My parents restored a classic car when I was little. I remember my dad using this weird pink stuff called Bondo to fill in the rusty spots. It smelled funny, was the color of bubble gum, and had the consistency of Play-Doh. When it dried, he sanded it smooth to match the rest of the metal.

Somewhere around the same time, I became a fan of Steve Austin in his role as The Bionic Man, and later, I was even more enthralled with The Bionic Woman. I even had bionic man and bionic woman action figures. Thin rubbery "skin" on their plastic arms and legs rolled up to expose a bionic chip. Not as cool as the TV series, of course, in which the two formerly damaged-beyond-repair characters were imbued with supernatural abilities through the miracle of modern science, but my childhood world of pretend was rich with imagination!

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What, you ask, does this have to do with anything? Never underestimate God's ability to speak into your life using the most random things! Here's what He revealed to me: Body filler faith is rampant. Bionic faith is a rare commodity.

Have you settled for filler faith? Most of us do, in one area or another. We come to Christ with all sorts of damaged parts and pieces—wounded hearts, twisted perceptions, misaligned motives. In fact, it's usually our brokenness that drives us to acknowledge our need for a Savior.

We come into the body of Christ dented, creased, and rusted. The people around us are shiny and smooth and perfect by comparison. We feel woefully inadequate and uncomfortable. Our bent parts make the people around us uncomfortable, too. We know in our hearts that God has new and better parts available, but we don't know how to access them, or get frustrated waiting for them to appear. Sooner or later, we pull out the body filler and slap it on as a substitute. Now, we look like everyone else. Only WE know that under the putty is a painful dent, or crease, or weak rusty place.

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I've met a lot of Christians who've survived on Bondo for years. They remind me of Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep in "Death Becomes Her." When tests come, and the Bondo begins to disintegrate and reveal their inner condition, they get mean. And desperate.

Bondo makes things look nice, but it's never as good as the real thing. It can't replace a working part. It's all for the sake of keeping up appearances. How can you tell if you've Bondo-ed an area of your life? When the test, or the pressure, or the attack comes, all of a sudden, you realize, "something is not working!"

Yeah, you adopted an external substitute for a work of the living God. You started dressing the part, talking the talk, going to all the right places and doing all the right things with all the right people. But it was external, not internal. When you call upon that part to function, it crumples like a discarded wad of bubble gum.

Maybe you can't share your faith, you can't pray with any conviction that God hears you, or you question whether or not you're even saved. You fear people who are dented and creased, because they might recognize what's under the surface of your filler. You surround yourself with those who look like you, sound like you, and think like you, and take comfort in the security of numbers. But on the inside, you're quaking in your pink putty shoes of peace.

Don't fret! Recognizing the fake filler parts is the first step toward getting real parts—bionic ones, direct from your heavenly Manufacturer! Are you interested? Check back Monday (or subscribe) to find out what having bionic parts means, and how to access them!