I recently read an article about a new e-book entitled, “What do ‘Raw Fooders’ actually eat”?  It follows the daily meals of 48 raw fooders for a week.  Many of these ‘raw fooders’ have written books about the raw food life style.  The article goes on to explain how some of the raw fooders who were approached refused to be followed for a week and have their every meal documented.  Why?  Because despite publicly advocating the raw food lifestyle they don’t always eat everything raw like they tell people to do in the books they write.  Now, I can’t say that I blame them.  If you have ever tried to eat raw or even follow a different diet plan than from what your family and friends follow you will realize how hard it is to stick to a diet plan ALL of the time.

Have you ever put on a different face for people you want to impress while just a short time before you were having an argument with someone in your family?  I remember when my kids were little.  The morning of getting three small children ready for church always proved stressful and I managed to “emphasize” the phrase, “hurry up”  more times than I should have.  Finally I would get everyone in the car with clean clothes, and hair combed.  The drive to church took 20 minutes.  I would drive to church with the same attitude I had left the house with.  About three to five minutes before arriving to church I would mentally rearrange my attitude and walk into church and greet everyone as if my morning had been the best of the entire year!  Smiles and sweetness for everyone.

I finally came to the conclusion that whether or not I became upset before leaving the house things would go as things went and we would arrive to church at the same time whether I said “hurry up” ten times or not.  Also, if I was capable of rearranging my attitude five minutes before arriving before church, why couldn’t I just rearrange my attitude a whole hour before that?

I think sometimes if we were to truly live an authentic lifestyle we would say to the pastor as we shake his hand after the sermon what we say about him just an hour later while eating lunch.  Of course most of us choose to be polite and say, “I loved your sermon today, bless you for all that you do for this church.”

If we let Jesus live in our hearts rather than just pasting Him on the outside we would say at lunch after church on Sunday, “Wasn’t that a great sermon the pastor preached today?  He works so hard for our church we should see how we can help him out.”  Jesus in our hearts will lead us to live the authentic lifestyle we want to live but can’t seem to do on our own.