"Ideal" Christian?
Growing up, I read my fair share of Christian teen girl magazines and books. While they were helpful at times and gave me some good insight to things. These things didn’t necessarily help me grow in my relationship with God all the time. In fact, in a weird way these things too led me personally to get caught up in the idea of self. When I read these magazines I often left feeling like I had to become this perfect ideal “Woman of God” and would think about the things that I need to do to maintain that image. Which if you think about it is no different than the message of self that other magazines give because I was still focused on myself. Our drive for relationship with God should be on Him and who He is, not because of how becoming who He wants us to be will bless us. It’s not bad that that’s the outcome and there’s definitely nothing wrong with having some self-confidence and a healthy view of yourself. But it can’t be from ourselves or the image we create, it has to come from God.
I feel like often we become too consumed with an image that we create of what a Christian is that we forget to look at Jesus. We instead look at the woman in our young woman’s Bible Study who seems like the 2014 Proverbs 31 woman. We look at the man in our men’s Bible Study whose heart for God matches that of David’s. And guess what? The 2014 Proverbs 31 woman is dating her very own Boaz who loves and fears the Lord and is also attractive. The young man from Bible study, courting his very own Proverbs 31 woman in the making (she just has to learn how to cook then she’s official). And maybe I’m the only one who wrestles through these things. But sometimes I feel like when I read stuff that talk about how I can change my character, it feels more like, “How godly can I become so I can find a really great guy/girl who is equally godly as I am?” or “How can I be as godly as so and so?” but that’s not at all how we should be thinking when we read some of these character advising articles in Christian magazines.
We instead need to look at who God is, who Jesus is. The thing is when we don’t look at God and instead are looking at ourselves or others, we can start to idolize ourselves or others. When we start to idolize ourselves things get dangerous. We become too consumed with what we are doing to be “right” with God or the best Christian or whatever. We forget that our being saved to begin with had NOTHING to do with us but that it was by God’s grace alone through Jesus Christ. (John 3:16)
I do believe that we should search our hearts and strive to live a life that pleases God. But I think that sometimes we forget to realize that it’s not about the man or woman of God we become but instead about knowing God and falling more deeply in love with Him, through prayer and reading His Word. Out of that love for God, we become more loving, kind, selfless, caring, humble. We shouldn’t strive for those qualities for our sake to become better people but instead ask God to give us strength to have those qualities so that we can glorify Him and point to Him.
I enjoy looking at Christian blogs, magazines and articles as much as the next person but we need to remember that above all else we should be in the Word of God. In Matthew 4:4, I was reminded this morning that “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”. When Jesus is being tempted in desert by Satan and he refers to bread that we eat. (And I don’t want to take this out of context or mess up what I’m saying here so I hope this comes across right) If I can remember right I think that the “bread” isn't necessarily bread you can eat but it can be compliments from others, steady things in life that make us feel like we don’t need God, pride or even, a Christian Magazine with great articles. See, we can’t know who God is by just reading articles about Him. We can’t grow closer to Jesus and allow Him to work in our hearts by just reading an article, “5 things that a Woman of Godly Character Has” with little verses that talk about each quality. Articles are great for helping to raise points and they are helpful. But without actually cracking open the Word of God, we aren’t going to be able to see things clearly and we’re going to get stuck on working at ourselves by ourselves and fall into an attitude of self-righteousness. The Bible has so much to teach us, we just have to be willing to learn.
So today, I hope that you leave encouraged but instead of closing out and finding something else to do that you would close your laptop and open up God’s Word. Because if we really want to grow, that’s the source that’s going to guide us more than all those Christian self-help books.
“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” -2 Peter 1:3
I feel like often we become too consumed with an image that we create of what a Christian is that we forget to look at Jesus. We instead look at the woman in our young woman’s Bible Study who seems like the 2014 Proverbs 31 woman. We look at the man in our men’s Bible Study whose heart for God matches that of David’s. And guess what? The 2014 Proverbs 31 woman is dating her very own Boaz who loves and fears the Lord and is also attractive. The young man from Bible study, courting his very own Proverbs 31 woman in the making (she just has to learn how to cook then she’s official). And maybe I’m the only one who wrestles through these things. But sometimes I feel like when I read stuff that talk about how I can change my character, it feels more like, “How godly can I become so I can find a really great guy/girl who is equally godly as I am?” or “How can I be as godly as so and so?” but that’s not at all how we should be thinking when we read some of these character advising articles in Christian magazines.
We instead need to look at who God is, who Jesus is. The thing is when we don’t look at God and instead are looking at ourselves or others, we can start to idolize ourselves or others. When we start to idolize ourselves things get dangerous. We become too consumed with what we are doing to be “right” with God or the best Christian or whatever. We forget that our being saved to begin with had NOTHING to do with us but that it was by God’s grace alone through Jesus Christ. (John 3:16)
I do believe that we should search our hearts and strive to live a life that pleases God. But I think that sometimes we forget to realize that it’s not about the man or woman of God we become but instead about knowing God and falling more deeply in love with Him, through prayer and reading His Word. Out of that love for God, we become more loving, kind, selfless, caring, humble. We shouldn’t strive for those qualities for our sake to become better people but instead ask God to give us strength to have those qualities so that we can glorify Him and point to Him.
I enjoy looking at Christian blogs, magazines and articles as much as the next person but we need to remember that above all else we should be in the Word of God. In Matthew 4:4, I was reminded this morning that “Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God”. When Jesus is being tempted in desert by Satan and he refers to bread that we eat. (And I don’t want to take this out of context or mess up what I’m saying here so I hope this comes across right) If I can remember right I think that the “bread” isn't necessarily bread you can eat but it can be compliments from others, steady things in life that make us feel like we don’t need God, pride or even, a Christian Magazine with great articles. See, we can’t know who God is by just reading articles about Him. We can’t grow closer to Jesus and allow Him to work in our hearts by just reading an article, “5 things that a Woman of Godly Character Has” with little verses that talk about each quality. Articles are great for helping to raise points and they are helpful. But without actually cracking open the Word of God, we aren’t going to be able to see things clearly and we’re going to get stuck on working at ourselves by ourselves and fall into an attitude of self-righteousness. The Bible has so much to teach us, we just have to be willing to learn.
So today, I hope that you leave encouraged but instead of closing out and finding something else to do that you would close your laptop and open up God’s Word. Because if we really want to grow, that’s the source that’s going to guide us more than all those Christian self-help books.
“His divine power has given us everything we need for a godly life through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness” -2 Peter 1:3
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