I Have Been Fooled.

For years of my life I have believed a prideful lie. One that has been re-iterated so many times, it is commonly believed to be Truth.  
 
The lie that I have more than “poor, deprived, starving children in Africa.” In response, I have offered up sacrifices of guilt, poured out finances, time, and a pretend love… all in attempts to give Christ only to those who “really needed Him, because they don’t have anything else.”

 
The lie that I have more than “upper class filthy rich, uncompassionate, pricks living in mansions.”
In response, I have judged them as guilty. I have scoffed at their pain and turned my face from them. I have ignored that my God can easily show Himself to all, regardless of social status.
 

I have been blinded by lies not fully seeing.
We all really need Him.

Fooled by the physical, not realizing we all have the same spiritual reality.

 
I am merely a human; my education has not lifted me higher than a prostitute mother. I am the one that has contributed to showy church services void of meaning. I have given up pride offerings to bring justice, ignorantly forgetting to petition the God who created justice, and is fully just, to come through.
 
I have compared myself, time and again, to the “lesser Christians.” You know, the ones who sit in the church service, lethargically slouching in their pew – week after week.Failing to recognize my own desperate need for renewed Life, day after day.
 

Christ came for the sick, I am the sick.
We are the sick.
Americans… Africans… Cambodians…

 
We are the ones who have turned our backs on God’s voice, time and again.
We are the ones who have heard and seen the gospel, and still been blind to its
full power.
 

I eagerly announce to you my foolishness, that God may be more glorified in my life.
For He, in His almighty strength, has used me to announce His name.
Regardless of my infancy and misunderstanding of reality.

 

I praise the Lord, because He is the One who heals me from foolish, shallow thinking.
I rejoice that He is the perfect Papa who lovingly disciplines me when I forget He owns every dollar.
His Joy fills me, because in my sickness He has reached me.
I have touched His cloak,
And now in front of me I can see,
Truth.
The Truth That Sets Us Free.