HOW CAN YOUR SMILE BE GENUINE?

“I saw you as you were singing in church today. You look so excited and happy to be here. It was encouraging to watch you as you sang the worship songs, like you were singing to each of us.”

A couple of people have said these types of statements to me as they meet me for the first time after we have worshipped together, and they are often very surprised to learn that I have terminal lung cancer. 

Ephesians 5:15-20 (ERV)

15 So be very careful how you live. Live wisely, not like fools. 16 I mean that you should use every opportunity you have for doing good, because these are evil times. 17 So don’t be foolish with your lives, but learn what the Lord wants you to do. 18 Don’t be drunk with wine, which will ruin your life, but be filled with the Spirit. 19 Encourage each other with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. Sing and make music in your hearts to the Lord. 20 Always give thanks to God the Father for everything in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In previous posts, I had mentioned that in the late 1980’s, I was introduced to Jesus and to the International churches of Christ (ICOC). Back then, I had an ugly attitude the first few times that I had visited the church. It was a group of people who were smiling all the time and who constantly were hugging one another. The place was filled with positive chatter and people were not quickly filing out to leave the worship service as the parishioners did during the Lutheran or Catholic services that I occasionally attended. I just could not really believe that everyone was real, so I had some very cruel thoughts back then.

I remember one woman coming up to me smiling and introducing herself. She was so bubbly and happy and of course, I was so miserable. My cruel thought that popped up into my mind because I doubted her genuineness was: “I bet you would not be so bubbly and all smiles if I took you out back and shot you.” Of course, because I have a very sensitive and extremely guilty conscience, I was very shocked and mad at myself for thinking that. The next 5 minutes or so, in my mind, I was whipping myself for thinking such ugly thoughts as I questioned myself from where such a thought came.

When I was younger, my siblings and I would a lot of times use the word “poser” to describe someone whom we did not believe was genuine and who was putting on a “face”. As I grew older, I started to use the word “plastic” to describe those whom I thought were not true to their character. I was so afraid that one day, I too would be “plastic” as I believed so many other followers of Jesus had become. Only as I am looking back at my earlier years and comparing it to my heart about things now, I never realized then how plastic I had become.

In the early years of the ICOC movement, we often had encouraged each other to always be out of ourselves and not come to church feeling sad or being what we used to call “navel gazers”. We had preached “dying to ourselves” and always sacrificing to serve others as Jesus did. After all, that is exactly what the Bible had said that Jesus had done and if we claimed to be followers of Jesus then that was what we must definitely do.

The problem though was that in many instances in the past, as a body of believers, we just would use the Bible to beat ourselves and others over the heads. Unbeknownst to us at that time, the church as a movement tended to rely more on our own power rather than on the power of the Holy Spirit to change us. Though as a movement, we knew that there was more to our relationship with God then following the law, it was far easier to focus on correcting the behavior rather than our hearts.

Up until September 2023, I had believed (and at times, it was even preached from the pulpit) that God desired for us to have those more “positive” emotions. Afterall, there were several scriptures that emphasized this a lot:

1 Thessalonians 5:16 (NIV)

16 Rejoice always,

Philippians 4:4 (NIV)

4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!

In fact, there is even a “command” that says that I am not supposed to complain or argue. “Whaaaat!” as a minion would say. “Boy! I must be such a major disappointment to God then because I sure don’t keep that directive! I complain and argue so much, either one of those could be my middle name!”

Philippians 2:14 (GNT)

14 Do everything without complaining or arguing,

It was also hard to ignore other scriptures such as 1 Peter 5:7 and Joshua 1:9 where God was saying that I should not worry or be afraid but to trust in him. And because I hated those types of “negative” feelings, such as anxiety, fear, sadness or depression, I started believing in the biggest lie of all from satan. I have lived all my Christian life until September 2023 believing that these “negative” emotions were sinful and selfish. I seemed to be in a constant guilt-ridden state. To preserve my psyche though, I had learned early on how to rationalize or ignore a lot of these feelings and thoughts. Some might have called it the power of positive thinking. However, for me, I now understand that I had just been lying to God and to myself about what was really going on in my heart.

As I reflect on my life, I remember battling with worry, my persistent negative thoughts and my fear of failure since I was in first grade. In my teen years, I struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts. Yet, though I have had some really low times in my life and thought often of suicide during those times, I have not ever tried to commit suicide because I was just too afraid to do it.

So I often would flip flop between these two states in my heart. At times, I would get very depressed, feeling sorry for myself because I had either failed at something or because I felt like I was lacking something. I was usually doing the deadly comparing myself to someone else. “Why can’t I be more like so and so? (sniff, sniff) They have it all together. They are so organized. They know how to relate to so many other people. They are so thoughtful (and the list goes on.)” But eventually, I could wipe my tears away and get back to ignoring my feelings and thoughts once again. Many times, I would rationalize or judge a thought as not Christ-like, so I would easily dismiss whatever feeling that I had felt in relation to those thoughts.

All these experiences and my perceptions of them began to consistently feed my distrust in myself and in God. I struggled constantly with fearing God’s judgment of every little thing that I did wrong so after a while when I could not deny things anymore or when I would think that God had a limit on his grace, I would get into episodes of severe depression. Many times in my mind, I was supposed to perform for God in always rejoicing and not complaining nor arguing and I kept failing at being able to accomplish this.

So with the combination of these misinterpreted church teachings and with my constant internal struggle in my acceptance of all my emotions, I believe that this began shaping me into what I was so afraid to become: PLASTIC or not true to myself.

Though I believe I had the gift of the Holy Spirit and had some understanding of grace, I had to come to grips about accepting ALL my emotions and identifying them as valid and not sinful. These scriptures were taken out of context of the whole Bible. The images portrayed of Jesus always being this sober-faced Caucasian male were so inaccurate. It has taken watching shows like “The Chosen” and digging deeper into the Bible to see Jesus expressing all emotions and not looking so serious and judgmental all the time.

So lately, I have been learning to deal with all my emotions and trusting God that he will always help me to process all that I am feeling as I give all those emotions over to him. I also had to come to understand that I am powerless and helpless to be able to process these emotions without God. I know now that I need to always call on him for his help to do anything.

In fact, Jesus had emphasized this when he was in the Garden of Gethsemane talking with his disciples and praying for them and for us – his future disciples. In John 15:5, Jesus said that apart from him, the true vine, none of us can do anything.

Come to think of it, Jesus himself said that he could do nothing without God the Father.

John 5:19 (HCSB)

19 Then Jesus replied, “I assure you: The Son is not able to do anything on His own, but only what He sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, the Son also does these things in the same way.”

This is what God had expected of Jesus. He expects this also of me. He wants me to always come to him, calling on him and looking to him for deliverance and provision.

Psalm 91:14-16

14 The Lord says, “I will save the one who loves me.    

I will keep him safe, because he trusts in me.

15 He will call out to me, and I will answer him.    

I will be with him in times of trouble.    

I will save him and honor him.

16 I will give him a long and full life.    

I will save him.”

According to 1 Peter 5:8, God calls me to be self-controlled and alert because devil is prowling around like a hungry lion looking for someone to devour. I know that this is not something that I can do on my own, but that God uses his supernatural power to help me to be more sober-minded and watchful since it is a spiritual war going on around us (2 Corinthians 10:3-6).

I cannot rely on my own wisdom but on God’s, and I cannot take any confidence in my own ability since I am not able to earn or even do anything without God providing me with all things.

1 Corinthians 1:19 (EASY)

19 It says in the Bible:

‘I, God, will destroy all the clever thoughts of wise people.I will show that their clever ideas are useless.’

Philippians 3:3 (NLT)

3 For we who worship by the Spirit of God are the ones who are truly circumcised. We rely on what Christ Jesus has done for us. We put no confidence in human effort,

Ephesians 2:8-9 (NIV)

8 For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— 9 not by works, so that no one can boast.

I imagine that I will not ever understand exactly how he does all the healing, but all I know is that I can trust that he cures me of all my emotional baggage. As I give all my emotions and I choose to surrender everything over to him, he revives me, helping me to trust even more in his power and his love for me. I know that only he can give me that peace and that comfort as he helps me to understand his purpose for me and his purpose for his body – the church.

God has helped me to understand the great importance of being part of his body, to encourage and to be encouraged. So, my smiles and singing are both genuine, and I am making a point of singing to you because I understand that God loves me and he loves you and that he calls me to love and encourage you with psalms, hymns and spiritual songs. This is my form of worship. To God be all the glory. Amen!