Lent Day 22 Reflection

By The Rev. Deacon Larry Barnhill

Looking now at Matthew 23:25 can people say that you devote more time to inner attitudes than you do to outer appearance and if so how and why? This should be the attitude we are striving towards, for this is how God looks at mankind. God looks at the inside, the heart, or in the terms of the Ancient Near East, the core of man. Jesus taught us that it is out of a man’s heart (or core) that his true nature is revealed. The Pharisee’s and the teachers of the Law were so self-focused upon how they looked and presented themselves to the public that they neglected to inside and thus their true relationship with Christ. If you have truly accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior, then Christ, via the Holy Spirit, lives within you. Because of this what we do to ourselves as Christians, we are doing directly to Christ. If Christ is in you then you should be striving to build up your inner attitudes, thoughts, and wellbeing so that your relationship with Christ is growing and so that the light of Christ can be seen radiating from you. If you focus singularly upon the outer appearance, your focus is on things of this world and not of Christ. If you focus on the world you lose sight of the goal of heaven and can easily become swayed by Satan. Many say that those focused upon outer appearances are vain. Indeed they are correct as VAIN stands for Vacillating, Anxious, Insecure, and Neurotic. Those that are vain, have to constantly work to put others underneath them somehow so that they feel lifted up and justified. This is not what Christ demands of us. Christ instructs us to love one another as he loved us. Focusing upon outer appearances brings a false sense of security. The outer shell that we call our human bodies can and will change its appearance over the course of our journey here on earth. If we have Christ within us, then our eternal nature, our soul, is magnified. This is the only part of us that will never change. It is the most important aspect of who we are. Therefore as you spend time in prayer today, seek to see if you are truly working to look at that inner person so that you can see Christ in them, or have you lost the way and only focus on the outer being. If you are focusing solely upon appearances, I pray that you can repent of that and then turn to Christ and grow in him.