My children don’t know who I am.
They think they do.
They grew up in my house. Sat at my table. Heard my rules. Felt the weight of my decisions. They’ll tell you I was strict.
I wasn’t that strict.
They’ll say, “Dad, we got cell phones later than everybody else.”
Yeah.
And looking back, that might’ve been one of the best things I ever did for them.
Because while everybody else’s kids were wandering through every dark alley the Internet could manufacture, mine had to wait awhile before somebody handed them the whole world in their pocket.
But here’s the thing.
My children know pieces of me.
So does my church.
So do my friends.
And I know pieces of them.
Because nobody walks around completely exposed.
We wear masks.
We lock doors.
We build separate little kingdoms online. Facebook gets one version of us. Instagram gets another. X gets another. Then Mom walks into the room, or Grandma, or somebody from church, and suddenly we straighten the halo and polish the wings.
Look at us.
Saints.
Yeah, right.
That’s why I don’t want the performance.
I WANT THE REAL YOU.
When somebody says, “Watch your language. He’s a pastor,” I almost laugh.
Why?
If that’s who you are when I’m not around, why manufacture somebody else when I walk into the room?
I can’t minister to somebody who doesn’t exist.
Give me the real man.
Give me the real woman.
Give me the anger.
Give me the questions.
Give me the doubts.
Give me the scars you keep covered.
Give me the truth.
Because Jesus never needed somebody to clean themselves up before He could see them.
And neither do I.
Here’s something else people may not understand about me.
The man behind the pulpit isn’t exactly the same man sitting beside a hospice bed.
Same Jesus.
Same Bible.
Same faith.
Different room.
Different need.
At church, I may preach Pentecostal fire.
But when I walk into a hospice room, I’m not there to put on a show.
I LISTEN.
Sometimes the person wants Scripture.
Sometimes prayer.
Sometimes they want to talk about God.
Sometimes they want to talk about their dog.
Sometimes they want to tell me about the war, their marriage, their children, the thing they regret, the person they never forgave.
And sometimes they don’t want to talk at all.
So I read the room.
Not some psychic foolishness.
Not fake prophecy.
I’m watching.
Listening.
Paying attention.
Because sometimes you can see heaviness hanging on somebody before they ever admit they’re carrying it.
You see it in their shoulders.
Their eyes.
The silence between their words.
And something inside me says:
There.
That’s where it hurts.
Maybe that’s experience.
Maybe that’s discernment.
Maybe sometimes it’s a gift of the Spirit.
I don’t always know.
I just know there have been moments when Scripture came into my mind, and I spoke it, and somebody looked at me almost stunned.
“I was just thinking about that Scripture.”
And I think:
Lord…
You did it again.
That’s why I need Jesus Christ with every human being I meet.
Because I don’t know everything hiding behind somebody’s eyes.
Neither do you.
We barely know each other.
Sometimes we barely know ourselves.
But I’ve got pastor friends who will tell me exactly what they think, even when they know I might not like it.
I treasure that.
No costume.
No polished preacher voice.
No religious theater.
Just truth.
And I want that from the people in my congregation too.
Don’t give me the church version of you.
Give me YOU.
Because I don’t want to minister to your mask.
I don’t want to pray for your performance.
I don’t want to shake hands with the cardboard cutout you drag into church while the real you is bleeding somewhere behind it.
I want to minister to the person underneath.
The one who gets angry.
The one who gets scared.
The one who has questions.
The one who sometimes wonders where God is.
The one carrying something nobody else knows about.
THAT PERSON.
Because that’s the person Jesus came for.
And when I don’t know what to say, I trust Him.
When I don’t know where the wound is, I trust Him.
When I don’t know what Scripture that person needs, I trust Him.
And every once in a while, right in the middle of an ordinary conversation, God puts something in my path that I never planned.
A word.
A Scripture.
A sentence.
One little thing that lands exactly where it needed to land.
And suddenly Proverbs 16:9 isn’t ink on paper anymore:
“The mind of man plans his way, But the LORD directs his steps.”
I planned the conversation.
God directed the step.
I walked into the room.
God knew who was waiting there.
I saw the face.
God saw behind it.
So no.
I don’t need the fake you.
I don’t need the polished you.
I don’t need the Sunday-morning version of you.
Give me the real you.
Broken edges and all.
Because Jesus already knows who’s behind the mask.
And thank God—
He knows exactly how to reach them.