Wearing Christ Inside Out

Wearing Christ Inside Out

Colossians 3:17
And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, [do] all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him.

Perhaps, like me, as you think over your daily life and business you are convicted of how little Christ is brought out and made a part of the daily affairs of our lives.  Inwardly we are cognizant of Him.  We may even have a spirit of prayer and praise going on throughout our day, but how much do we compartmentalize our faith.  Perhaps the Lord is not really revealed and manifested in the outward man that deals with the world around Him.  I tend to be a very task oriented individual.  I become very focused on the task I am currently addressing and often zone out other distractions and demands until I finish what I am doing.  In a sense I compartmentalize myself to focus on the task that is at hand.  That tends to create in me a box type mentality.  Everything has its own box or space and depending upon which box I am in that is how I deal with it.  Sometimes it becomes difficult to integrate and mix our boxes.
What we know in our hearts is that Christ must be such an integral part of all that we are and all that we do so that He is automatically coming forth and present in every situation that I am dealing with in my life.  While some of us move from one compartment to the next we may find that in those different compartments we have developed different values.  We may have tough values for dealing with business issues, our compromising values for dealing with tax issues, our promiscuous values for dealing with sexual issues and so on.  With those different values systems and different compartments of our lives we send different messages to people about who we really are.  We can be all spiritual when we are with our Christian friends, “praise the Lord brother” and then talk a whole different language around our work or social crowd.  This description is fitting a lot of us who proclaim Christ today, at least if you get us in the right compartment.
Jesus didn’t ask for a compartment of our heart, He ask that we would love Him with all of our heart, mind, soul and strength.  That means that He must become the essence of who we are.  Our identity is no longer in who we are in this world, what we do or the talents that we possess.  Our identity is in Christ, Christ in us and Christ living through us.  The Lord doesn’t have multiple personalities like many of us have been trying to live.  He is one God, with one set of values.  Isn’t it time that we confront who we really are and make one compartment that deals with everything through our Christ being?  After all the scripture does exhort us that whatsoever we do in word or deed that we do it all in the name or the nature and character of Christ, giving thanks to God through that same nature.  I guess it is time that we start wearing Christ inside out, so that He is manifest in our lives at every level for all to see.  After all we need to be true to who we really are.

Blessings,
kent