Truth

“She expects the voice of God to always come through a random person”, I said to my husband after a conversation we had with a dear friend of ours. It was one of those long, weird days where the minutes seem to hang in the air and not move forward or backwards. I have been recovering from the flu. Could it have been omicron? Maybe, I didn’t get tested so am uncertain. I just know it is the sickest I’ve been in years. I am grateful for the healing power of God at work in my body, and for the strength I am gaining each day. I’m also grateful that if I was going to get sick, it was now, because I begin teaching a new 8-week class at church this Sunday and I wanted to be ready for it.

But this day, which was two days ago, was unusual for other reasons. In the space of about two hours, I had seven people reach out to me on a wide variety of reasons, boom boom boom, one after the other. Really intense reasons, not just simple reasons. Reasons that required intentional thought and in-the-moment prayer. Just when I thought I was finished, here would come another, and some simultaneous! Who left the gate open, I wondered?! I was literally exhausted by the end of it and scared to even glance in the direction of my phone in fear it would light up again!

As I scratched my head asking the Lord what that was all about, the thought came to me that every conversation, no matter how different, had one thing in common: they were all fear driven! IEEE-gad, I thought, my heart breaks for all of this fear that is so dividing and hammering those I care about!

Regarding the days we find ourselves living in right now, I’ve shared in previous posts that we embrace the narrative we know best – either the world narrative or the biblical one. If you aren’t familiar with the biblical narrative, chances are you will be driven instead by the world narrative. The world narrative breeds fear, offense, deception, and what I call dissipation. Strangely enough, however, there were some in those conversations who were quite familiar with the biblical narrative, and were still gripped by fear. Why? Here are my thoughts:

• Truth is truth. Whether you believe in it or not has no impact on it’s validity
• As long as we are driven by fear, we cannot discern truth. Fear is a choice
• To know truth, to understand God, we must love God (John 14:17-21)
• All the religious knowledge in this world cannot replace relationship with God Himself

This may seem like a bunch of random hooey but the common thread in these scattered thoughts is truth. Here is another truth for you: We need to stop pretending that God is silent and somehow distant with everything that is happening in our world, and that all He had to say has already been written. God is continually speaking! It shouldn’t be uncommon for any of us to hear His voice and know it! We are the ones who need to start listening, hearing, heeding – even when the message is not one we want to hear – although these days I think we are all begging to hear truth! Why? Because Jesus says “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6) , and “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free” (John 8:32).

It all goes back to Mark 12:30, which says to love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength. If we are not whole-hearted lovers of God, we risk not being able to discern truth. If we cannot discern truth, we risk being driven by the world narrative, falling into fear, deception, offense, and dissipation.