Is there Substance or just a Silhouette?

Passage read and meditated on 2 Tim. 3:1-9

v5 "...holding onto a form of godliness, although they have denied its power: Avoid such men as these."

Could my life be avoided? Should my life be avoided? How authentically is CHRIST being lived out of my life? Isn't there something different about those who "pose" & those who live authentically? Paul says here the difference is the very person and presence of Christ...HIS LIFE!!! Listen I don't want to live my life LIKE CHRIST... He is not something I can just "add on", "or get the latest plug in or version" and then go on living my life my way ... I want to live in such a way that ALL of ME is consumed by ALL OF HIM! I know what my life will be like if I try and "do it" any other way. Empty, powerless, miserable! There is so much at stake in my life ... I desperately want my life to count... I want my life to change and shape the lives of the next generation. I desperately want to KNOW Christ more and to make HIM KNOWN... but I confess I am a screw up at times ...I get in the way so many times!!! I have the desires and the want to... but when I give into "a form of godliness" ...when I choose to pursue religious expressions instead of pursuing a pure and simple devotion to Christ, I become "that" person Paul describes. A lover of self and possessions, boastful and ungrateful, unloving and unforgiving. I end up living my life for the praise of men, instead of the pleasure of God. I admit this Christian life becomes miserable, and powerless and religiously rigid when it is lived outside of intimately & authentically knowing Christ. Listen I want to be the Man God has called me to be, the husband that I long for my wife to know, and the father that I would want my sons to grow up and become! But am I willing to pay the price? Am I willing to die? Am I willing to lose myself and my "form" of godliness... so that the very LIFE and person of Christ may be spilt out of my life and into the lives of others? Man the stakes are high ...and I have one chance...one opportunity to make an impact... and as I read this verse today ... I wonder ??? God is this life that I live... is it becoming merely a silhouette, a form, a "keeping up of appearances", a list of "doing" ... instead of a life of "being" and LIVING IN CHRIST? May it NEVER BE!!!!

So I ask myself today ...does my life stand in dark contrast to the norm of a self centered "Americanized Christianity?" Does my Christianty take on a form of godliness OR does it take on the very person and character of Christ! I cannot live that kind of Christianity ... where there is more emphasis put on the outward appearance of Christ instead of an inward reality of His person. OH GOD how I need help to live that way! How I long for the very Person of Jesus Christ to spill out into every area of my life! God I pray that my life with you would NEVER get to a place where it simply becomes an outward symbol, a silhouette of what I think others want to see but rather may the life that I live be the very substance of the person of Jesus Christ!

Not Ashamed...Bill