: Keeping Up Appearances

[Michael Atkins]

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From: Internet Cafe Devotions <lo...@internetcafedevotions.com>
Date: Sat, Sep 17, 2011 at 4:10 AM
Subject: Keeping Up Appearances
To: playe...@cs.com

Keeping Up Appearances

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Keeping Up Appearances Posted: 16 Sep 2011 10:15 PM PDT A while back I removed the “fake” silk flowers from the pots stationed at my front door in sentinel fashion.  My “real” flowers had died due to lack of water, but the pretty, lacy, Creeping Jenny had survived.  I had complained about my lack of time to “green up” my thumb and a friend had suggested, “Put some fake flowers in the pot! No one will ever notice!” So I had plopped some lively looking silks in the pot…you know…. to keep up appearances.  But since the colors of the silks had faded, it was time (long past time) to remove them from their station. Days later as I stepped up to enter the door, I looked down and noticed all the new growth of the Creeping Jenny.  With the “fake” (i.e. not alive, nor real) removed, the little peeping, creeping ground cover had plenty of room to shoot forth in new growth! It was then that I thought of all the times we “put on” a pretty facade of  having and doing the right things in life–in order to “fit in.”  Yet, all the while we lack spiritual growth. Many times it’s because we have not removed the “dead or fake” from our lives, and Christ has no room to grow and mature us into what HE intends for us to be! “The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon.  Those that be planted in the house of the LORD shall flourish in the courts of our God. They shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be fat and flourishing; To shew that the LORD [is] upright: [he is] my rock, and [there is] no unrighteousness in him.” Psalm 92:12-15 KJV Join me today in seeking to weed out what is unnecessary–the things that we tuck in just to “keep up appearances.” The very burden of that idea of having to conform to man/woman is what weighs us down! God has called us to a specific walk.  What He requires of me will sometimes look different than what He may require of you.  But the goal is to seek HIM daily, allow HIM to do the uprooting of the fake: planting instead righteousness and all the spiritual gifts that will bring GLORY to HIS NAME! By the way, “fake plants” have no roots.  And the sun fades them quickly.  Just in case you wondered. © Angie Knight–The Knightly News.  All rights reserved.  Used by permission.

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