Meet Landry Hays

I was scrolling through my Instagram feed the other day when I saw a photo of a cute little family. At first, the photo struck me as just a pretty picture of a pretty family. I clicked on the mother's account and began to scroll, finding almost all of the pictures to look very similar, and something wasn't right. As I began to look closer, I saw hair done perfectly (by a traveling stylist, no less), the perfect outfits, smooth skin, white teeth, and of course that perfect smile with the little gleam in their eyes—all things that made me think "that can't be real."

I know I'm not the only one who has experienced this. Our world is FULL of fake things: photoshopped celebrities, taking 50 photos to get the right one for social media, creating the perfect identity for yourself through various means, acting a certain way for certain people, and more. In a world like ours, it's so hard to be genuine. But friends, that makes it even more important!

Our authentic love separates us from the rest of the world. When we are authentic and genuine, we are showing the love of Christ to others. To do that, we need to get rid of distractions and temptations in our lives that cause us to want to be someone else. Now, that is where it gets extremely difficult, but the more we tighten our grip on the Lord and grow closer to Him, the less we begin to care about the things of this world. God never stops loving us, and His love is the truest thing we have to cling to. We must absolutely and totally hold on to Him so we can't be ensnared by the world.