Why can’t I always practice what I preach? I look back over the last several months’ offerings of Wake Up Calls and see that I espouse kindness, forgiveness, not being offended, and generally trying to always be Jesus with skin on to other people.

Well, so much for the “preach” part of it. That’s the easy part. Now to try to work on the “practice” part of it – there’s the rub. Recently a family situation found me filled with all those yucky emotions like unkind thoughts, judgment and offense. Of course not wanting to show that I don’t have the “Christian” thing licked, I put on my smiley face and pretended I felt none of it.

Ahhh…now we have added hypocrisy to the list. The final frosting on the cake is guilt. After nearly thirty years as a follower of Christ, how come I’m not farther along? How can I tell others to do things I can’t master myself?

Are you nodding your heard as you are reading this? Do you sometimes find it near impossible to practice what you preach? Join the club! Yes it is hard and the truth is that we don’t always succeed. Much as we would like to be perfect reflections of Jesus all the time we often fail. Just as the Apostle Paul tells us in the seventh chapter of Romans; we often do the very things we don’t want to do.

What is the solution? Honesty with ourselves and God is a good start. Failure may not be a good thing but it does have one silver lining: it keeps us humble and at the feet of Jesus. We need his grace every day don’t we? I know I will never get past the place of needing it. If you aren’t practicing what you preach, keep practicing. You know – “practice makes perfect.”

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