Good morning and happy Saturday. I hope that you had a great Thanksgiving Day. It is now time to start getting creative with some of the leftovers. Maybe the thought of a delicious turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole and pumpkin pie smoothie will motivate you to get out of bed. Besides, you have less than a month to get your Christmas shopping done. There’s no time to waste.
Speaking of wasting time, the other evening I was mindlessly doing a word search. For you younger readers, no, I wasn’t searching for a word on the internet. It is a cheap paperback book filled with pages of sheer entertainment. You have a list of words that you seek to find. Once you do, you circle it or highlight it depending on your methodology. Yes, I know, it doesn’t rank up there with running with the bulls, cliff diving, or scuba diving. But it is cheap and that is my language. Anyway, there I was in my gaming chair. Actually, my chair with matching footstool. I was wrapped up in a blanket, my warm slippers propped up, and my word search book opened to the next puzzle. Just reading this makes me sound like I am getting old. I even told Michelle that I think I am only one step away from being placed in a retirement home. Anyways, I was completing one of the pages. I had found 34 of the 35 words. And yet, that last word remained a bit elusive. I scanned the page up and down looking for the letter combination “TR” which begin the word “Truth.” After looking quickly a couple of times, the thought popped into my head, “Why is ‘truth’ so hard to find?” As soon as it did, I had to chuckle. Isn’t that really the problem with the world in which we live? We have access to more information than at any other time in history. The vast majority of it can be accessed in seconds. And yet, in all of it the truth can be hard to find. A few years back, the word of the year was “Truthiness.” It was coined by Stephen Colbert. In explaining it, he said, “We are not talking about the truth, we’re talking about something that seems like truth – the truth we want to exist.” Sadly, whether you are watching the news, politics, blogs, social media posts, or just having a conversation, you see evidence of this everywhere. There is a lot of truthiness being spoken. We live in a world where a few bits of truth can be taken and editorialized in such a way to make it say something different than what was intended. We have phrases like, “twisting the truth” or “changing the narrative” or “tell a lie long enough and loud enough and people will start to believe it.” The scary thing is that this is just not a problem with the politicians (regardless of their party – see Romans 3:23), news media and those in power. This is a problem plaguing mankind. But, this should not be a surprise. Satan was called a deceiver, the father of lies, and it was said that the truth was not in him. As his influence on this world continues to intensify, of course it will manifest itself in ways such as this.
As believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, we must be very careful not to get caught up in this. We need to be very discerning about what we believe, especially relative to current events. Just because people feel strongly about something doesn’t actually make things to be true. Things are true because they are true, not because we want them to be. Satan is a deceiver and he is really good at his job. His goal is to cause doubt, division and chaos. That is an apt description of our world.
Pilate had the opportunity to talk with Jesus face to face. And yet, he asked one of the most profound questions in His presence. He asked, “What is truth?” Jesus, the very embodiment of truth, the Word of God incarnate, was right there. And yet he didn’t believe. God has given us His Word so that we can know Him and also be able to navigate the world in which we live. Never stop studying His Word. Continue seeking His guidance. Rely on the Holy Spirit. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. Don’t lose sight of that. Thy Word is truth!
But let your word ‘yes’ be ‘yes,’ and your ‘no’ be ‘no.’ Anything more than this is from the evil one. (Matthew 5:37)
From our neighborhoods to the nations,
Pastor Larry
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