Today I was shopping downtown at one of my favorite book stores. When I came out I went to my car and tried to open the door. Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but I will anyway…I don’t usually lock my car doors. Especially not when I’m in downtown PraCan. My car isn’t that nice, and there sure as heck isn’t anything inside worth taking.
So, you can imagine that I was a bit confused to find the door locked.
That’s when it hit me. I looked inside the window. A travel mug. A stellar interior. This. Is. Not. My. Car.
Awkward.
Then there was that moment when I looked over my shoulder, sure the true owner had seen me and would be asking questions. Luckily there was no one around. So I looked across the street to find my own Chevy Equinox, got inside…and snapped a photo of the mistaken identity to show you later.
It got me thinking about mistaken identity. From the outside lots of things can look the same. A silver Equinox parked on the side of the street can be mistaken for another. I can think that car is my car. {And I did.} It’s only when you look through the window to see the interior that you recognize you’ve made a mistake. It could happen with any number of things. For instance, a ripe watermelon looks pretty much the same as one that’s gone bad. When you chop into it, you’ll find juicy, solid fruit…or a pile of weird, watery mush.
People can be like this too. From the outside you draw conclusions. But the Bible teaches us that God cares most about what is inside. He teaches us to beware of outward appearances and instead examine the heart. To look through the window to examine the interior, before we commit to getting inside the wrong vehicle. {Matthew 15:1-20; Proverbs 21:2; Jeremiah 17:10; Luke 16:15 the list goes on and on…}
From the outside two people can both look caring, compassionate, and Christ-loving. Their insides, however can be very, very different. One can be of pure intentions, while the other can be motivated by vanity, selfishness, or the desire to seem holy. {Gee…sounds like some Pharisees I heard about once.}
Recently I taught a lesson on purity inside our social media. I pulled Facebook statuses from lots of my friends and had our youth group teens draw conclusions about them. The kicker was that I pulled two from the same person. One that advocated going to the bars for cheap drinks and a night of wasted fun. One that contained a call to prayer. That’s weird. That’s hypocrisy. That’s how mistaken identity can occur.
What identity are you portraying? Is it a pure image of who you really are? Are your intentions pure? Or are you trying to trap the outside world into mistaking your identity?
Take time to pray that God would guide your assessment of others. That He would teach you to be an examiner of hearts, now outward appearances. Pray that He would purify your intentions as well…so everyone can see just how wonderful you are.
Amy
