Only the Truth Is True

Somehow, folks, I feel a tremendous burden to help us realize that only the truth is true. We tend to make up truths that help us perpetuate the false teachings we have believed for so long. When we do this, we are making decisions that keep us bound to the world's ways and keep us from being true servants shining God's light into this dark world.

If we are being treated totally rotten, we need to treat others AS IF we know that God will do to us what we do to others. We cannot be concerned with how God treats others. We cannot hold a tally sheet up to God and watch to see if He brings others to judgment for what they did to us. How can we know their hearts? We are only responsible for our own reactions to what the people in this fallen world do to us. If we don't have an automatic Godly response to offer the world's mean and rotten people, we will contribute to the world's meanness and rottenness and help keep people on a path to hell. Keeping Matthew 7:2 in mind, if we think we are the almighty correctors of other people's lives, perhaps we'll think twice about correcting them if we know that God will send people who think they are the almighty correctors of our lives to us, hounding us with their corrections. Why would we want to get into that seemingly endless cycle of hell on earth? It really is quite simple, when we stop and think about it. We simply have to stop being so frustrated with others' behavior toward us, stop fighting with them in our hearts and start forgiving (so that we can be forgiven). That is utilizing the truth for our highest and best purposes. In addition, that is true submission to our Lord and Savior. Didn't Jesus say if you love me, do as I command? I suppose we should stop fighting the teachings of the One we claim to adore with all of our hearts, don't you think? Sure, it's a hard teaching but the rewards for diligently pursuing this goal of following Jesus' commands are tangible.

I do not want to live in a world where Matthew 7:2 isn't true. The world would be impossible to see through without that scripture to believe. If Matthew 7:2 isn't true, we have no way to see where we have gone astray. We would be clueless with regard to our attempt to straighten up, repent, and fly right. Matthew 7:2 is the Holy Spirit saying to us, “I want to show you the areas of infestation so that you can give them to me to heal.” Because of the truth of Matthew 7:2, we are able to look into our brothers and sisters eyes and see a reflection of ourselves and our sins, which, though forgiven through Christ, still need to not be done over and over again. Praise God, Matthew 7:2 IS true. If carnality arises in us when others are treating us shabbily, then we have a clue that somehow, someway we are treating others the way we don't want to be treated. We can then correct it by repenting and thanking God for showing us what we are doing to others that we find irritating when it's done to us. If we stop treating someone else this way, we can know that in a certain amount of time, either others will stop treating us that way or, when they do, it will not cause a rise in carnality in us. It is God's law. In addition, we need to be aware that what we do to others does not necessarily come back at us through the same person we did something to. God often brings others in to reflect our behavioral error. When that happens, it can rile us because we KNOW we did not do that to this new person in our lives. God is able to bring what we need into our lives through whomever He chooses. Still, by our forgiveness of this new party, our forgiveness comes.

I am very grateful that God DOES show us when we are sinning. He shows us through others. He can only show us through others. How else would He do it? Would He whisper in our ears that we are way off base here and we need to change ourselves quickly or He will have to strike us with lightning? Every Christian understands that we can't change ourselves. God must do it because He made us. But did you know God made us in His image? We, therefore, are perfect in His sight, through Jesus Christ. God sustains us. He cannot come down on us, saying we are imperfect because then He would be lying. He created us perfect so Jesus asks us to be perfect, even as our Father in heaven is perfect. The problem is only about our behavior, our defenses, our rebellion, and our lack of understanding. The problem is that what WE made of ourselves, and continue making of ourselves, is imperfect. Therefore, we would do well to listen to what the world, through God's children, reflects back to us and change, not ourselves, but our behavior. In other words, repent, and “be perfect” in Christ. Is this really so difficult? Actually, it is hard work to change our habit patterns. There's an old Spanish proverb that habits are first cobwebs, then cables. But we can do all things through Christ, who strengthens us, even as we face our faults and change our ways.

Follow this: If we have made something of ourselves that is not what God has created, then we need to let go of what isn't us, right? So our job is not really changing anything. It is letting go of what we are not. It is recognizing infestation so that it can be eliminated from us. This is getting easier, isn't it? Being perfect does not entail a radical and self designed change of our self. That would be the same mistake our ancestors already made eons ago—when we, as a human race, decided to take charge of ourselves and judge others and rebel against God. We don't want to go down that road again. All we want is for God to peel away the layers we have pasted on ourselves which deny what God has already made of us, through our Lord and Savior. That's all! It is not complicated. It is divine.

We must turn away from evil and turn toward God. The Holy Spirit, which Jesus sent, was specifically designed to help us in this matter. It is He who exposes the layers of ourselves that are not consistent with who and what we really are through Christ. We, then, can choose our healing or fight what the Holy Spirit is revealing. Which are we going to do? Are we going to maintain the layers and layers we've made, which block God's light and are so very painful or are we going to allow God to heal us from our false self perceptions and prepare us for a mature walk in Christ? God does not want us to stay in pain. And keep in mind, it is not our business to know who will and who will not go with this layer removal process. Let's just consider that, in order to avoid judgment against others, take on the attitude that eventually, all of us will go with the Holy Spirit's program. We must believe in others' eventual salvation so God can assure us that ours is firmly established in His heart. Shall we start now?

If others were always nice to us, but we had heavy chains of bitterness around our hearts, how would we be made aware, so we could ask for the removal of this layer and obtain our healing? The Holy Spirit uses His children to help us pray to Him asking Him to forgive them. Then we can be forgiven of dark spots we have buried too deep to see. God's divine adjustment is necessary here. He heals us when we, through forgiveness, help others to be healed. Truly, only a marvelous and wise God could set up the world in such a way in which our healing is possible. Remember, if Matthew 7:2 isn't true, we have no way of knowing when we are messing up. Would God make it so we have no way of knowing when we are making errors? Not the Almighty and loving God I pray to, that is for sure.

Of course, if all of us acted Christ-like and truly forgave everyone, then how would we know we were out of line? How would God reveal our infestations, if everyone did as I am suggesting throughout this book, and prayed? Earlier in this book in the chapter entitled "The Holy Spirit and Correction" I gave an example of what happened to me when a sister, whom I had treated inconsiderately, chose to pray for me instead of condemn me. I was very much convicted by the Holy Spirit—and corrected by Him. So we must trust that God will heal us when others fall on their faces before the Lord and pray for us, but He will also heal us if we are driven to our knees to pray for someone who is coming at us, making us angry and irritated at their behavior. Because so few Christians are praying for those who irritate them, the scenario that is most likely to happen is the one where we must pray for others who are bothering us.

 After Jesus healed people he often said, "Go and sin no more." This implies that in these cases, a sin caused the malady that Jesus healed them from. He took the sin away and healed the person, but if the person continues "sinning," they will have a return of their malady. A deliberate choice must be made by us to not sin again (once Jesus heals us). The world tempts us time and again to keep on sinning (or rebelling by handling things our way).

There are times when we feel we must dilute God's truth in order to save our faces. Is it so important that our faces be saved? Shall we save them in a jar and put them on a shelf by the door? Is the false appearance we have created for others to see so important to us? What are we preserving when we do this? Are we not courting death? After all, Jesus said if we save our lives, we shall lose them. We might ask ourselves, “What have we got to lose?” Our reputations, that's all. But are our reputations and even our worldly lives actually worth saving? And who saves our lives, anyway? Jesus provided for our eternal salvation by His death upon the cross. We are not capable of saving our lives. Frankly, we are not capable of saving anything. So, not trying to belabor the point, why try to save our faces?

When we preserve our lives as we have made them, we find we also have to preserve God as we have made Him. We don't realize we have a tainted picture of God. He has become passive and incapable of carrying out His plan. We do not see, then, that we are viewing Him incorrectly just as we are viewing ourselves incorrectly. God tries to redefine Himself to us, but we fight His efforts to do so and build a huge defense against the real God.

We can allow the real God to be revealed to us when we stop preserving our lives. We do this by allowing His children, whom He sends to irritate us, to drive us to our knees as we cry to Him for His help in forgiving those who persecute us. If we choose to “fight,” we will be doing battle with ourselves and, in a pathetic misunderstanding of God's laws, when we “win” the battle, we will actually be losing our opportunities to know God. This is counter productive. Our winning in worldly battles by our might and our cunning, initially gives us peace but the peace quickly turns sour as new foes rise up because our souls remain uncorrected. We, then, have no peace. Why? Because forgiveness was not given by us and is, therefore, not received by us. Do not preserve your life. It is not worth preserving. Break the jar with your face in it that you keep on a shelf by the side of your door, and know the real God and your real self, since you've accepted Christ.

We often think there are only two choices to make when we are confronted with a human relations problem: We will defend ourselves and fight it or run from it. If we do not want to “fight,” we may choose to get away from the problems that are besetting us by ignoring them, thereby denying their existence. These are a different sort of defense but a defense against God's will nevertheless. We cannot run from the lessons God would give us so that we might be stewards for Him while we reside on this planet. Since we've accepted Christ, we are children of a most high God and, as His children, we must do His will, not ours. If it is His will that we are supposed to forgive so that we might be forgiven, who are we to argue with Him on this point? Let's make a decision to quit avoiding God's will by fighting it or running from it. Let's recognize that there is a third choice. Let's turn to God and ask Him to forgive our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. In other words, let's understand that God forgives us when we forgive others.

Our free will has, at times, been a burden. But God gave us free will so that we can come to Him on our own without coercion on His part. Initially, you might think that when He set up the universe so that He does to us what we have done to others, He is using coercion to make us come to Him this way. Not so. He created us, we did not create Him. He created us as His children (through Jesus Christ). If we choose to redefine ourselves as something we are not, it is we who are choosing to enter into worldly pain. God isn't doing this to us. He is good and He initially created His children good. With free will, we have made ourselves become something we are not (which occurred by our rebellion in the Garden). Pain was the result. This pain is not administered by God, but given to ourselves as we bump into the walls of the maze we have placed ourselves in (since our eviction from the Garden). Did God create the pain? Not on your life! This was rebellion on our part, pure and simple. The result of rebellion is pain. This pain will, by the way, appear to be caused by someone or something else. God, in His goodness, set up the world in a way that we would be free to choose Him, when we are ready to do so. Isn't it wonderful that our masquerade can be over through Jesus Christ? We will only be free of our painfully restrictive definitions and rebellious ways through Him and Him alone.

Do we want to recognize our true nature through Jesus, or not? If we don't, we are choosing to deny God something that is very precious to Him. Us. Jesus, indwelling in us, is the way, the truth and the life. We do not want to continue to have to fight for worldly justice and defend our constantly toppling towers of ourselves that we have to continue re-building. Why do we defend what is so tiny, it might as well have never existed at all? What we have, that we call “ourselves” here in this world, is real close to nothing. The more we die to self, the greater in Christ we'll become. That is the glorious existence He desires for His children.

God didn't create “nothing.” We are made in the image and likeness of our Creator, and we have the same qualities of spirit that He does. We were created to love God with all our hearts and love each other as we love ourselves. All that impedes what we were created for, must be allowed to fall away. We must choose to allow God to define us and quit trying to define ourselves (especially with the backdrop of the world in our faces.) We are not really part of this world. We are an extension of God (through Jesus Christ) and the sooner we recognize this, the sooner we'll go through the temporary but necessary pain that comes when we relinquish our incorrect definitions of ourselves. Yes, painfully, we will, through Jesus Christ, come to recognize that only the truth is true. We will quit trying to define ourselves. We will recognize how invaluable God's children are to this “tearing down and peeling away” of the layers that make up our false selves. We will learn to love those who treat us unfairly because they are being used by God, to help us know ourselves through Christ. We will become stronger and stronger in Him, eventually rejoicing as our responses to the world's kicks and jabs automatically send us to our knees, instead of into a rage.

The result of the prayers we pray, as we point our minds toward God's way of forgiveness rather than Satan's way of vengeance, will be increasing joy as we recognize the simplicity of God's ways—which is knowing that only the truth is true.

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