“Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28 NIV)
Our ingrained mask-wearing keeps us from having the authentic, intimate relationship that Jesus wants to have with us. What if you put on this kind of show with your spouse, dressing things up and trying to be someone you aren’t? A wife would feel she needed to be in her finest clothing with all her cosmetics on at every single moment. A husband would believe he had to put on a show as well. Both would speak to each other as they’d speak to someone on a first date, dancing around things, worried about saying the wrong words. Marriage would be totally exhausting and utterly unsatisfying. After a few weeks of it we’d be hiding from each other.
What we love in marriage is the utter relaxation, the complete intimacy we enjoy with each other. We let down our hair, we stop hiding our warts, and we say whatever is on our minds. Why can’t we be that way with God?
Getting to the end of me means I don’t need to hide my flaws because I know God’s love is unconditional. And we’ll be deeply satisfied, deeply fulfilled, because it’s so much easier to be one person than two – so much easier not to create and sustain a false identity…
Jesus wants a real, no-makeup relationship with you. He wants you to be pure in heart – unmixed and soul-sincere.
-- Kyle Idleman in “The End of Me: When Real Life in the Upside-Down Ways of Jesus Begins”
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