Captured!

Photography.

Let me give a shameless plug to the wonderful husband-and-wife team that make up Word Photography. Andrew and Heather Word did our engagement pictures and will do our wedding next weekend. If you haven't seen our beautiful pictures that were taken in November, please feel free to go check them out here. They were taken on my family's beautiful campground which is also the location of our wedding.

For me, it's a strange feeling when you are told by a photography to "act natural" while they snap away with a camera. Walking, talking, laughing, content, etc. They are trying to capture the real you. A fake smile will not do. A pose is usually stiff and uncomfortable. So they say, "Just smile! Be happy! Act normal!" Why? Because they want you as you! Genuine. Authentic.

Now, I hope you know where I'm going....

Photographers watch, then snap, and capture who you really are. And likewise, the world is watching and clicking away with their "cameras" - observing us, testing us, critiquing us. They want to see if we truly are who we claim to be. They watch to see if we're really committed to the God we claim to "serve." They test us. They try us. They want to capture us; to see the real Christian.

Luke 14:1
And it came to pass, as he went into the house of one of the chief Pharisees to eat bread on the sabbath day, that they watched him.

The world is searching for truth. The world is searching for something real and geunine. The Christians declare that we have it!.....and yet so often, the Christians are entangled in the chains of sin; talking the talk, but failing to walk the walk. The lost see that. The world, full of God-haters and mockers, laugh at it. And Satan uses it to his advantage.

We are captured every day, through the lense of this world. What do they see? When they bring their camera up to their eye and snap, do they capture a genuine Christian, full of joy and honor and holiness? Do they see a happy man or woman of God, as giddy in Christ as two newlyweds on their wedding day? Do they see the Gospel demonstrated and lived out in their life? Do they see a real Christian? Or do they find that the snapshot they took is a posed picture; an act; A phony and hypocritical person with a fake smile, an artificial joy, and a conterfeit Christianity....

Let it not be so!

Next weekend, when our photographers take dozens of pictures of me and my groom, they will capture us as we are - as a bride and groom completely in love and altogether happy! But my prayer is also that they, along with the whole world watching us, will see the joy of Christ in our eyes and in our smiles....and in our life. And I pray that is your prayer too.

Luke 6:7And the scribes and Pharisees watched him, whether he would heal on the sabbath day; that they might find an accusation against him.

Luke 20:20
And they watched him, and sent forth spies, which should feign themselves just men, that they might take hold of his words, that so they might deliver him unto the power and authority of the governor.

Colossians 2:8
Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.