DON'T FILE AWAY FAITH

Imagine your life to be a filing cabinet. Every drawer on the filing cabinet represents a different aspect of your life, and you open each drawer whenever you need it. So to give a few examples; you've a drawer for when you're in school, a drawer for when you're with family, a drawer for when you're in church. You get the idea. Depending on who you are in each one of these situations, depends on what drawer of the filing cabinet you open. And when
you change context or situation, and you're in a new setting, or with new people, then you close the old drawer, and you open up a new one applicable to that area.

Isn't this quite accurate imagery for our lives? I know it is for mine anyway. We compartmentalise. It's who we are. We put on different masks. For different situations. For different people. It's sad really. Why can't we just be ourselves all the time? Is it fear? Is it shame? Is it guilt? Maybe it's the urge to be someone who we're not? I don't know. I guess it's different for everyone.

Especially as Christians, why do we tend to shut the drawer of our filing cabinet that's labelled 'our walk with God'? Do you find yourself doing this? Because I certainly do. When I'm in youth work mode, I've got the Christian drawer of my filing cabinet out. It's open when I'm at Church. It's open during the summer when I'm busy doing camps and summer schemes. It's open when I read my Bible or pray. But when I'm not doing these things, I realise that I tend to close this drawer of my filing cabinet.

When I'm at football. When I'm on the X-Box. When I'm angry. Why doesn't the Christian drawer stay open? I mean it's stupid really. When I struggle with things, the only one that can help me is God. It makes no sense to battle away at it alone, and to shut God off from it. But that's what we do. That's what I do. We put God in His box, and we pull Him out whenever we need Him. We shut that drawer of the filing cabinet.

What if we left that drawer open all the time? Imagine if we allowed God to truly take over every aspect of our lives! The good, the bad, the downright sinful. This is a great challenge to me personally. Let God into the other areas of our lives, where we tend to shut Him out of. So when we struggle with sin, we can ask God for His help to deal with it, instead of shamefully closing his drawer and pretending He doesn't see.

School was a killer for this. I failed big style. My walk and my talk just didn't match up. I was going to church and youth programmes, and my peers knew I was professing to be a Christian. But my behaviour, my attitude, my words and my actions just didn't reflect it at all. Why? Because I didn't take God with me. I didn't take Him from my church, or from youth, or from my own personal time, into the other areas of my life; like school. And as a result, my life was not a good mirror of Christ.

My challenge to you is the same one I write to myself. Leave God's drawer of the filing cabinet open. Don't shut Him off. Allow Him into all areas of your life. To help with the struggles, to shine in the darkness. As Christians, we have an obligation to go all in, 110% for Jesus. If we try to box Him out and compartmentalise our lives, then we are shamefully filing away the glory of the cross.

'And whatever you do or say, do it as a representative of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks through him to God the Father.'

Colossians 3 v 17