Ok, here is another song that kind goes along with what i wrote last week.  It is about how we naturally put forth our best face and try to hide our weaknesses and failures cause we don’t want people to know how bad we really are. We all do it and I think if we say we don’t then we are doing it by saying that.   It seems that Jesus really believed that too.  He was so harsh with the religious people that were always putting on a show.  Kyle, one of the kids in our Youth group had just read Mathew  6 and we were talking about how once we get a religious discipline under our belt we love to show all our fellow club members how good we have gotten. I remember the first time I led someone to Christ, I bragged about it till I was blue in the face.  We want people to see how good we are and how well we follow God’s law.  It makes us feel special and unique and better than those who don’t or can’t be as good as us.   Jesus did such a good job at showing how this form of thinking is actually worse and more destructive in our relationship with God than outright sin that everyone sees. There is an older woman (we’ll call her Crystal)  who is a heroine addict in our community who will do anything or anyone to get her next fix. She is one of the biggest rejects in our community and seemingly impossible to change. Even the lowest person still despise her and considers them self better than her.  We have reached out to her for the last 4 years and seen nothing.  No change and no desire to change.  But there is something refreshing about Crystal in the sense that her sin isn’t hidden.  It is exposed to us all and it disgusts us and destroys her family and this community.  We can learn a lot from her and we can actually see ourselves on a cosmic level before God when we look at her. Jesus showed that all of us are Crystals in the Kingdom of heaven. All of our sin is utterly exposed for everything it is whether we can see it or not. God sees us all as we see Crystal.  He sees our hearts for what they are: selfish prideful and rebellious toward the saving grace he has given. We are addicted to ourselves and we even do thing in His name to satisfy those selfish desires of our hearts We whore ourselves to get whatever fix we think we need in order to feel alive and consequential. We use religion to cover up our filth, but eventually even the strongest moral fabric human’s can weave on their religious spindles will rip and expose the sickness rotting beneath. Even our best smelling religious colognes that we cover ourselves with will eventually wear off and the stench of our spiritual BO will plague those who are closest to us.  But the King of the universe is not like us.  He doesn’t treat us the way we treat Crystal.  He himself has come into our filth and been clothed in the same stinking flesh that we all have.  But for some reason his didn’t stink.  He was refreshing and those who got near Him and got to know him were either driven away by His purity or they embraced it. He brought hope and new life to those who knew they needed a savior. Those who saw that their sin and their best deeds were one in the same.  Those who saw they had no hope in knowing the perfect God through their own imperfect works. But those who wanted to justify themselves through religion, and those who loved their sin hated Him and killed him.  But even that was part of the plan, for in His death, all  the failures and darkness of His loved ones was taken on Him and utterly consumed in His light as He rose again from the dead. In that miracle, something amazing happened to those who put their hope in Him.  Crystals like me got a new heart and new clothes.  The stinking rotting sin begins to fade as the  gospel works itself deeper into our hearts and we actually begin to enjoy the look and the new life it brings.  We start to love the way He loved and live the way He lived.  Not because we have to but because we really want to and because we love our savior and believe what He has done for us.

So here is the song.  I recorded this one actually a few years ago.  You can click on the link and hear it.

Shining Shells and Cheap Cologne

Put on a shining shell, for all to see

to somehow hide what lies beneath

The secret’s dark the shame is real

You’d do anything

To convince yourself and everyone else

That everything will be alright

You tell yourself and everyone else

That everything will be alright

You’ve fallen hard

You’ve fallen far and you want to come back

You’ve fallen hard

You’ve fallen far and you want to come back

Put on your cheap cologne

to cover up the rotting things that lie beneath

A heart of stone, that’s all alone

You’d do anything

To convince yourself and everyone else

That everything will be alright

You tell yourself and everyone else

That everything will be alright

You’ve fallen hard

You’ve fallen far and you want to come back

You’ve fallen hard

You’ve fallen far and you want to come back

I don’t want to be the one that sees you

But can’t believe you, so promise me

I won’t have to be that way again

I don’t want to be the one that sees you

But can’t believe you, so promise me

I won’t have to be that way again

I don’t want to be that way

I’ve fallen hard

I’ve fallen far and I wanna come back

I’ve fallen hard

I’ve fallen far and I wanna come back

Bring me back

Take off my dirty clothes and give me yours

So I can be like you

Rip out my heart of stone and give me yours

So I can be like you

Jesus make me just like you