I just got back into Brooklyn yesterday morning from what seemed like an endless and tumultuous month of traveling on and off. I wanted to get some cleaning done this morning before work, so that when Josiah and I both get off work tonight we can just relax instead of being stressed out at the mess that post-travel suitcases and bathroom bags bring. I only had a few hours allotted before work so I knew I had to choose which cleaning tasks were most important. Immediately my mind went to dishes and bleaching the entire bathroom + kitchen sink. As I was doing this (I promise this is getting somewhere!) I realized that I would prefer a messy house that is clean, rather than a tidy house that is dirty. The living room still had suitcase explosions practically taking over, and blankets everywhere and just a mess of untidy-ness, but I knew just felt it wouldn't be right to only pick up the clothes and make it look nice to the eye, while leaving the kitchen sink yucky and the bathroom dirty. Mind you, I understand in an ideal world you would tidy up and THEN deep clean, but again note the time crunch that is my entire life! I know people in my life that are the exactly opposite to my though process. They would rather live in a dirty house that is tidied up and looks presentable. I don't know if they would actually be open to saying those exact words, but it's very obvious in the way that they live and run a household.
While I was cleaning, the Lord really began to stir up in my heart the similarities of my thought process to a matter of the heart. Was I someone who would prefer a clean/pure heart and be honest about the issues (or mess) that remained in my flawed person, or would I prefer to look like I have everything together and not have messy relationships/ be afraid to confront my friends and family in love about REAL issue all the while ignoring the intentions of my heart?! BAM. Just like that I found myself repenting to God. I was suddenly burdened with an intense desire to see the people I know and love be honest, be repentant, be CLEAN before God and look less-than-perfect. Because really, who are we trying to fool? You know the people in your life that try to look like they have everything together with their seven jobs and their ten kids and their perfect marriage, but we all know that everyone has their own struggles. We are human beings, and a beautiful part of being human is the unity that comes with honesty and weakness.
Recently, a few things have happened in my friend group that have caused a stir of conversations. Some of these chats were of genuine happiness or concern, and some revealed deep hidden ideals in hearts that caused me to really look back and reflect on my own beliefs and convictions. In the world I live in (Brooklyn/NYC specifically) I am challenged daily to whether or not I will stand up for my belief in Jesus Christ as my savior, or will I cooly step back and blend into the apathy and godlessness that is the "city life." My pastor here in Williamsburg, BK recently gave a statistic to us about our community. He said that less than half of one perfect of our community attends a church meeting on a Sunday morning. Immediately upon hearing this I truly wanted to vomit. Can that possibly be real? And if it is real, what does that say about our city/neighborhood? Initially my thought was solely that this city needs Jesus so desperately. More desperately than I've seen in any of the missions trips I've been on/3rd world countries I've lived in combined. But today as I was deep cleaning my kitchen sink, I realized that where I was raised you wouldn't know the true statistic of what percentage of the population even attended church on a Sunday morning, let alone who believed they had a relationship with Jesus Christ the Son, God the Father, and Holy Spirit who lives inside of us. So many people in a "Bible Belt" culture would say, "Of course I go to church on a Sunday morning!" and even more would say, "Yes, I'm definitely a Christian!" and the conversation would possibly stop there and no deeper questions would be asked. Maybe the surveyor wouldn't have second thoughts as to if that person was being truthful, or if they were just trying to look tidy on the outside and inside of the southern cultural norm. Maybe that person inside feels so lost. Maybe that "statistic" hasn't believed that Jesus Christ was God since they were fifteen years old, but no one has bothered to dig deep enough to notice, so they just quietly slip out of youth groups and Sunday school class, and into a different friend group with enough alcohol and drugs to numb their mind so they don't have to ask the hard questions anymore because it's just too difficult.
Think about this:
"But just as we have been approved by God to be entrusted with the gospel, so we speak, not to please man, but to please God who tests our hearts." -1 Thessalonians 2:4
As a believer, we are told plainly in Scripture that God will test our heart's intent. Yes, learning how to be obedient to God and follow the guidelines laid out for us in Scripture is super important!!! But maybe even more important is the way we allow God to test our hearts and make known to us the true results of his testing. Out of that cleansing process, I believe God allows us to grow into stronger believers, into more obedient, humble, and serving Christians through the help of the Bible and his Spirit that lives inside of us as believers. Speaking the truth to friends in love is NOT easy. Most of the time they get mad at you, and possibly in extreme cases cut you out of their lives because they misunderstand you, or they don't want to deal with the truth of what you're saying. That doesn't mean it isn't right, or more importantly what you are CALLED to do as a Christian and a lover of Jesus.
I don't think I'm saying anything new here. I don't think I'm above the very thing I'm trying to draw your attention to. It's because I struggle with this issue that I want to write about it. In a way it keeps me accountable, and in a way I just like to read back through my blogs and read about what God was doing in my life when I lived NYC in 2015.
If you're reading this, know that I prayed for you. I prayed that God would stir something so deep in your heart that you can't close the browser tab of my blog and just forget. Spend some time today in prayer and mediation, and ask God to show you your heart's intention, because sometimes we can fool even ourselves into thinking our spiritual house is clean AND tidy, instead of realizing we haven't deep cleaned in quite some time.
Here is the question from scripture that I want you to read out loud to yourself:
"For am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ." - Galatians 1:10
Let's work together on this. Let's be real friends and stand together for purity in a generation of blurred lines, and stand for the Gospel in a generation of less than one percent of people who attend church on a given Sunday morning.
xo
Wynt In The City
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