The McDonalds in my home town had warped carnival mirrors by the cashiers when I was a kid. I don’t know if it was because I grew up in a small town or it was the more simpler times of the 80’s, but I can remember laughing at the distorted images of me when I would walk by. My head would either be 10 x’s too big or my stomach would be. That is kind of amusing when you know the truth of what you really look like away from the distorted mirror. I’ve often thought about how that mirror at McDonalds is very similar to a couple of “mirrors” that I’ve had inside of me. They aren’t amusing to look at like the carnival mirrors at McDonalds. They are warped images of what I sometimes think is a reflection of God or sometimes the warped images of what I think is the reflection of the inside of me.

I’ve been involved in a Bible study on Discipleship with a few ladies. Studying my lesson this week has brought the distorted images back into view. I’m not sure where I got the image of God in my head that makes Him angry, watching for my sudden slip up with anticipation of the punishment to follow. Sometimes it’s best compared to the God with lightening bolts that is impossible to be good enough for that I think is watching me. These images are not as prevalent in recent years but occasionally they do raise their ugly head. I found myself this week when I saw the title for this weeks study, “The Disciple’s Lord”. My thoughts of how short I fall from being what I should be and how holy He is started to play through my mind. Then as I read the scripture the things that stuck out to me were that Jesus as “Lord” is first above all. Colossians 1:15-20 points out that Jesus is the image of the invisible God, before all things, holds all things together, the head of the church, the fulness of God. The enemy would want us to look at these images of who Jesus is with a type of “spiritual drunk goggles”. You know the type of goggles the Highway Patrol uses in school demonstrations to show the kids how being under the influence makes you not see or feel correctly. Sometimes we look at the word in the Bible with those kinds of distortions instead of the comfort and encouragement it is meant to be. Jesus as the head , the one before everything is a wonderful thing. If we allow God to remove the “distortion” goggles from our eyes we can see that Jesus being Lord is not what we sometimes make it.

Paul writes in Colossians 1 that He prays that the Christians “grow in their knowledge of God”. The reason being is if we really know Jesus, we will gladly follow Him. Look at the Jesus in the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John), He is the Jesus who took time for the hurting, the lost, the broken, those wore down by life. Colossians 1:15 says this Jesus is the “image of the invisible God…” When we see the heart of love in Jesus, we see the image of the heart of love of God. As we look deeper and deeper into who Jesus is we see more and more of what God really is like. Jesus before all, Lord of all, is God’s heart of Love ruling over every detail of our life with His Goodness towards us. Colossians 1:12-13 Paul talks about exactly how it is that God accomplishes His Lordship in us. We can never be good enough so He is the one who qualifies us. We cannot overcome on our own so He is the one who rescues us. We cannot, but He can. Because He rescued us from the hold the darkness has had on us and brought us in to His kingdom.

When we take off our distortion goggles or step away from the warped mirror of lies the Devil would have us believe, we see that Jesus’s Lordship in our life, the things He asks us to lay down at the foot of the cross, the things He asks us to obey Him in may appear to be the death of us and they are… But they are the Life of Him. And His life is all we really needed all along.