We've got social media now where we can even create an identity for ourselves and show the world an inauthentic highlight reel version of who we are. But I'm drawn to real, not a highlight reel. The world doesn't need to see another plastic Christian pretending they've got it all together.

We've got social media now where we can even create an identity for ourselves and show the world an inauthentic highlight reel version of who we are. But I'm drawn to real, not a highlight reel. The world doesn't need to see another plastic Christian pretending they've got it all together.

I love David's prayer, "Search me, God, and know my heart..." [Psalm 139:23]. I prayed that a lot. "God, search my heart and my life, reveal to me any areas of my life that you want me to see, any identities you want to show me, and help me dare to believe that your grace has erased them once and for all."

Christianity has always been against the flow of culture and continues to call us in the opposite direction of the way the world is heading. Instead of falling in love with ourselves, Christ followers are called to deny themselves. Instead of trusting in the power they possess, they are called to surrender to God's higher power. Instead of looking within for the answers in life, they are called to acknowledge that His ways are higher. The decision to follow Christ has always been an "all or nothing" decision. There's no way to stand up to the world while you're trying to straddle the fence.

Anyone attempting to live a Christian lifestyle will always be pressed towards settling for "nominal Christianity." For the believer who lives in the Bible Belt, it can become less about whether one is living his or her life in complete and total sold-out devotion to God, and more about where I'm going to lunch after church. If I live in an area where Christians are in the minority, there is the pressure to take a more a la carte approach to one's belief system. It's safer to take some of God's teachings and apply the parts we like but push aside that which seems too extreme or exclusive.

The thing is, dressing up, going to church, dropping a twenty in the offering plate, those things are all well and good, but that doesn't make you a Christian.

I couldn't catch a ball if it had Elmer's Glue all over it. And my father had to be this ex-football star. He didn't know what to tell his friends, so he told them all I had Polio. On Father's Day, I used to limp for him.