Have you ever walked into a room and suddenly felt uncomfortably overdressed or worse—underdressed? Like a feverish, throbbing, red thumb on the hand of social status. You stand there at the threshold of the door looking in, taking mental inventory of your closet at home, sizing up the competition, suddenly acutely aware of every out-of-place hair on your head.
As you mingle you feel an awkward urgency, an almost-obligation to slip in an explanation for your outfit choice, or if you’re anything like me, you hide behind your mildly self-deprecating, wildly charming wit and you force them to be okay with it.
I believe the same can go for us spiritually.
You walk into a room, or better yet, a church, and you immediately get a whiff of just how spiritually underdressed you are. And please, let’s put conviction aside, I’m not talking about conviction here. I’m talking about one believer being made to feel inadequate by another “believer” because he or she wasn’t wearing the right shade of Christian.
Her dress is a little short. His ears are pierced. You know, come to think of it, I think I’ve heard him say a curse word before. Can you believe she drinks wine? Someone told me something he did in college a few years back, we should really pray for him.
“What can we do to perform the works of God?" they asked. Jesus replied, "This is the work of God that you believe him who he has sent” (John 6:28-29).
Jesus goes on to say in verses 35-37,
“I am the bread of life. No one who comes to Me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in Me will ever be thirsty again. But as I told you, you’ve seen and yet do not believe. Everyone the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will never cast out.”
So what if you’re not spiritually dressed to the nines in someone else’s eye? You will catch me with holes in my jeans and sneakers on my feet any given Sunday morning the same as you would on any given Tuesday.
Jesus doesn’t want your Gucci or your Prada. He doesn’t care if you’re not articulate, if He wanted you to be He would’ve made you that way. I promise He doesn’t mind if your shirt is wrinkled—mine always is. He just wants to love you and for you to trust that His intentions are good for your life and on behalf of the Church, I am so sorry if someone has ever made you feel any different.
Come as you are right now. With the holes in your jeans, with your electronic Bible, with your paper Bible whether the pages are still crunchy or they’re falling out. With your tattoos and your political views. In your basketball shorts, with your full face or your fresh face, with your few words or with your many. Come new, come old. Come excited, come tired. Come skeptical, come expectant. If you grew up in the church or you didn’t. If you know the words or you don’t.
There’s no one way to love Jesus. He just wants you to choose him. The rest will come as you grow. Right now just come.
Come and taste. Come and see. Come and let him heal the hurt. Come and never thirst again, never hunger. Come and find a Love that will never leave. Come and seek, come and find. Come and believe.
Your place is here.
