Tag Archives: Authenticity

Devotional, Series

FAITH, HOPE, LOVE, Part 1: When Your Résumé Becomes a Mask

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Read Luke 18:9–14

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Not that we are qualified of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our qualification is from God.” (2 Corinthians 3:5 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “When Your Résumé Becomes a Mask” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Faith, hope, and love are more than ideas Paul placed beside one another in a memorable verse. They describe a life continually reordered by the grace of Christ: faith loosening our grip on certainty, hope opening a future beyond what we can see, and love transforming how we understand ourselves and one another. In this series, we will follow that grace beneath religious appearances, inherited assumptions, and carefully defended identities until the gospel becomes visible in the lives we live.

The résumé rests on the desk between you.

Your education is there. Your experience. Your accomplishments. The positions you have held and the skills you have acquired. Every line has been carefully selected to present the strongest possible version of you.

Then the interviewer looks up.

“Tell me about yourself.”

For a moment, you wonder what remains to be said. The document already contains the person you came prepared to present. Still, you begin rehearsing its contents in complete sentences. You speak confidently about your strengths, your experience, and the value you would bring.

Then comes the question everyone knows is coming.

“What is your greatest weakness?”

You cannot say anything too honest. This is not the moment to mention the flaw that has damaged relationships, cost opportunities, or kept you awake at night. So you choose something safe. You care too much. You work too hard. You occasionally become so committed to excellence that you forget to rest.

The interviewer nods. You smile. Your weakness has successfully completed its transformation into another strength.

In the story Jesus tells, two people enter the temple to pray. The Pharisee arrives with a spiritual résumé. He has practiced his faith diligently. He fasts. He gives. He has avoided conduct his religious community condemns. None of those practices is inherently wrong. In fact, on their own, they are quite good.

The problem is what he has made them mean.

His résumé no longer describes his devotion. It proves his superiority. He stands before God listing his qualifications and then points toward the tax collector as evidence that he deserves a higher place. He does not simply believe that he knows where he stands with God. He assumes the authority to determine where someone else stands.

His prayer begins with God, but it never truly reaches beyond himself. In a way, it’s hard to see where he ends and God begins.

The tax collector has no impressive document to present. His position has allowed him to profit from an imperial system that extracts wealth from his own people. Perhaps he enjoys the money, power, and protection his role provides. Jesus does not tell us that he has resigned, repaid anyone, or repaired the damage he has helped cause.

The tax collector does not claim innocence. Neither does he announce that he is worthless, disgusting, or beyond redemption. He does not say, “God, I loathe myself.”

He simply tells the truth.

He knows his position has harmed people. He knows that no polished explanation can turn exploitation into righteousness. He knows he cannot stand before God pretending that his life has cost others nothing.

So he asks for mercy.

That is humility. Humility is not hating yourself. It is not shrinking until you disappear or treating your existence as an offense God reluctantly tolerates. Self-hatred can become another form of fixation upon the self—another form of idolatry.

Humility is seeing yourself truthfully before God, without inflation and without erasure.

Grace does not require you to discard your gifts, education, experience, or accomplishments. Grace does not erase the person you have become. It releases you from using those things to prove your worth. It removes the exhausting burden of persuading God, other people, and yourself that you deserve to be loved.

Churches do not always make that easy. We proclaim grace while rewarding the most polished spiritual résumés. We elevate people who appear certain, productive, respectable, and endlessly available. We can make usefulness look like holiness and visible success look like divine approval. Eventually, people learn to bring curated versions of themselves into worship while their frightened, wounded, complicated selves wait outside.

But God is not conducting an interview.

You are not competing against the person praying beside you. You do not need to disguise your wounds as strengths, list your good deeds, or prove that someone else is less deserving. God already sees beneath every carefully constructed answer.

The unsettling question is not whether your résumé is impressive.

The question is whether it has become a mask.

Who are you when you stop presenting evidence that you deserve to be loved?

You are the person God already knows.

You are the person grace is already reaching.

And you may finally discover that the self beneath the mask does not need to earn mercy, only receive it.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Humility is standing truthfully before God without making yourself either superior or worthless.

PRAYER
Merciful God, free me from the need to prove my worth or measure it against another person. Help me see myself honestly, receive grace without performance, and extend that same mercy to others. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Previous Post, Series

From the Archives: SEVEN LOADED LETTERS, Part 6: The Church that Played Dead

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Read Revelation 3:1–6

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Isaiah 29:13 NLT)

The Book of Revelation opens not not with beasts or bowls, but with a voice—a call that echoes through time and space to a Church both ancient and present. These seven letters, delivered to communities scattered across Asia Minor, are more than historical artifacts. They are loaded with truth, urgency, and love. They speak to us, challenge us, and strip away illusions. In every age, Christ’s words to the Church still ask us to listen—and respond.

Image: AI-generated using OpenAI’s DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Church That Played Dead” at Life-Giving Water Devotion

Part 6: The Church That Played Dead. They had a name for being alive. People looked at them and saw success. Momentum. Activity. A solid reputation. And yet, Jesus—who sees beyond appearances—spoke a truth that silenced the room: “You are dead.”

Sardis wasn’t being persecuted. They weren’t being tested. They weren’t in crisis. That might have been the problem. They were comfortable, confident, and coasting on yesterday’s faith. The form remained. But the fire had gone out.

This wasn’t a church that failed to perform—it was a church that learned how to perform too well. And that’s what makes Sardis feel so familiar today.

We see it in churches built like brands—polished, televised, franchised. Places where celebrity pastors replace shepherds, and worship feels more like spectacle than surrender. We see it in the rise of prosperity preaching, partisan pulpits, and marketing strategies baptized as mission. These churches are full. Loud. Impressive. But Jesus isn’t impressed. He never was.

But it’s not just in megachurches.

We see it in denominational dashboards, where vitality gets reduced to numbers: attendance, professions of faith, giving units, mission hours logged. Boxes get checked. Goals get met. Reports get filed. But hearts remain unchanged.

Jesus was never about numbers. He was about relationships.

His movement went from one, to three, to twelve, to thousands, and back again to twelve, then three at the cross. His mission wasn’t built on crowd retention—it was built on deep, costly, unshakable love.

Not image. Not metrics. But faithfulness.

When Jesus says to Sardis, “Wake up. Strengthen what remains and is about to die,” it’s not a rejection—it’s a rescue.

He doesn’t say it’s too late. He says there’s still something left. But it won’t survive on autopilot. It won’t be saved by better branding or busier programming. It has to return to the source. To Him.

“These people say they are mine. They honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.” (Isaiah 29:13 NLT)

And then there’s this, from Jesus himself:

“You are like whitewashed tombs—beautiful on the outside, but filled with dead bones and all sorts of impurity.” (Matthew 23:27 NLT)

This is the danger of playing dead: you forget you’re supposed to be alive.

But resurrection is still on offer.

Jesus says, “If you do not wake up, I will come like a thief.” The language is sharp because the stakes are real. A church can do all the “right” things, and still lose the thread. Still fall asleep at the altar. Still drift into a coma of respectability.

But not everyone in Sardis gave up.

“Yet you have a few people… who have not soiled their clothes. They will walk with me, dressed in white, for they are worthy.” (Revelation 3:4 NLT)

To those few, Jesus doesn’t say, “Start a rebellion.” He says, “Hold on.”

Stay awake. Stay faithful. Stay close.

This isn’t about recapturing success. It’s about reclaiming life. The Church doesn’t need to prove it’s alive. It needs to return to the One who is.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
You can’t build resurrection on reputation. Only Jesus gives life that lasts.

PRAYER
Wake us up, Lord. Strip away the illusions we’ve built. Forgive us for confusing noise with life, numbers with faithfulness, and performance with presence. Strengthen what remains. Help us return to you—not for appearances, but for love. Amen.

Devotional

Forget the Fake

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Read Ecclesiastes 2:4-11

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
Next the devil took him to the peak of a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. “I will give it all to you,” he said, “if you will kneel down and worship me.” “Get out of here, Satan,” Jesus told him. “For the Scriptures say, ‘You must worship the Lord your God and serve only him.’” (Matthew 4:8–10 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E (OpenAI) and modified by the author. Used with the devotional “Forget the Fake” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

I was walking through Walt Disney World—shoulder to shoulder with families in matching shirts, toddlers gripping melting Mickey bars, and cast members trained to smile like their jobs depended on it. Every corner had a soundtrack. Every smile, every gesture, every blade of grass seemed perfectly in place. The grass along the walkways looked too green to be real—and in many places, it wasn’t. Astroturf blended almost seamlessly with manicured lawns, trimmed to the millimeter. The air smelled like popcorn, cotton candy, and sunscreen. Hot dogs sizzled behind shiny glass counters. A trolley clanged gently by, carrying brightly dressed folks singing and dancing their way down the street, inviting all of us to believe we’d stepped into something better than reality.

It felt like walking through nostalgia—curated, choreographed, and utterly convincing. I found myself humming, “I’m walkin’ right down the middle of Main Street, U.S.A.” Then—full stop.

Is this what Main Street U.S.A. really looks like? Smells like? Sounds like?

That question cut deeper than I expected. The illusion cracked. It was too American. Disney had really bought into—or maybe sold—the American Dream. Not from a place of privilege, but from the deeply rooted delusion that luck doesn’t matter. This was one man’s kingdom. His dream. His rules. His version of magic. And beneath the polished surfaces and pixie dust? The same thing that exists everywhere else: inequality, inequity, and the same old story of the rich getting richer off the backs of people willing to give everything for a dream they didn’t invent.

And yet, even in that critical moment, I couldn’t deny the complexity of the legacy. Credit where it’s due—Disney and the company Walt built have also created real opportunities for people to learn, grow, and launch meaningful careers. Both of my daughters have participated in the Disney College Program and have benefited deeply from the vision he set in motion. The legacy is complicated—but it’s not without value.

As the vision softened, so did my judgment. The clarity I felt began turning inward. Empathy began to emerge. I started to see Walt not as a villain, but as a man who did the best he could within a system that gave him a stage—and limits. He built something extraordinary. He dreamed big—not simply for profit, but because his imagination had once been stifled. And yes, he wanted to be paid. Don’t we all? Even me, writing on Medium. Maybe Walt didn’t forget where he came from. Maybe his dream was rooted in that memory. Maybe the blind spots didn’t come from evil intent, but from the slow erosion that happens when success numbs self-awareness.

That’s the thing. The monster wasn’t the dream. The monster was the appetite to sell it. And that hunger isn’t unique to Walt. It’s not unique to Disney. It lives in all of us. We trade the messy, sacred truth of real life for something shinier. Easier. Safer. We chase success as if it proves something. We believe that if we just dream big enough, work hard enough, we’ll get what we deserve. But that’s not gospel. That’s marketing.

Jesus didn’t buy into the dream of empire. He was offered all the kingdoms of the world and turned them down. Why? Because real power doesn’t come from illusion. It doesn’t come from building something shiny on the surface. It comes from humility. Truth. Justice. Mercy. Love.

We don’t need more spectacle. We need more substance. Forget the fake. It may glitter. It may sing. But it won’t save. Only Jesus can do that.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The American Dream may offer comfort, but it can’t offer Christ. Don’t settle for the illusion of magic when what you need is resurrection.

PRAYER
God of truth, awaken me from the dreams that deceive. Help me see through the illusions of power, prestige, and performance. Teach me to long not for the kingdoms of this world, but for your Kingdom come—on earth as it is in heaven. Make me brave enough to let go of the fake, and faithful enough to walk in what’s real. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional

The Sermon, part 15: Authentic Prayer

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Read Matthew 6:5-6

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“God detests the prayers of a person who ignores the law.” (Proverbs 28:9 NLT)

There can be no doubt that Jesus was for authenticity. Jesus was not a fan of fake people and he had a word he liked to use toward fake people: “hypocrites”. The word “hypocrites” in Greek (the language Matthew was written in) is ὑποκριτής (pronounced hoop-ok-ree-tace’) literally means “stage actor.” Thus, properly speaking, a hypocrite is a person who puts on a show.

Unfortunately, today’s passage has become one of the most misunderstood and misinterpreted texts in the enitre New Testament. Throughout Christian history, it has been an unfortunate reality that Judaism has gotten the short end of the stick. They’ve taken the blame for “killing Jesus”, they’ve taken the blame for being more concerned with “the law” than with God or human beings, and they’ve taken the blame for just about everything you can imagine.

This, in my mind, is a blight on Christianity and it is to our shame that Christians have in the past and continue to look down their proverbial noses at our Jewish brothers and sisters. Do we forget that Jesus was a faithful Jewish rabbi and prophet? Do we forget that Jesus claimed to be the JEWISH messiah? Do we forget that Paul and some of the earliest Christians were, in fact, Jewish?

In fact, Paul had some choice words for Christians who were starting to discriminate against Jews within the church in Rome. “You, by nature, were a branch cut from a wild olive tree. So if God was willing to do something contrary to nature by grafting you into His cultivated tree, He will be far more eager to graft the original branches back into the tree where they belong” (Romans 11:24 NLT). While Paul was trying to understand Judaism in the context of the risen Christ, and he was trying to develop his own soteriology (understanding of Salvation) in light of the fact that many Jews had not accepted Christ as the Jewish Messiah, he also did not condone, nor did he participate in, the bashing or blaming of his Jewish brothers and sisters.

Now, back to prayer. Jesus states in verse 5 that one should not “pray as the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on the street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them.” This verse was not meant to be taken literally as a pronouncement against public prayer. First off, the synagogue is known as a house of prayer and it is where countless Jews, Jesus included, went to pray and worship. Public prayer in the synagogue was normal and quite called for, just as it is called for in our churches.

Second, public prayer in the street corners was NOT a normal practice in Judaism, nor was it necessary. It is inherently wrong and slanderous for Christians to propogate this as a common practice in Judaism. Again, Jesus was not saying this a commanded prohibition against the act of public prayer, which he clearly wanted the church to engage in (Matthew 18:19-20), but on the intent behind it! This is important to note.

What Jesus is doing is calling us to look within our own hearts and search the motive(s) behind our prayer. Are we praying for recognition, to appear to be holy, or to gain some sort of selfish desire? Are we stage actors, putting on a good show and pretending to be something we totally are not? Or are we praying to GOD alone, for the sake of praying to God? Is our prayer centered on God, and God’s will, fully expectant that God objectively hears and listens to our prayers? Do we believe, or are we mere stage actors looking for something else?

Jesus’ comman to go in a closet, or to be alone when praying, is not meant to be taken literally; rather, it is asking us if our prayer is centered on God ALONE and, on top of that, are we totally focused on GOD alone. We can fake pray in the closet too, just as easily as we can in a public place. The location, nor the company, is not what matters, what matters is the authenticity. Where are you in your prayer life? Are you authentic? Are you solely focused on God, or are have you let others (yourself included) into that (metaphorical) space that is meant to be for God alone? Reflect on this and be challenged by it to further develop your prayer life.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” – Martin Luther

PRAYER
Lord, I offer you my authentic prayers for I know that you alone hear them when I pray. Amen.

Devotional

Crossroads

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Read Luke 6:43-49

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Jesus said to everyone, ‘All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross daily, and follow me. All who want to save their lives will lose them. But all who lose their lives because of me will save them.’” (Luke 9:23-24 CEB).

Since the recent attacks on Paris shocked the world, there has been a lot of debate on what the appropriate response to all of this is. What’s more, the current Syrian refugee crisis has come front and center as people realize the possibility that terrorists can blend in with the refugees and sneak into the countries who accept them in. Naturally, people are worried (and even afraid) of the dangers looming over the decision of letting minimally vetted people into their country.

Without doubt, many Christians have entered the debate coming from varying angles. Some Christians have argued that we either shouldn’t allow any refugees in or we should only allow Christians in. These Christians feel that, though they have sympathy toward the refugees, it is most important to protect our homeland and its citizens. Because there is no real way to adequately screen the millions of refugees pouring out of Syria, these Christians and many others (regardless of religious affiliation) fear that allowing such people in could have catestrophic and deadly consequences.

Many have argued that the Christian response would be to welcome them in. After all, God in the Hebrew Scriptures called the Israelites, and by extension us,  to be welcoming of and kind to foreigners and strangers. Also, Jesus called for such mercy and compassion toward others as well. In Matthew 25, Jesus tells a few parables on the Kingdom of Heaven. The last parable describes God separating the faithful from the wicked, just as a king who separates the sheep from the goats. The sheep, being faithful, have lived lives of radical compassion and service toward all who are in need. The goats were wicked because, though they claimed to follow the king, they refused to live lives of radical compassion and service toward all who are in need.

The point of this is not to choose sides between the two options, or anything in between. That is not my job, nor my goal, in writing this devotion. That discernment is up to you, as a Christian or person of faith. The point I am trying to bring out, by highlighting this current issue, is that Christians today find themselves in a place where faith goes far beyond the pew on a Sunday morning. It is one thing to say, “I’m a Christian. I believe in Jesus.” It is a completely different thing to deny yourself (e.g. your desires, your successes, your status, your hopes and your fears), pick up your cross, and follow Jesus.

Today, we find ourselves, ever increasingly, at crossroad not unlike what Jesus’ disciples and the earliest Christians found themselves at. Evil, injustice, and oppression are rearing their ugly heads in our world at alarming rates. No longer is it okay for Christians to be complacent as if the only thing that matters is “professing” Jesus’ name with their lips. That sort of “faith”, as James rightly exclaims, is dead! That is really no faith at all. What Christ is looking for, as is clear in the sheep/goats parable, is followers who are committed to LIVING out their faith in the world. Christ is looking for Christians who will seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God. Christ is looking for people who will resist the status quo like he did. He is calling us to stand against injustice, evil and oppression. He is calling us to be committed to radically compassionate service toward all of the “least of these”, regardless of who they are, where they’re from, or what others think of them or say about them. There can be no debate that this, for Jesus Christ, is what being his follower is all about.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
“Go in through the narrow gate. The gate that leads to destruction is broad and the road wide, so many people enter through it. But the gate that leads to life is narrow and the road difficult, so few people find it.” – Jesus, the Christ (Matthew 7:13-14 CEB).

PRAYER
Lord, keep steering me toward the resurrected life of justice, mercy, compassion, humility and faithful action. Amen.