Saved, Sanctified & Spiritually Catfishing

I wonder how many people have struggled to recognize God because of the way I represented Him.

That’s an uncomfortable question, particularly because I’ve spent a considerable portion of my life trying to recover from the ways other people represented Him to me.

I’ve watched people preach love while practicing cruelty. I’ve watched people speak in tongues and use that same tongue to absolutely demolish somebody’s character. I’ve watched people demonstrate extraordinary spiritual gifts while possessing the emotional maturity of a wet paper towel. I’ve witnessed people identify demons in somebody else’s life from three zip codes away while remaining completely oblivious to the pride occupying their own living room.

And somewhere along the way, I started confusing their character with God’s.

Their rejection became His rejection. Their manipulation became His control. Their inconsistencies became evidence that perhaps God wasn’t nearly as loving as everybody insisted He was.

I allowed imperfect people to become the measuring stick for a perfect God.

And then I did something even more disturbing.

I became so consumed with identifying how other people misrepresented Him that I stopped considering whether I was doing the same thing.

Because how many times have I called my suspicion discernment? How many times have I disguised my preferences as conviction? How many times have I claimed to be led by the Holy Spirit when I was actually being dragged around by my emotions like an unsupervised toddler in Target?

How many times have I made somebody feel small while claiming to represent a God who calls them valuable?

I wonder if there are people who have had to recover from an encounter with me.

Whew.

I’ve spent years criticizing the very behaviors I’ve occasionally reproduced. Apparently, recognizing dysfunction doesn’t automatically mean I’ve been delivered from participating in it.

Sometimes I’ve simply learned to make mine sound more biblical.

And that realization forced me to reconsider something I’ve misunderstood about the Holy Spirit.

The evidence of His presence isn’t merely in the gifts. It’s in the fruit.

Galatians 5:22–23 identifies that fruit as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

Not eloquence. Not popularity. Not how loudly I worship or how accurately I can quote scripture. Not even how effectively I exercise a spiritual gift.

I can imitate a spiritual performance. I can memorize the vocabulary, learn the posture, and become familiar enough with church culture to look like I’ve been walking with God since Moses parted the Red Sea.

But I cannot manufacture genuine spiritual fruit through performance.

I can pretend to be patient until somebody inconveniences me. I can appear loving until loving somebody requires sacrifice. I can talk about peace until my circumstances refuse to cooperate.

Eventually, what’s growing in me will reveal itself.

And perhaps that’s why Jesus’ words in Matthew 7:22–23 are so sobering. People will point to prophecy, deliverance, and mighty works done in His name, yet discover that religious activity was never a substitute for actually knowing Him.

Imagine being impressive to people while remaining resistant to God.

Imagine becoming so skilled at demonstrating spiritual gifts that I never notice the absence of spiritual maturity.

That terrifies me, particularly because I’ve sometimes been more interested in being uniquely gifted than consistently kind.

I’ve wanted extraordinary revelation while struggling with ordinary obedience.

I’ve wanted God to trust me with greater influence while occasionally struggling to trust Him with my attitude.

I’ve wanted mountains to move while refusing to move my pride out of the way long enough to apologize.

And somehow, I’ve convinced myself that the extraordinary things I want God to do through me are more important than the ordinary things He’s trying to change within me.

Then I started studying Jesus.

What He demonstrated publicly was rooted in who He was and how He lived privately.

Before the miracles, the crowds, and the public ministry, the Father affirmed His identity at His baptism. Jesus didn’t have to perform His way into being loved.

Yet I have spent an embarrassing amount of my life trying to do exactly that.

Somewhere between losing my parents, experiencing abandonment, and learning that being useful sometimes felt safer than being vulnerable, I developed an unhealthy relationship with performance.

If I could help enough, serve enough, produce enough, and become indispensable enough, perhaps I wouldn’t have to experience the pain of being left again.

And without realizing it, I carried that mentality into my relationship with God.

As though ministry was an audition.

As though obedience purchased affection.

As though my usefulness determined my worth.

Jesus received the Father’s affirmation before His public ministry, and I’m still occasionally trying to extract affirmation from mine.

Good grief.

Luke 4:1 tells me that Jesus was full of the Holy Spirit and led by the Spirit into the wilderness.

He was already full before the public demonstration of His ministry.

And I had to ask myself what I’ve been allowing to fill me.

Because if I’m full of resentment, eventually resentment will come out. If I’m full of fear, fear will influence my decisions. If I’m full of comparison, even my obedience can become competitive.

I cannot spend my private life feeding everything contrary to the Spirit and expect my public life to consistently produce His fruit.

That’s not a lack of gifting. That’s a lack of surrender.

And then there’s Aladdin.

Now, Aladdin had access to a Genie capable of extraordinary things. Yet instead of simply embracing who he was, he became obsessed with presenting himself as somebody he believed would be more acceptable.

Enter Prince Ali.

The elephants. The wardrobe. The parade. The entire production budget of a small developing nation.

Baby, he had everything except the confidence to be himself.

He was so consumed with appearing worthy that he overlooked the value he already possessed.

And I wonder how often I’ve done the same thing spiritually.

How much energy have I invested in appearing like somebody who walks closely with God instead of actually cultivating intimacy with Him?

How often have I wanted the presentation of spiritual maturity without enduring the private process that produces it?

Because the Holy Spirit was never given to help me construct a more impressive version of myself.

He was given to transform me into the likeness of Christ.

And that brings me to John 16:5–7.

Jesus was preparing His disciples for His departure. They were grieving the thought of losing His physical presence, yet He explained that His departure was for their good because the Advocate would come.

I wonder how confusing that must have sounded.

How could losing access to Jesus physically possibly be beneficial?

And suddenly, I started thinking about all the seasons when I interpreted loss as abandonment. All the prayers I believed God ignored. All the doors that closed while I stood there questioning whether He cared.

I have spent so much time grieving what left that I’ve sometimes overlooked what God has made available.

That doesn’t make every loss good. There are things I would give almost anything to have back. People I would love to hold again. Seasons I would never voluntarily relive.

But perhaps my inability to understand what God is doing doesn’t mean He’s stopped being present.

The disciples were grieving the departure of Jesus without fully understanding the gift of the Holy Spirit that was coming.

And here I am, possessing access to the very Spirit Jesus promised, yet occasionally living as though I’m navigating life alone.

Which brings me to the most offensive revelation of all.

I have the Holy Spirit in my house, but not in every room.

I invite Him into ministry, but sometimes resist Him in my marriage. I ask Him to guide my decisions, but occasionally reserve the right to make emotionally charged ones and request His blessing afterward. I welcome His comfort, but become considerably less enthusiastic about His correction.

I want His power without always welcoming His interruption.

I want His direction until it contradicts my desires.

I want His presence, but apparently, I’ve been attempting to negotiate the terms of His access.

1 Thessalonians 5:19 tells me not to quench the Spirit.

And I wonder how often I’ve done exactly that, not through some dramatic rejection of God, but through the quiet, ordinary decisions to ignore His conviction.

I keep asking God for more when I haven’t fully surrendered what He’s already given me.

Maybe I don’t need another revelation.

Maybe I need to obey the last one.

Maybe I don’t need to become more gifted.

Maybe I need to become more gentle.

Maybe the greatest evidence of the Holy Spirit working in my life won’t be an extraordinary public demonstration, but an ordinary private response that would have looked completely different a year ago.

An apology without an explanation attached. Forgiveness without pretending the offense didn’t hurt. Patience when everything in me wants to respond differently. Kindness toward somebody who has absolutely exhausted my supply of it.

Because I don’t want my husband, my friends, or anybody else to have to reconcile the Jesus I proclaim with the person they experience.

I don’t want somebody to have to heal from my representation of God before they can recognize His actual character.

I’ve spent years asking God to protect me from people who misrepresent Him.

This morning, I’m asking Him to protect other people from the ways I might do the same.

And perhaps that’s the most humbling prayer I’ve prayed in a while.

I don’t want to be Prince Ali, surrounded by an impressive production that disguises what’s actually happening underneath.

I don’t want to be spiritually impressive and relationally destructive.

I don’t want to carry His name while contradicting His nature.

I want the fruit.

The kind that grows slowly, privately, and often painfully. The kind that requires pruning, correction, surrender, and a willingness to admit that some of what I’ve called personality has actually been immaturity.

I want the Holy Spirit to have access to every room.

Even the ones I’ve kept locked.

Especially those.

Because the evidence of His presence isn’t simply what I can do in His name.

It’s who I’m becoming through His influence.

And I am beginning to realize that the most dangerous version of me isn’t the one who openly struggles with God.

It’s the one who becomes so comfortable performing Christianity that I no longer recognize where I’ve stopped surrendering to Christ.

Lord, don’t let me become fluent in Your language while remaining unfamiliar with Your character.

I don’t want to spend my life advertising fruit that only exists in the photographs.

I want roots deep enough to sustain what people see.

And if the Holy Spirit truly lives in me, I don’t want Him to remain the most underutilized presence in my life.

I’ve been asking God to use me.

Perhaps it’s time I let Him change me.