Where do you go for truth? Your spouse? The newspaper? Your heart? Or maybe you don’t care about truth. Maybe that’s not important in your life right now. For some reason, in these times, the “truth” has become TRULY important to me and I am gravely aware of its presence, or should I say, “lack of” its presence.
The “truth” is defined as “in
accord with fact or reality or ideal”, by Wikipedia. I fear
the lack of importance placed on knowing and seeking the truth today is
horrendous. Its probably the one thing I
fear most, that and spiders J. Seriously, though, I don’t think we have any
idea of how lackadaisical we have become toward this “ideal” – this
old-fashioned reality, we used to call “truth”.
Right before Jesus was
crucified, He said to Pilate: “You say that I am a king.
In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the
truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”
Pilate then asked him, “What
is truth?” (John 18) In “truth”, Pilate found no charge against
our Lord. Jesus said He came to testify
to the truth. That “truth” that Jesus
came to testify about, it wasn’t well received back then and ISN’T well
received today either.
Good question for us today
though, don’t you think? What is truth? Is your
truth the same as my truth or vice
versa? I’m not being political here, I
am talking about the whole truth –
cross-your-fingers-or-you-will-die truth.
If Jesus said that the
reason He was born and came into the world was to testify to the “truth”, then
He is Truth. That makes
everything-EVERYTHING-He said, the truth.
When teaching Nicodemus, Jesus told him:
This is the verdict: Light
has come into the world, but men loved the darkness instead of light because
their deeds were evil. Everyone who does
evil hates the light and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds
will be exposed. But whoever lives by
the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has
done has been done through God. (John 3:19-21)
Living in darkness, away
from the truth, Satan can fill us with so many lies that we don’t even know
what the truth is anymore. All we hear
is the ridiculous exaggerations Satan whispers.
“you won’t amount to anything” – “you can’t do that” – “you will never
be free of that” – “God doesn’t love you” – “that’s unforgivable!” – and all
the other lies Satan spits out.
And in that grace, God’s
Word, HIS TRUTH, permeates the soul so that the darkness can be shown for what
it really is. Now, when I hear or even think
on something false (from Satan), I stop, fill myself with a “truth” and ponder
that truth. I keep myself in the light. I pray truths all the time. I hate the darkness. I hate evil.
I live in THE TRUTH.
I also surround myself with
truth - truth-seeking family and friends who believe and live in the
truth. When Jesus said, “everyone on the side of truth listens to
Me. ” – I take
that literally. I live on the side of
truth. And if I ever go to the other side,
the “dark” side, somehow God’s grace brings me back to where I belong – through
confession and forgiveness – or however God deems it so – I am brought back to
the very place I am supposed to be – IN TRUTH.
God’s will for me and for
you is to live in this truth - the whole truth and nothing but the truth. And that is SO the desire of my heart as
well. I pray for you as Paul prayed in
his letter to the Ephesians:
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