Hope Discovery of the Day:
When we study the truth we are better able to live it.
Scriptures of the Day:
John 18:37-38
“Then Pilate said, “So you are a king!” Jesus replied, “You say that I am a king. For this reason I was born, and for this reason I came into the world–to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice. 38 Pilate asked, “What is truth?” When he had said this he went back outside to the Jewish leaders and announced, “I find no basis for an accusation against him.”
Ephesians 4:14-15
14 “So we are no longer to be children, tossed back and forth by waves and carried about by every wind of teaching by the trickery of people who craftily carry out their deceitful schemes. 15 But practicing the truth in love, we will in all things grow up into Christ, who is the head.”
Asking my youngest son why he did not do a chore I asked him to do 9 hours earlier, he boldly responded, “I did!” Looking at all of the bags that were in the same place I had left them that morning, I wondered how in the world he thought I would believe him. Sometimes we can get so acquainted with speaking untruths that we think we are telling the truth. That’s what deception does. It blinds the eyes of those who indulge in it.
Sometimes we don’t want to believe the truth. Staring into the eyes of Truth incarnate, Pilate asked what truth was. Sometimes the truth is right in front of us but we cannot see it. Or perhaps we don’t want to. Sometimes the truth hurts – especially when it reveals sin. But to walk in darkness and believe a lie hurts more.
Some people get bugged when there is just one way. It seems unfair. But it would actually be cruel for God to keep changing the standards or tell us to ascribe to standards that He does not define. I am just so grateful that there is an absolute standard that God has set. Although we could never meet His perfect standard, He gives us grace and mercy if we ask Him. And keeping His standard before us helps us to live faithful lives down here.
Have you ever had someone lie to you “to protect you” from the truth? How did that make you feel? Probably not protected. Why would we believe that a lie would be better than the truth?
It gets confusing in this world that tries to include everything as truth. We want “our truth” to be “THE truth”. We want to be our own god. Yet there is a truth that sets us free – free from pleasing self, free from man’s opinion. God’s Word. God has not left us with a relative understanding of what truth is. He did not want us to be uncertain about our salvation.
Man might try to confuse truth and manipulate it to say what He wants, but the gentle whisper of the Holy Spirit guides us into all truth as we are diligent to study His Word.
When God reveals His truth to us, if we are careful to apply it to our lives and ask Him to show us where we are deceived, we live out the life God intended. Knowing the truth and living it out takes grace and wisdom. We all will fall short, but God meets us in our place of truth and illumines our mind with his understanding.
Having an objective truth is not being exclusionary. Boundaries give freedom for those who are willing to live in accordance with them. Standing for everything is standing for nothing. Saying everything is truth is denying that absolute truth exists at all. Everything cannot be true, particularly things that are in opposition to one another.
The word, “practicing” in Ephesians 4:15 above is translated in other versions as speaking, following, doing, holding. We are to speak the truth (in love), follow the truth, do the truth and hold onto truth by the grace of God. When we study the truth we are better able to live it.