human billboard.
so what if i told you that you were a walking, talking, breathing, laughing, crying, living billboard? and that everything you say and do is an advertisement of what you think? that what’s on the inside of you spills out to the outside of you? and that who you truly be is written in your posture and your attitude towards the world around you.
now tell me, friend, if i stumbled across your path today — what would your billboard say?
are you a poster child for the belief system you spout from your lips? or does your do speak a bolder Truth than the pretty little lies you’ve been programmed to regurgitate by the indoctrinators of a fallen world?
“you can make your mouth say anything, annie.” the razor-sharp words of a man who taught me much about what Love does and does not. and while the abuse that i suffered at his dirty hands was far more putrid than most will ever know, there was such deep and profound medicine in these particular words. like a demon wrapped in flesh, mocking the parts of me that identified as a follower of Yeshua Ha’Mashiach from my mouth, but whose behavior misaligned with such righteousness and Love.
i hear people say that they believe. in Love. in goodness. in doing the right thing. and then they quickly go on with their regularly scheduled programming — cursing those around them and mocking God Most High.
what hell we create for ourselves when we live so inauthentically to The Truth.
the circumstances of our lives may be difficult — and we may associate certain obstacles with a hell-like experience. i have my own pile of episodes in the 42-season-and-still-going-strong series of “the annie show” that are ear-marked with pain and tragedy and tremendous suffering. but the difficult events in my life have not been the hell that i have seen. even with trials so desperate as being beaten and kicked and spit upon by men who claimed to Love me. nay. the deepest and darkest pits of hell i have tasted have been when i have separated my mind from the mind of Christ. when i have listened to the lies of this world that call to my hedonistic and wicked self. when i give into the temptations of evil within — not around.
how desperate i remain for my Savior. and how pleased my Father be when i run to him in need of Grace.
. . .
what if we became a people so richly determined to behave as the Sons and Daughters of The God of all that is seen and unseen, that there was literally nothing we could say from our lips that would be more powerful than the record of our actions? and what if we saved that which came from our lips to be only blessing. only Grace. only healing to the hearts and minds and bodies and souls of those around.
. . .
i challenge you today, sweet friend, to take a hard look at your human billboard — the sign that you are sending out to this world. is The Message of your Life in harmony with who Jesus says you be? or are you just passing along on whims and trends as another sad face, another dejected soul, another victim of circumstance that has been graffitied and torn and weathered away to a faded field of beige. no vibrancy of color. no big, bold print. no cause to be noticed. just a sad sack of human apathy. another brick in the wall.
if you could design a billboard to match the very best version of you on the inside — the parts of you that dream big dreams and want to help others and still believes that there is Good in this world that is worth standing up for… what would your billboard say? how would your billboard make people feel when they saw it? how long would people think of your billboard’s Message after it was no longer in sight? how many people would want to see your billboard again because the Beauty and Truth and Goodness that it shared was so refreshing to the Spirit?
you have everything you need inside of you to be an incredible, life-giving, blessing-to-those-around-you human billboard. you also have everything you need inside of you to be a poisonous, energy-sucking, waste-of-space human billboard. aim to be a billboard worthy.
Love you. mean it.