There are no half-naked girls dancing around the words of Jesus.

"So, I don't care if nobody loves me, nobody loves me, nobody loves me but you.
Because the truth is never sexy. So, it's not an easy sell. You can dress her like the culture, but she'll shock 'em just as well. But she don't need an apology for being who she is. And she don't need your help making enemies."

This quote is from a song by Derek Webb that I listened to today. The lyric "the truth is never sexy" really caught my attention.

So much about the truth from the Bible, especially the words of Jesus, are in no way sexy. If they were a commercial on TV, there would be no half-naked girls dancing around.

If it were marketed toward kids, there would be no mothers to approve it. There would be no smiling, retired, old people.

There would be respected law-abiding citizens telling the audience to stay away. That it's going to ruin everything you've worked toward. It could make you sick or move away from your family or give all your money away or quit your job or lose your dignity or be killed. It would be like those commercial for new drugs, where most of the commercial would a list of bad side-effects.

But it's still the truth. And it's just as good as the preacher in church says it will be. It's just as breathtaking and exhilarating as you hope it could be. As you want it to be. It's that.

Unfortunately for a lot of us, we want the exhilaration without the side-effects. But it doesn't work that way. God requires nothing from us for His love. But we're not going to feel his love unless we do what He commands us, with disregard to what people and culture say.

Do you want to feel God's joy? That happiness that stays despite your circumstances?

Do you want to be holy? Set apart and victorious over the temptation of sin?

Do you want to feel God's love? To be special and wanted and loved, knowing God's commitment to you and His joy from being with you?

I believe those things are all possible and real. I think the key to all of them is to really believe the things Jesus tells us.

So, when Jesus says to love our enemies, let's not gossip about them. When he says to sell stuff we have (or buy fewer things) so we have money to give to the poor, let's actually give money away. When he says that it's hard for the rich to enter the kingdom of heaven, let's make it easy on ourselves and become poor. When Jesus spends all his time with the losers, the disabled, the sick, the poor, let's spend time with those people too and become their friend and love them.

And when we do these things, we will joyous, holy, and overwhelmed by God's love. And if we don't do these things, then we're probably just faking it.