I don't have it all together, and neither do you. And that's OK.

Why does the world think Christians are stuck on themselves? How did they begin to perceive that we walk around acting “holier than thou”? Why do many unbelievers look at Christians as if we were all a bunch of phoneys?

I believe it is because in many cases we act like that. We walk around guarding our hearts, not wanting to share our problems, not wanting to share our heartbreaks, our failures. We’ll certainly share when we do something good, but how often to we honestly admit when we’ve messed up? And not just that we’ve messed up, how many of us hide our struggles away trying to make it look like we have it all together? That our families have it all together?

I’m guilty of it myself. I don’t want to share a lot of what goes on in my life, even with other believers...perhaps especially with believers. I imagine I’m not the only one. We walk around putting on shows. Why are we so afraid to be real? Why is it that we feel we have to hide our struggles? Why do we think we have to be perfect?

How often do you stop in church and say hello to the same people week after week? And when they smile and ask how you are doing do you stop on those days when you just need someone to give you a word of encouragement (or a hug) and say “You know, today I’m not doing so well. I’m having a hard time with [insert problem]”? If we cannot be honest with our brethren in Christ, how are we ever going to be honest with those who don’t believe?

Do we honestly think that putting up these “I’ve got it under control” fronts is going to help show Christ? It is when we can walk through our struggles, whatever they might be, in faithfulness to Christ and be honest with each other that people can see Christ work in our lives. If we pretend to be perfect what need is there for Christ? But if I stop and admit that some days aren’t perfect, some days my knees are killing me and some days I am really worried about how the bills are going to get paid, but I put my trust in Christ to get me through it, and people see the struggles they’ll see Christ. And besides, as fellow believers we are to support and encourage each other daily. How are we supposed to do that if nobody has any problems?