June 20

Take hypocrisy to Christ, the physician whose skill and faithfullness can make you whole. If you must die, die at His door. But for your comfort, remember that no one has ever fallen out of His healing hand; and no case has ever been too hard for Him to handle. He blamed the hypocrites who were ready to trust any charlatan ministering in his own name without God's authority but who would not confess the One who had come in the Father's name. And He who blamed hypocrites for not coming cannot be angry with you if you come. It is His calling.

Christ came to be a physician to sick souls. Pharisees were so settled in their own conceit that the Savior spent His time with those who admitted they needed help. If you cannot do anything but groan under your weight of hypocrisy, and send those groans in prayer to God, your healer will soon come to you. Since His ascension into heaven Jesus has never once laid down His calling, but still practices, granting forgiveness as faithfully as ever.

For example, Christ counseled Laodicea how to be loosed from her deadly disease of hypocrisy: "I counsel thee to buy of me gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich; and white raiment, that thou mayest be clothed" (Revelation 3:18). He warned, "Laodicea, you are deceiving yourself and others with appearances instead of realities, with counterfeit graces for true ones; your gold is impure and your robes are rotten rags. They do not cover your shame but expose it. Come to Me if you want real treasure." Although Christ mentioned buying, what he really meant was buyer's spirit, valuing Christ and His grace so highly that, if they could be bought, a person would be willing to spend all the money in his account and even the blood in his veins for it, yet still go home saying it was a bargain. It is the thirsty soul who will be satisfied, but we must be sure our thirst is right and deep.

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