So Far to Go

By Greg Laurie, Op-ed contributor Thursday, September 03, 2009

I don't mean to say that I have already achieved these things or that I have already reached perfection! But I press on to possess that perfection for which Christ Jesus first possessed me. - Philippians 3:12

I happen to be bald, and I am not happy about it. When I began to lose my hair in my 30s, I started finding imaginative ways to try and postpone the inevitable. While I am reluctant to admit this (but I actually put it in print in my book, Lost Boy), I tried a hairpiece. I couldn't bring myself to wear it when I was speaking publicly, but one day I decided to take it out for a test run. Let's just say that a close call with a gust of wind helped me make my decision. I believe author Peggy Noonan's description of a hairpiece as a lie on your head is pretty accurate.

I don't think any of us want to have a lie on our heads or in any other area of our lives. We want to be honest. We want to be true. We don't want to be hypocrites, because one of the most common reasons unbelievers give as to why they don't want to go to church is there are so many hypocrites. The problem is that whenever people are involved, there will be hypocrisy.

But let's understand what a hypocrite actually is. A hypocrite is not someone who believes something and then falls short of it-that is called a Christian. We have standards that we seek to live by and we fall short of them, because we are imperfect people trying to serve a perfect God.

Having said this, it does not mean that we should settle for such an existence. We should seek to be godly men and women. And the further we go in the Christian life, the further we will realize we must go. The more we grow spiritually, the more we will discover that we must grow spiritually.