WHATS SO IMPORTANT ABOUT TRUTH?
11/2002
W.ROSE

Let me start off by saying that it seems that TRUTH has taken a back seat to experience these days. We now live in the day where it is acceptable to base our understanding of things on our experience rather than the clear teachings from the Word of God. I have seen this practiced many times in my relatively few years of experience. If it works – do it! That’s the name of the modern game. Unfortunately, this is not at all what the Bible reveals to us as Gods will in this area. If this ‘pragmatic’ philosophy were true, then there would be so many contradictory gods and bibles and beliefs that it would be impossible to sort out. How is it possible that someone who is walking in error can receive what appears to be ‘results’? How can people be ‘healed’ at meetings where the speaker of the hour is no more than a ‘snake oil’ salesman? This is the purpose of this site, to help the SEEKER of TRUTH find the answers to these and many other questions, in the Word of God.

It is not my intention to offend anyone, only to present the TRUTH. If the TRUTH offends you, then you must take that before the Judge of all. I pray that my words will be life giving and not taking. My goal is to build you up in your relationship with the Father, and His son, Jesus Christ. I believe that Jesus Christ IS the Truth. So we can fully trust Him with our lives. –

John 14:6 – Jesus answered him, ” I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life; no one goes to the Father except by Me. (TEV)

So lets get to the question – What’s so important about truth? The answer has many facets,but really only one main point. That point is that Jesus IS TRUTH so, it is only as important as Jesus is. How do you or I esteem Jesus? Do you view Him as the object of your life? Is He more important to you than anything else on earth? Remember that Jesus said – Luke 14:26 – “Whoever comes to me cannot be My disciple unless he loves Me more than he loves his father and his mother, his wife and his children, his brothers and his sisters, and himself as well.” You see, when it comes to TRUTH we must love it more than anything or anyone. Its too bad that in our society and others that people love ‘things’ more than they love the TRUTH. We know from scripture than unless we love the TRUTH we cannot be saved. How many times have we closed our eyes to TRUTH because if we didn’t it would mean some sort of sacrifice for us, maybe to lose money, or humble us, or to get us in trouble? In essence we are saying that we love these things (our pride, money, etc.) more than we love Christ. According to His own words then, can we be His disciple?

What we must come to realize is that Christ demands our TOTAL self – 100%, no less. The next verse in Luke 14 says – “Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after Me CANNOT be My disciple.” (emphasis, of course, is mine) Wow , what an awesome expectation laid on us from the Savior. Did He place this ‘burden’ on us and give us no way to keep it? Of course not, 1 John 5:3 says – “For our love for God means that we obey His commands, and His commands are not too hard for us.” The cross, giving up MY life, never MY will, ALWAYS His, death to SELF, crucifixion of the flesh, how can I possibly do it? YOU CANT!! Sound contradictory? read these verses carefully –

2 Corinthians 12:9,10 – But His answer was:” My grace is all you need, for My power is greatest when you are weak.” I am most happy, then, to be proud of my weaknesses, in order to feel the protection of Christ’s power over me. I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and difficulties for Christ’s sake. For when I am weak, then I am strong.

Can you see, that Christ IS our strength. Philippians 4:13 says – “I have the strength to face all conditions by the power that Christ gives me.” What a power that is !! So this life of living in the TRUTH is not unattainable, as most think, but it is promised as a fact, if we will put our full trust and faith in Christ and His provision for us. It even gets better than that, -He gives us His power through the Holy Spirit. If we walk after the things of the Spirit and not the flesh. –

Romans 8:5-8 – “Those who live as their human nature (flesh) tells them to, have their minds controlled by what human nature wants. Those who live as the Spirit tells them to, have their minds controlled by what the Spirit wants. To be controlled by human nature results in death; to be controlled by the Spirit results in life and peace. And so a person becomes an enemy of God when he is controlled by his human nature; for he does not obey God’s law, and in fact, he cannot obey it. Those who obey their human nature cannot please God.”What a warning for us to heed with all our hearts, that we cannot please God if we walk after the flesh. Walking after the flesh means putting the desires of our flesh before the desires of God. If we steal some money we have chosen to obey the flesh, rather than God. But the applications are so much more than this. When we choose our way, even when it seems ‘righteous’ and ‘holy’ over Gods way, we are walking in death. There is only one way God has for us to walk, that is down to the foot of the cross and placing ourselves on it and letting the nails be driven in. We must HATE our way, and LOVE Gods way. If we don’t, we will do things in our own strength, and be far from Gods will.

Back to TRUTH. You may say, well I know all this, and on top of that, I have the truth already, thank you! I pray that you do , brother, sister. But the scripture also commands us to examine ourselves, to see whether or not we are in the faith. We must compare ourselves with scripture to check up our spiritual condition. Can you admit that there are millions out there who profess to know the TRUTH, when it is obvious that they are far from it? SO, what about you, shouldn’t you examine yourself to make sure you are not one of those? Let’s give this an illustration – Suppose you had 10 different transparencies in your hand, all with pretty much the same writing and pictures on them. But you are told only one is correct. What to do? You look them over carefully and you don’t notice anything so majorly different, just some minor things here and there, but to you, they all pass the onlookers test. Then you remember that the original was on the overhead projector shining on the wall. So you take each one of the transparencies and place then one by one on top of the original. What do you find? The first one was way off, everything was blurry, because of the difference. The next about the same. One was real close, but about a quarter of the bottom was missing. LOOK! An exact duplicate, one that fits exactly over the original, without any differences. You have the winner. This is how it must be with our lives in Christ. We must match the original perfectly or else we have committed the sin of IDOLATRY. We have heaved unto ourselves a man-made god, with our own rules and ways. We do not think that God knows best, so we try to make a god to suit our needs, and our preferences, and how we think it should be. God forbid we do this!! So when we place ourselves against the original and SEE that we don’t match, what should we do? Should we ignore it, because its only a little thing anyways? Or because we think maybe the original is old and needs updating to fit our culture and fashion and ideals? Or maybe we are afraid of what the others might say if we should try to correct our errors and conform to Gods word, and not man made doctrines of devils?

Only someone who is seeking the TRUTH will be able to overcome all of these obstacles and say to the Lord, “Here I am Master, You are the Potter, I am the clay, mold me into the man YOU want me to be.” Then hand the chisel and hammer to Christ and let Him pound away. It hurts, I know it does, but don’t you want to be formed by Him, and not by the man down in the big building with the tall steeple on top?! Jesus IS the Master builder, the chief cornerstone. Oh , that we as His body would trust Him to mold us into His image. He is looking for a bride (church) that is spotless ( fits the original perfectly) and blameless, who is the reflection of Himself. That is the only way. Its His way! Think of it this way – When was the last time you hung a few – billion stars in space? How about the last storm you caused to wipe out a city? What about the last time you breathed life in to a piece of meat and life sprang forth out of it? Been awhile hasn’t it? What do you mean never? Oh, you’re not God , that’s right. Well why don’t we remember that the next time we read His Word and think we can do better than He. That should humble us into true submission to His will.

You may be asking – Well, isn’t TRUTH hard to find and who knows what REALLY is the truth? I feel the answer to the first part is- yes, and no. One man quoted as saying – “TRUTH is so obscure in these times, that unless one loves the truth, he cannot find it.” I think he said it fairly well. We must LOVE the TRUTH. It is ‘hard’ to find in this wayward society we live in, but it is easy to find in the Word of God. However, it must consume us. to the point where the pursuit of it is our purpose in life. Think of the implications – That we put seeking for Christ over every other task in our life. Contemplate the message in the following verses –

1 John 2:20 -” But you have had the Holy Spirit poured out on you by Christ, and so all of you know the TRUTH. I write you, then , not because you do not know the truth; instead, it is because you do know it, and you also know that no lie ever comes from the TRUTH. – vs. 27 – But as for you, Christ has poured out His Spirit on you. As long as His Spirit remains in you, you do not need anyone to teach you. For His Spirit teaches you about everything, and what He teaches is TRUE, not false. Obey the Spirit’s teaching, then, and remain in union with Christ. Yes, my children, remain in union with Him, so that when He appears we may be full of courage and need not hide in shame from Him on the Day He comes. You know that Christ is righteous; you should know, then , that everyone who does what is right is God’s child.”

Remember the comment about the man in the building with the steeple? What is he teaching you? Is it different than what the Word of God teaches you, or His Spirit that He came to pour out on you? If so, who do you think is wrong? Could it possibly be that God has somehow messed up and this mortal has came to the rescue and cleared things up for you? I doubt it!!!! God has given us His Word so that we would know how to live as He wants us to. He gave us His son, Jesus, to SHOW us how He wants us to live. He has given us His Holy Spirit to guide us and remind us of the TRUTH which Christ brought.

So it should be clear by now, that God has a thought in all of this. He has set in order a plan for us, so we will know what is TRUTH and what is not. It’s His Word. His Spirit. His Son. These three must agree in order for it to be TRUTH. If you feel the Spirit telling you that its o.k. to commit adultery ( an obvious overstatement to prove a point) then you automatically know that it CANT be TRUTH, because both Christ and the Word say otherwise. It failed the test! Can you apply all you think to be true to the threefold test? This question should not be answered to hastily. Give it some deep thought and study. Write down on paper as many ‘beliefs’ as you can remember that you have. Then go through the Word of God and take the time to see if indeed it is according to His will, or your will. I’m sure we all have areas where we need to repent and ask God to change us to His image. The question is, Will you humble yourself and admit you are wrong, and immediately begin to walk in the TRUTH of His Word? Or will you reason and procrastinate and explain away, and make void the commands of God?

This article is not meant to be an extensive study into these various topics, just a ‘feeler’ to see whether or not you really love truth. If you cannot honestly answer that you want TRUTH more than ANYTHING, even life itself, then this site will be a waste of your time. You need to look elsewhere to find comfort for your hard heart. We as TRUTH SEEKERS are devoted to finding the TRUTH, no matter the cost. We are NOT saying we have all TRUTH, for as 1 Cor 13 says- We see through a glass dimly, but when Christ comes, then we’ll see the TRUTH fully. However, if you can say to Christ, ‘ Have thine own way , Lord’ then continue on. And may God receive the Glory that is due unto His name, and may Christ be Glorified by these writings.