Archive for truth
When the Truth Crashes Through
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The words hit me. I felt their impact as if I’d run full-force into a brick wall in the middle of the night. My soul reverberated from the impact. It was as if layers of dried up mud had suddenly cracked open and began to fall off my heart and mind, piece by piece, bit by bit, chunk by chunk.
I had come face to face with truth. Oh, the truth had been there all along, but I had not known it. I’d not been willing or able to see it. The dried muddy layers of denial and resistance and repression which I’d used to protect myself from pain suddenly were cracked open enough for the truth to begin to penetrate my heart and mind.
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With God in the Valley
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Recently I’ve been pondering how God leads me, at times, into the valley of the shadow of death, where life is uncertain, the terrain is difficult, and it’s just downright scary at times.
Well, you might say, “God doesn’t do that.” Uh, I beg to differ. The Psalmist David, the one God Himself said was a “man after my own heart”, invited us to explore the reality of walking in that valley. Job, who was called “a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil”, certainly walked through the valley. Jesus Himself was “driven into the wilderness” to be tempted, and on the cross he faced the greatest darkness, as he took my sin and your sin and the sin of all humanity on himself and cried, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
The mysteries of human suffering are beyond our grasp, and yet God invites us into them. While I do not believe that God causes evil and I understand that all evil and pain in the world are a result of the work of the enemy, I do believe that God uses human suffering to change us.
In the valley, we struggle and grasp for answers. We wish we could explain the workings of God and the workings of evil in neat theological boxes and all the while God is whispering to us that it’s not so much understanding that we need but a releasing of our need to understand.
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Wake Up!
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A busy ministry schedule has limited my time to blog, but I want to give a quick update.
This is a land of great darkness, but more than that, it is a land of great need of the light of God’s love. Our ministry here has focused on sharing the love of God to the people of Thailand and also to Jason and Sarah Ricketts, who are missionaries here.
I have walked the streets of Pattaya where there are thousands of prostitutes and hundreds of bars. Men come here from around the world for sex. Young girls and boys sell their bodies in order to make money. They are often illiterate and have no marketable skills other than their very body. The damage to their souls is beyond measure. Yet there are some here who are endeavoring to share God’s love. They teach free English classes. They teach marketable skills. They provide counseling for the trauma; most of the young girls have been raped more than once. So many have come here in order to honor their families by providing financially for them. That is important in this culture. Most families know their girls come here to work in the bars. They know their girls will become prostitutes. It is an acceptable means of employment. However, most know nothing of the horrors these young girls will experience. And once the girls experience the horrors of prostitution, instead of honor, they find intense shame and feel unable to go back to their families. Isnt’ that the enemy’s classic strategy? Empty promises and bondage in the very place you thought would bring freedom.
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Embracing Truth; Experiencing Freedom
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A few days ago, I wrote about truth.
- Truth is still truth whether you acknowledge it or not.
- Jesus is truth.
- Jesus said that known truth would make us free.
David, in a conversation with God, said
Surely you desire truth in the inner parts ;
you teach me wisdom in the inmost place (Psalm 51:6).
Other translations render inner parts as "innermost being". God desires us to know truth from the inside out.
Our message at church on Sunday was about denial. We talked about how we all revert to using denial at times. For example, we refuse to step onto the scales so we don’t have to face the number which represents our weight. Or we don’t balance our checkbook because we are afraid of or dread to see the balance. And we could go on and on.
David, a man after God’s own heart, spent a year in sin and disobedience after he committed adultery with Bathsheba and then had her husband murdered before he finally came to truth inside himself and cried out to God for forgiveness. It was on this occasion that he acknowledged, "Surely, God, you desire truth in my innermost being."
There were still difficult days ahead for David but that moment was his turning point. God met him at his point of inner truth and began to restore his soul.
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