Your Truth: Tactic Of The Day
There is a saying that I’ve heard more and more in my life that is taking over society and it is people saying “ live your truth”. There was a time in my life I’ll never forget and a gentleman I was working with was in a position where he knew a few different sides to a single story. As he was bringing me in on this story he started by saying “Well, here is how life works there are 3 truths. Your truth, the other person’s truth and then what the real truth is.” After he told me this I paused for a minute and asked “well how do you know what ones true”? He laughed and told me that was the tricky part of life and you just have to go with your gut.
I sat on this story for a couple years and lived by the principle that someone’s reality is their truth and accepting that is what’s right. About a year later God gave me the opportunity to become a believer and my mentor showed me a verse that changed my perspective on truth. The verse was John 14:6 “Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”
Now the first time I was shown this verse when I read it I did not even perceive the verse correctly. When I read it I thought the text was referring to Jesus always is speaking the truth. That is not what Jesus says. Jesus tells us that He is the truth.Think about the fundamental difference in those 2 ideas. Anyone can say something that is true but Jesus was saying He is truth. What does that mean though? What is Jesus telling us?
The place I take this is back to John 1:1 and John 1:14
John 1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
John 1:14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.
This is another example of how we see the bible tell us Jesus was something, the Word. Then the Word becomes flesh and dwelt among us and at the end of the verse we see that he was full of grace and truth.
The way the bible explains Jesus as the Word is the same way we can understand that Jesus is the truth. Think about it like this. Picture a person and they are always right. They have never been wrong once in their whole life. They could be described as right. That person is right.
As we look at who Jesus says He is the truth it’s because everything He is truth. Everything he says. Everything He does. Jesus never sinned and lived a perfect life so that means there was no lying, no deceit, no manipulation. Every single antonym of truth would not have existed in Jesus so in return He is truth that is His very nature.
This verse was very impactful because it tied me back to a few years previously when the advice given was that there are different variations of the truth. People saying “well they believe that so it must be true” Or “they live their life based on their truth”. The reality behind this idea if it was accurate is you could never know what is true. We are all subjected to a truth given to us. Whether this truth was given by our parents. Belief systems or advice someone gave us we are all coming to a “truth”.
There is another statement Jesus gives us in Matthew 6:24 and He says ““No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”
What this scripture shows us is as people are walking in “their truth” anything that is not the scriptural teaching of God would be worship of another master. Let me give you an example. We know that 1 + 1 equals 2. We have a truth. Now every single thing that would guide you away from 1 + 1 equaling 2 would be false and examples of us serving a master of untruth. That could have been a lie we were told, it could be someone that was bad at math telling us 1 + 1 equaling 3 anything you could think of that would not bring you to 1 + 1 equaling 2 would be a false reality.
Jesus is showing us this same concept with truth. As I was told there are 3 truths to every story, the reality is there is only 1 truth. The one truth lines up with principles taught to us in scripture and people are either abiding in God’s nature or not.
If we don’t have God to set the truth , what ends up happening is our truth is based on morally whatever we have decided or been taught and that would have been by the powers of evil if it is not from Jesus. In Psalm 99:9 the writer says
Exalt the Lord our God,
And worship at His holy hill;
For the Lord our God is holy.
To exalt means to lift to the highest, and this is how we need to evaluate truth. Scripturally we are shown truth is not objective to our lives or our truth but that God is truth. The tactic of the army of evil is to make us believe anything besides the truth that God lays out for us.
There is a common misconception in spiritual warfare that to be worshiping the devil you need to be a devil worshiper. That’s not true. The mission of the enemy and his army is to get you to worship and believe anything that is not God Jesus and the Holy Spirit. In return you would be living outside of truth. Lets zoom in further, scripture teaches us there are 2 paths God and Not. It’s not that the Devil is standing at the end of one path saying “you worship me the fallen angel” He provides millions of different false truths at the end of the path and sits behind a tree using those as bait. Now on the other path you have Jesus standing holding his hand out to you. Look back to Matthew 6:24, we can only worship one God. Our God does not coexist with any other god, or belief system because they are contradictions to the God of the bible. If Jesus is the way the truth and the life, that makes everything else false paths lies and death.
How do you start building your knowledge of the truth? It’s through the word of God. Scripture gives us an outline of the truth. If you are excited to start this process a good first step is reading through the 4 gospels, Matthew Mark Luke and John and from there you take all the statements Jesus has made. As Jesus is making these statements they are your start to an outline of truth. To zoom in a little further you can start at the sermon on the mount in Matthew 5-7 and in this section of scripture Jesus gives a sermon to a large group of people and gives core principles of what it takes to follow Christ and gives us the truth.
As you are looking down the 2 paths for truth and lies it’s not always easy to know what ones are. But how could it be easy for us who have fallen in sin. The more important mental frame to use is understanding our fallen state and understanding we do have the guide. Your responsibility is to read the word of God to understand what’s true and is not. As you read the fog on the 2 paths starts to dissipate and soon enough you will only see the truth.