I recently saw a church sign message that asked the question, “How can you be a jerk during the week, then worship on Sunday?” Most church sign messages I see are ridiculous and counterproductive, but that one spoke truth. That was some truth in love that all Christians need to hear.
Are we grumpy? We need to hear that truth.
Are we bitter? We need to hear that truth.
Are we keeping secrets from our spouse or parents? We need that truth to come out.
Are we being selfish? We need to hear that truth.
Are we lazy? We need to hear that truth.
If we want to gird our loins in/with the truth (“gird”??? See post here.), we need to know the truth about ourselves. We need people to speak the truth in love to us.
And we need to be truth-speakers. That definitely includes refusing to lie about anything.
Do you find that you struggle with truth? It could be that you struggle receiving truth. It could be that you struggle telling the truth. It could be that you struggle living truthfully. If so, then go back to work on this, strengthen the core, the center, which is the truth of a relationship with Jesus who is the truth.
Being a truth-speaker, also includes speaking the truth in love to people.
Recently in a class I’m teaching at Lancaster Bible College we were talking about apocalyptic literature in Scripture, like the book of Revelation and that led to a conversation about how differently people interpret that apocalyptic literature. I mentioned that I often hear people say things like, “We are definitely living in the end times, and Jesus is coming soon,” as if they really know that, but they actually don’t.
We talked about how people can be absolutely convinced that their opinions are the truth. And yet they can be blinded by their own ability to ascertain the truth. They might think they have figured out the truth, but they are actually believing something false. Like thinking they know Jesus is coming in our lifetime. They don’t know.
One student raised her hand and asked about this, because she has some family members who are very authoritative about their viewpoints, totally unwilling to receive any other points of view. How can she speak the truth in love to them?
My point in saying this is that we need to be two things, people who receive the truth about ourselves and people who speak truth to others. In both of them be grounded in the truth of Jesus, humble about the reality that we don’t have it all figured out and we won’t ever have it all figured out.
Regularly seek to grow in your relationship with Jesus, the Truth! So get to know Jesus. Spend time with him every day. Quiet, listening time. Read about Jesus in the Gospels. He is God in the flesh. Read what the early church wrote about him in the rest of the New Testament.
Ask people to tell you the truth about yourself. Yes, it is risky and scary. Make sure you ask people who will actually tell you the truth. You’re not perfect, and neither am I. We need courageous loving people who will tell us the truth, and we need to be courageous loving people who tell the truth in love.
Fight the urge to lie, to shade the truth, to mislead, to deceive. Satan is the great deceiver. So if we want to take our stand against him, we cannot use his methods. We the people of Jesus are people of truth, because Jesus is the truth.
Photo by Keren Fedida on Unsplash
Engaging Scripture 