What does LOVE look like?

The Good Bishop Rev. C.W. Honeycutt

We were treated to a wonderful guest speaker today at TLC!

The Good Bishop Rev. C.W. Honeycutt (4th cousin twice removed) was in the house and boy, was he upset!

First off, there wasn’t a “proper pulpit” to set his King James Bible on (we found one backstage, thankfully!). Next, he pointed out there wasn’t any good “church music” provided for worship. After explaining that guitars (including those “bass fishin’ ” kind) were “of the devil”, he began leading the congregation into a brief rendition of “We’re Marching to Zion”. That didn’t go so well…

He also noticed a lot of the people there were dressed inappropriately for church! Blue jeans, t-shirts, hats… even women in pants!

His head was spinning… where were all the pews? The hymnals? The baptismal fount? This certainly wasn’t the kind of church he was accustomed to!

The Bishop was visibly “flustered” as he so eloquently put it. After reading scripture (with quite the animated delivery), he then turned the service over to myself. I reckon The Living Church wasn’t his glass of sweet tea…

Whether you know it or not, the Bishop’s kind of attire, music, and “church” was the norm for many years. It’s still like that to this day in some places! And you know what? God bless them because they’re our brothers-in-Christ and they’re still reaching others with the Gospel! (I’m thankful that there’s more than one way to “do church”!)

But what the Bishop embodies in a lot ways is the dark side of Christianity that misrepresents what we as believers should be about. You weren’t a “true Christian” if you didn’t wear your “Sunday best” to church. Long hair and sandals were for hippies (and pictures of Jesus). Facial hair? That was unacceptable, unless of course you sported a stylish mustache (like the Bishop’s!).

Not only that, but you made sure to throw your weight around towards others in righteous judgment if they weren’t just like you (forget that whole “being like Christ” thing). Conformity to these “rules” was practically a requirement for church membership anywhere you went. Unfortunately, many Christians around this time turned far more people away from God than closer to Him!

They were consumed with outward appearance, rather than how “the lost” perceived them to be.

What’s the point in all of this? That God doesn’t care about “looks”, but our heart instead!

1 Samuel 16 tells us:

⁶ When they arrived, Samuel saw Eliab and thought, “Surely the LORD’s anointed stands here before the LORD.”

⁷ But the LORD said to Samuel, “Do not consider his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him. The LORD does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.”

Eliab (King David’s older brother) was noticeably “fair and tall”, yet God knew His heart and deemed him to be unfit to be King of Israel. He pointed this out to Samuel, who had thought Eliab surely must’ve been “the one” on his appearance alone!

What does that say for us? That not only can looks be deceiving, but the heart is what is most important! It shows who we truly are!

If your heart is pure, displaying love for God and His children (yes, all of them!), then people are going to take notice and desire for themselves whatever made you that way!

So while it’s perfectly alright to wear your “Sunday best”, what matters more is how your heart looks! Is it dirty? Prideful? Ugly? Not very appealing? Then it’s probably time to ask for the Holy Spirit to change it!

The same goes for the Christian church! Both God and our fellow man don’t care as much about how nice the building is, but rather what’s on the inside! If we show love and acceptance of people (not the sins that get dragged with them!) then that’s when we’re truly doing the Lord’s work and we start changing lives!

Remember that in God’s eyes, purity beats vanity EVERY TIME! “Putting up a front” will only get you so far, before you’re found out to be a fraud or worse… a misrepresentation of the God you serve!

Lastly, my apologies go out to the Bishop who was last seen at “Bob’s Country Chicken & Fish” somewhere on U.S. 1.  He loves that place!