Followers of Truth |
| Posted by RH Admin (rhadmin) on Jul 23 2008 at 12:21 PM |
As followers of Jesus we are followers of truth.
I have recently lost some dear friends do to deception. I will not judge which of us is deceived but I can say for certain that one of us is and it has produced death. It has become a common trend for me to go through something like this and my suffering takes me to the point of gaining a deeper understanding of the heart of Jesus. So I will call this a good thing, but very painful. I remember telling a friend of mine that was suffering through his grandson being murdered, that it is ok to feel angry. After all God shows anger, but his anger is against sin. I told him that he must allow his anger to produce hatred for the lies that lead to sin not toward the person who is held captive by the lie. So for me, after a range of emotions that has caused both weeping and cursing, I have landed at a place that I believe is righteous anger. It is an anger against lies and deceit. BJ Kramps used to say that you can know when your angry and you can know when your happy but you don't ever know when you are deceived. You are deceived when you have believed a lie and so there is the problem, you believe it. So what is the answer? How do we tell the difference between a lie and truth. Well, the simple answer is by knowing the word of God. But how can we ever know if we have interpreted it properly. These are huge questions that brilliant people have struggled and debated over for thousands of years. So why bother even trying? All I can say is I have no other options but to search out truth or I will be surrendering my life and my family to lies.
If you remember back to the beginning when Adam and Eve were in the garden living in a world that knew no lies. They were without fear, shame, guilt, anxiety, or even the knowledge of sin. So what happened? They were lied to and they believed the lie, they were deceived. Satan challenged the truth of God with his own version of the truth. The Bible calls him a liar and the Father of all lies. It says that when he lies he speaks his native language. As a result of that deception we have been in a battle ever since. It is a battle between good and evil, truth and lies. If you fast forward a few thousand years we get a reminder of how people get deceived 2 Corinthians 11: 1 equates our lack of simplicity with deception.
But I fear, lest somehow, as ?f?the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, so your minds ?g?may be corrupted from the ?1?simplicity that is in Christ. ?4? For if he who comes preaches another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive a different spirit which you have not received, or a ?h?different gospel which you have not accepted-you may well put up with it!
What is the simplicity we are in? I believe it is this. Look at John 8:31 "Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed Him, "?If you ?n?abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. ?32? And you shall know the ?o?truth, and ?p?the truth shall make you free.?"
Jesus was talking to the Jews who had believed that they had already possessed the truth because they had Gods word. Jesus corrected them by presenting himself as the fulfillment of the Truth, the Law. They believed they were sons of God because they followed the teachings of Moses but Jesus corrected them again and said they were sons of the devil and their hearts were wicked. Even though they kept the law perfectly, He put them in the same class as murderers and thieves. Jesus makes it clear that he is the Truth and when we are in him we are living in Truth and he has put his Spirit in us that he calls the Spirit of truth.
So hear is what I believe we should do with all this. We surrender our lives to Jesus as our Lord and consider ourselves bond servants of his. As a result of our willingness to surrender to him he places his Spirit in us and now leads us in all truth. In other words, he makes us forgiven people because of his sacrifice but he also continues that work in us by giving us a new heart that desires truth. We begin to war against our natural desires that lead us into lies and accept the Truths of God.
As for me it has been shown in the reality that my once wicked heart has been supernaturally changed into a heart that desires more and more to live my life loving people like Jesus did. The Spirit of Truth is dwelling within me and welling up in me like a spring that longs for nothing but more of him, more truth. The truth I long for is not just a system of belief, but a person. Jesus!
Don't get me wrong, the flesh is still with me and I still fight against its longings. I struggle to be the man my heart really desires to be. But one day this flesh will die and I will then see clearly what my heart longs to see. I will see Jesus! Until then we are a people that must refuse to continue to follow the patterns of this world and learn to think and meditate and ultimately believe in all truth. I invite you to join me as I have written down a long list of things that I claim I believe based on the Bible. I am now going over that list and looking at my life and honestly asking myself "Do I really believe this or have I lied to myself" You might ask the question like this, "Do I really believe that the things I say I believe are really real?" If you really believe then there will be evidence of that belief in your life. I plead with you! consider.
In service to the King,
Todd
