Self-Tanner and the Christian Faith

I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but for those of you who don't already know, I love going to the park near my house. I always have. I've been playing basketball there for 14 years. The older I get, the more time I seem to spend there. Of course, it helps that they built a small pond with "sitting rocks" spaced evenly around it. 

I find myself sitting on these rocks quite often.

Some days I'll walk over and rock-sit after I play basketball or run. Other days I'll go specifically to sit, think, brainstorm blog topics, practice my talks, read, or write. There's just something about observing God's creation that floods your soul with peace. 

The other day when I was rock-sitting, I was looking down at my legs and suddenly found myself thinking back to my freshman year of high school. 

It was track season and, for whatever reason, I had decided to use self-tanner. Which is fine! There's nothing wrong with that! There is, however, something wrong with only putting it on your legs.

I had no idea how off-balanced my skin appeared until one of my friends pointed it out to me.

Friend: "Dang, Kris! Your legs are DARK! But um...what's going on with the rest of your body? Why is it so uneven?"
Me: "I've been using self-tanner!"
Friend: "Only on your legs???????"
Me: *laughs nervously and uncontrollably* 

I went home that day and looked at myself in the mirror. Sure enough, my legs looked like an oven-roasted turkey while my face and arms were whiter than new-fallen snow. I'm not one to get embarrassed, but if I did, this moment would have made it in the top ten, no doubt. I spent the next few weeks applying self-tanner to only my face and arms. When the top half finally matched the bottom half, I made sure to apply self-tanner to all areas from then on. 

I smiled as I thought about how our faith is a lot like that self-tanner. 

Stay with me, I promise I'm going somewhere with this! 

As Christians, we often treat our faith the same way I treated my self-tanner. We apply it to certain areas of our lives, but not EVERY area. We go to church on Sunday mornings and we attend weekly Bible studies, but the rest of our life is off-balanced because we don't implement what we learn into every aspect of our life. This, of course, results in an uneven faith, an unnatural glow. 

God doesn't want us to apply our faith to the areas of our choosing. 

He wants us to apply it evenly throughout our lives, whether it's going to be seen by others or not.

When we do this, when we implement Christ's teachings 24/7 rather than only when/where we feel like it, we develop a natural glow, radiating His light wherever we go.

Are there certain areas of your faith that need to be evened out? 

Don't get caught picking and choosing where you apply your faith. Apply it every day, in every single way.