God works with the real you

Our ¹unfaithfulness to God is often the primary way we come to appreciate the value and importance of faithfulness. If we have ²experienced the love and presense of God to any significant degree, unfaithfulness leaves us with a sense of isolation and separation from God and missing His presence.

Though unfaithfulness definitely separates us from God, it is not on God's side, but ours. We have wandered from God; not Him from us. As God's children, he never leaves us and is always working in our unfaithfulness as well as our faithfulness. He, in fact, uses that sense of separation -- along with other consequences -- to call and draw us back to himself.

In this, we can relax, knowing he's ultimately using even our unfaithfulness for our good and his glory and not be concerned about our unfaithfulness in ³this sense. In a significant way, who we are, is who we should be i.e. we should not pretend to be something we are not because we think we are fooling God somehow -- though we might fool ourselves and others -- into thinking we are someone other or better than who we really are OR because we think we will somehow impress God with some feigned faithfulness. We simply need to be our honest, real, and true selves so we can identify and learn from those hidden areas of brokenness and distrust in God. God uses our mistakes to help better see where we need to grow. 

And maybe the most critical point is we will not turn away (repent) from something we deny exists and aren't aware of. If we are always masking our true self with some pretend self, we will never see what needs to be fixed i.e. where we need to let God's love shine and our trust needs to grow. You won't turn away from what you don't think is broken. 

Does this mean we are to deliberately indulge in unfaithfulness so that we will learn? No, it simply means we are who we are and will be who we will be and need to be honest with who we are before we can truly change. Pretending doesn't promote honesty and without honestly there is no true change/repentance. A performance-based approach to God verse a grace-based approach prevents us from seeing the true level of our unbelief/unfaithfulness. We can not turn away from destructive behavior unless we see its destructiveness.

We need to recognize God meets us where we are in all our distrust and brokenness, and works to advance His good purpose in us. We need to allow God to show us who we truly are in our unfaithfulness so we see the real us, in order to truly turn from our brokenness. If we don't see, experience, and feel our true brokenness and the emptiness of our unfaithfulness, we will never sincerely turn. We may make some external changes, but this is not a true change of heart empowered by God's Spirit/grace. Any change that is not Spirit/grace-driven is superficial and ***performance-oriented.

***by performance I mean acting in order to impress either God or others... seeking to earn or gain their acceptance and approval.

On the other side of this, we should also be aware that unfaithfulness always has consequences. Not only does it cause us to lose a sense of God's presence, but it also results in harm to others and ourselves -- not to mention it dishonors God. So for these reasons we should always be alert and seek to become more aware of our unfaithfulness and more diligent in our faithful pursuit of God. 

The point is we should not beat ourselves up over this. This simply is who we are and to recognize Christ already took our beating. The consequences of our unfaithfulness, in themselves, actually become a vital means of our seeing the need to abandon unfaithfulness.

When we come to the place that we clearly and honestly see the importance and value of faithfulness we will not depart from it. It will be our real, lasting, conscious, and deliberate pursuit of God, not superficial and some pretense of pursuing him.

When we do, this too will be who we really are.

For a further discussion on being real click here. 
____________________________________________________

*unfaithfulness being our lack of trust in God displayed by a lack of diligence pursuit of i.e. obedience to God. Lack of trust in God is the essence of sin.

**If you don't experience that sense of loss in your unfaithfulness, you may have never experienced anything significant enough to feel a loss, to begin with i.e. you can't miss what you never had.

However I would also argue we all experience a sense of loss of God, whether we are his children or not, we just don't know it's God we are missing.  All we know is we long for love and when we experience it we want more; the more love we experience the more we long for it.  

The reason we want more is that God is more than anything we can experience through the things and relationships in this life. Whatever little tastes of love we experience in this world can never be enough because we were designed for eternal, infinite love, not temporal finite love. Only infinite, eternal love can fulfill that infinite eternal desire for love built into all of us as God's image-bearers. 

***We should be concerned from the standpoint that we will suffer loss/consequences for our unfaithfulness. But again, this is as it should be and how we learn to be faithful. It is not something to be "uptight" about. God uses all things for our good, including our unfaithfulness.