Is your Christ to small? A devotional for EASTER....2012

How to Know When Your Christ Is Too Small

A Blog for Easter  --borrowed

The tears flowed down her cheeks, as she pressed against me as hard as she could.  All around us stood people laughing and smiling, but my daughter wanted no part of it.  What hurt her you ask?  Why, in the middle of the amusement part, had the dam broken in her little tear ducts?  It was a cartoon character, and it was moving towards her to give her a hug!  That’s right, the very thing that was bringing laughter and cheer to other three and four year olds, had terrified my little three year old.  She wasn’t just crying, she was pulling at me, trying to get me to take her away as far as she could get from that terrifying “monster” bunny, with its “ferocious” smile!  She was completely serious.  So I turned and moved to a “safe” distance (which to her would have been in the car driving 90 miles an hour in the other direction).

My daughter is now 13, and you know what, she is still terrified of those bigger than life carton characters.  It doesn’t matter how many times I tell her that they are just some hot sweaty teenager dressed up in a costume.  She cannot stand it.  She doesn’t cry anymore, she just turns the corner and goes the other direction.  Even though she knows it’s just an unfortunate person sweating to death inside a costume, all she still sees is a giant cartoon character.  Of course, we all know that just because you put a costume on, you are not the costume.

Now it is easy for you to see how silly my daughter is, but I am willing to bet that you don’t understand this truth as much as you think you do.   I am no longer talking about costumed characters at the amusement part.  I’m talking about the person you see staring back at you when you peer into the mirror every morning.

When you accepted Christ, you didn’t just get a little Christ in you.  He also didn’t give you a costume to wear.  He is your life.  The old is gone, the new has come.  You are a new creation.  So then, why do you still struggle against the same old things you always struggled against?  It’s simple; you think that you are that bunny costume you are wearing.  Okay, so maybe you don’t wake up every morning and put on a bunny costume, but you are wearing a costume.

Your costumes (like mine) take many shapes.  Some of your costumes look a lot like you before you knew Christ; perhaps what you think is a better version of you.  There is also a costume you wear that we will call “the perfect Christian.”  This is the costume that you are striving to be.  If you put this on every morning and do everything a perfect Christian does, you will be a perfect Christian.  But here is the struggle, why do all of your costumes look so dingy and dirty and lifeless?  If you are a new creation, then what changed when you accepted Christ?  Well, nothing changed…you were exchanged.  You got a new life.

When my daughter saw the cartoon character, did she see the teenager inside the costume or the cartoon character?  What was true?  Was that really the cartoon character?  No, of course not.  So what makes you, you?  The person in the cartoon costume could act like a cartoon character all day, did that make them a cartoon character?  You could put on a bunny suit in the morning and hop around eating carrots all day.  Does that make you a bunny?  If you did it for days and days on end, would you be more of a bunny after 30 days, or a year, or a lifetime, than you were the first day you put on the bunny costume?  No.

We often think if we could just act like a Christian, we could become a better Christian.  If we could just keep up the appearance.  If we just made sure our costume worked.  Guess what?  The pressure is off.  Just like wearing a bunny costume won’t make you a bunny, your actions won’t make you a Christian.  Christ already did that.  You just have to get out of the way, and let him be Christ in you.

But what about all the bad things you did, or continue to do?  What about all the bad things that others have done to you?  How can you overcome those things?  

More freedom awaits you!  As you gain a greater perspective of your life in Christ, you will have a greater understanding of living the abiding life.