Monday, March 14, 2011

Whats that smell?

Dear Barneys,
This weekend was really amazing. I just want to thank you all so much for your amazing sense of instant friendship this weekend. I feel so blessed to be serving with such compassionate and encouraging people. It was really depressing to wake up this morning and not sit with really awesome people eating and laughing.

Anyhow... todays reading was really encouraging for me and completely took my brain on a complete tangent. I hope that this post doesn't come out the way it could and completely look like i am condemning the girls at my church, but I just really need to get this off my chest and share. I really haven't seen true fellowship and compassion until this weekend. The smell of Christ working in all of you was sooo beautiful. But I want to caution against the smell it could become. My home church (not the one I go to Sonshine with) really struggles on accepting people. The girls are very clicky and it is really hard to find God when I feel I cant share anything without being judged.
With this said, I think that the sweet fragrance can also be a form of honesty. People have this strange notion that once you become a Christian nothing bad can ever happen to you and you have to maintain this really high unattainable level of perfection. I feel like this fragrance of God is something that really keeps people away from Jesus. I feel like when we are honest about our lives and realize that Jesus pushes our limits, challenges our lives, and causes us to die to ourselves daily. I think that with great honesty comes a great fragrance of the truth Jesus wants us to share. I feel like the best way we can tell people about Jesus and show them the sweet fragrance is by being completely one hundred percent honest. People fear God because they think He will judge for the broken pieces of their past. When we share our troubles and brokeness and meet people where they are afraid to be, I think we can really just show the compassion of Jesus and clear all misconceptions. My hope for this summer is that God would allow the campers to smell HIS, not my, sweet smell.

WOW, I can really go off on random tangents. Sorry guys, I understand if that made absolutely no sense to anyone.
Your Sister,
Haley

5 comments:

  1. True that, Haley! Honesty is super important - especially with campers! Like you were saying, it's easy for people to think that once you become a Christian, nothing bad can happen, and it's especially easy for campers to put Sonshine staff on a pedestal as "perfect Christians" - I know I did as a camper!

    But when we're honest with them about our struggles, that aroma directs them back to the person of Jesus. The super ultra even calls humility "intoxicatingly attractive". People can't get enough! That way, we encourage them to attribute anything good that they see in us to God and God alone!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Spot on! This totally ties in with something Kristen and myself were talking about. Lets see if i can word it right.

    Its not that you don't have your ups and downs when you are a christian. We all still have stuff happen to us that sucks. The difference is that we don't have to handle it all by ourselves. We have this big safety line that helps hold us up. We still feel the bad stuff when it happens, but we are cushioned from it. It might suck and be horrible while we go through it, but it would be exponentially worse if we didn't have christ to fall back on.

    I think I got that right. Kristen can correct me if I missed anything :)

    logan

    ReplyDelete
  3. Speaking of Kristen, this reminds of me of something Reid said to/about her. When she said she struggled with body issues, he mentioned her team saying, "Hey, I struggle with that too, how are you dealing with that?"
    To connect with today's passage, it's not exactly our successes where God is glorified. It's our weaknesses and how he comes into those. It's not that they're gone, it's that we've got an all-powerful God helping us through them. The more we admit that, the more people want somethin' like that too. Preeeettyy sweet.

    ReplyDelete
  4. God finds confessed sin very attractive.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "Broken Emily" hates that God finds confessed sin very attractive... and yet somehow "Broken Emily" loves that most about him. i am continually finding that i SO need Jesus to be all the things i wish he didn't HAVE to be.

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.