Hokie Pokie

Honour moms

The Hokie Pokie…

I sang this song when I was in play school and Kevin sings it today.

Its all about putting your left foot in and your left foot out….

Its quite a silly song.

But when it comes to our walk with God we do the same…

But the song goes more like put your best foot in put your best foot out.

Every Sunday we put our best foot and then we leave church and we put our best foot out.

In out in out and then sometimes we will have a really good experience and then we shake it all about.

More thsn just church.

How soaked are we in the redemptive blood of Jesus Christ.

How real is it that we disappoint God? That we make him smile, that we make him cry?

Not dealing with?

Bring the things go right in a testimony?

Always those little hidden things that we keep. Not only from each other but also from God.

Trevor Hudson in his book signposts to spirituality calls the things that we don’t really like to bring to God our “Shadow Selves”

Whole self – holy as one approved a workman for for God. Eph. 2:10

God has already dealt with your best foot. He wants to start dealing with the things that we try and cover over and hide.

I remember when I was younger…cupboard eg.

Some parts could not use.

As Christians we can get very good at doing all the externals right. We come we hug we smile we raise our hands we clap we nod we look up a scripture, we drink tea, we smile we hug we go home.

But when do we clean?

When do we take out garbage?

When do we get stuck into the spiritual warfare that rages all around us and bring the real issues of our heart to God?

Banquet

Jesus gave a parable of a banquet, Luke 14. He wants all to come. He wants all of us to come. He loves us and he wants every part of our selves, shadow selves included to come and partke. It was for thos very shadow selves that he died.

By withholding those shadow selves, hinders our ongoing conversion, it splits our lives and makes us vulnerable to that which we have denied.

It hinders us as we kind of give our stuff to the Lord and stay stop no further, it splits us by some of ourselves being at the cross and some of it resting on our own strength and it makes us vulnerable because we never know when those shadows are going to rear their ugly head. Eg Peter betrayal

Proverbs 23:7 reads, “As a man thinks within himself, so he is.”

Matthew 5:8 – Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God

The fact that God has no time limit means that he has not given us a time limit.

He wants to journey to walk to help and to clean.

Some of us can do it over night others need to walk a bit.

The first thing we need to do is make the statement. We need to get up and make a statement of faith…Play clip.

Lets start working it out. Lets start having a look at these shadow selves?

The statement can be made, but if you don’t recognize these shadow selves, then we are lost?

Read questions.

How do we Id?

Pay attention to immediate reactions.

Read Ephesians 4:31 and Galatians 5:19-21 for scriptural support

Find out what you so easily condemn in others

How do I bring them into the light?

Jesus died for our shadow selves because he loved us. The love he has is present today in the body. Find a friend that you can confes all things to. Find a spiritual host for your banquet and start the journey.

Get imaginative with a gospel story. Start reading what happened with Jesus and have a look at your immediate reactions and what you condem. Acts 17:11.

Start making friends between your shadow self and Jesus. He knows it anyway. But formally introduce them.

I am ok and I am on my way.

Some “closets” in our spiritual life that may need to be cleaned.

Bad habits need to be removed

Profane speech needs cleaned up

Some TV shows might need turned off.

Some books that need to be trashed. Consider Acts 19:19-20,