Truth and Love: The Key to Relationships
Purity 445 06/15/2021 Purity 445 Podcast
Good morning.
Today’s photo of Lake George comes from a friend’s recent boating excursion with their child as they decided to dedicate the day to seeing the beauty of the lake and to spending some quality one on one time with their son. As awesome as a day on the lake can be by oneself, it can be even better when two people can put their troubles and personal agenda’s aside and just take delight in the sights to behold and in one another’s company.
God is a personal God and He designed us to be in relationship with one
another. Relationships can be beneficial because they can help us meet each
other’s needs, but they also allow us to share our experiences and love with
one another. By the way, this is what
our relationship with God is supposed to look like too. He meets our needs, but
He also wants you to share your experiences and love with Him.
But anyway, all relationships can thrive when the parties are honest
with one another and I’m not just talking about facts and figures, I’m talking
about thoughts and emotions too.
Many of our relationship problems come from dishonesty or from
misunderstanding one another’s motivations. We can’t read one another’s minds. So
taking time to talk with one another about what’s going on in life, and in our hearts
and minds, can help us to avoid misunderstandings and bring us closer together.
I attend a group this evening whose core is based on honesty and mutual
support. The forum allows for people to take off their masks and to speak
honestly about their situations, thoughts, and emotions. As we have continued to meet and be
vulnerable with one another, a real sense of community has developed.
In recovery circles, they say we are only as sick as our secrets.
Although all the problems and situations the members of the group are facing
haven’t necessarily been solved in the six weeks we have been meeting, I
believe that we are all a little bit healthier than where we were when we
started, because if nothing else, we have a support that we didn’t have before. The word says that one of the benefits of
confession is healing and the Lord is using our group to make that happen.
And that’s the key to successful relationships: the truth, according to
God, and love.
We can’t be truly honest without God because He is the author of truth. He determines what is right and true. However, God is also love. He doesn’t use the
truth to hurt us, but He will lovingly guide us to align our lives with His
truth because it is the way we were made to be. Living according to His truth
is the best way to live.
Telling the truth is sometimes called “keeping it real” and we can’t be
right with God, or each other, and not be real.
I know from experience that God will make you be real to be right with
Him and I also know that to keep the peace and harmony we have with God that we
have to keep on “keeping it real” by being honest with Him and continuing to
live according to His wisdom.
Likewise, to keep the peace and harmony we have with others we must find
that fine balance of truth and love. That’s a lot harder with people than it is
with God, because people are less than perfect.
We are all on different paths of understanding and maturity and we
differ in the amount of truth and love that we are capable of. Some people don’t have the truth. Some people
can’t handle the truth. And others won’t or can’t accept the truth.
So in all our relationships, we must remember the Lord’s command to love
one another. We may have to adjust the amount of truth we dispense but we can
always love as Christ did.
Jesus told us to love our enemies but the love we show our enemies may
look very different from the love we show to our close friends or family. To
keep peace we must use the wisdom and compassion the Lord has given us to find
the balance of love and truth in each relationship we face.
We won’t do it perfectly, but we can learn as we go. God will show us the way and He will be with
us as we take each step into our new lives in Christ.
This morning’s meditation
verse is:
Matthew 28:19 (NKJV)
19 Go
therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of
the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Today’s verse is every
Christians call to action from Jesus Himself.
I
It also shows me
that the Lord has a sense of humor as it was only yesterday that my “random”
draw of the verse of the day drew Matthew 28:20. So it appears that we are
going backwards in the book of Matthew!
But seriously, I believe
the Lord interacts with our daily experience because He is sovereign and is in
relationship with us. As a sovereign God, He is over and above all creation, directing
the course of history for His purposes, and that includes the part we play in
His plan too.
As He one day called
me out of darkness and unbelief and has since been guiding me to increasing
levels of sanctification and understanding, I choose to believe that His
presence in my life never ends. So when
I, or you, if you also believe the Lord is with you, receive a Bible verse,
message, or theme, that keeps on coming up in our experience, I choose to
believe that the Lord is telling me something.
So what is the Lord
telling us? Well, we are to go make
disciples. That means we will have to speak about our faith and the truth of
the gospel of Jesus Christ to other people.
We should take every opportunity to let others know, with our words and
actions, that we represent the kingdom of God and are ambassadors for Christ.
We are to live our lives in a way that people know we are Christians that live
by faith.
I know sharing our
faith can be difficult when we focus on how we feel or how we may be perceived
by others, but the key to sharing our faith is to just speak the truth about
what the Lord has done in our lives and the lives of other Christians that you
know.
Revelation says we
overcome by the blood of the lamb and by the word of our testimony, so quote John
3:16 and explain that Jesus was sent to save us. After you do that, tell people
how He saved you and what He has done in your life. Leave the results up to God
and whether they accept Christ as Savior or not, be pleased that you were faithful
to God’s command.
Our lives of faith
are walking expressions of God’s mercy, grace, and love. All we have to do is
tell people our story and be prepared to have the Lord use us for His
glory.
As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org
where I always share insights from prominent Christian counselors to assist my
brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue with Dr. Neil Anderson’s Victory
Over the Darkness, beginning Chapter 3.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes
and encourage all to purchase Dr. Anderson’s books for your own private study
and to support His work. If you need this title you can find it online at several
sites for less than $15.00:
Theology
Before Practicality
The experiences of Claire and Derek illustrate the
importance of establishing our Christian lives on what we believe instead of
how we behave. We need a firm grip on the truth of God's Word before we will
experience much success at practical Christianity. We need to understand who we
are as a result of who God is and what He has done. A fruitful Christian life
is the result of living by faith according to what God said is true.
The problem is that we try to base our
spiritual growth and maturity on practical sections of the Scriptures and spend
too little time internalizing the doctrinal sections. For example, Paul's
letters tend to fall into two major parts. The first part is generally called
the doctrinal section, such as Romans 1-8; Ephes. 1-3; Col. 1-2 and so on.
These sections reveal what we need to know about God, ourselves, sin
and salvation. The second half of the letters is the practical section: Romans 12-15; Ephes. 4-6; Col. 3-4 and so on.
These passages describe what we need to do to live our faith in daily
experience.
In our zeal to correct the problems in
our lives, we skip the doctrinal first half and jump to the practical second
half of God's Word. We want a quick fix, a rule or instruction we can apply
like a Band-Aid to make things better. We don't have time to wade through the
deep theological concepts of Scripture; we want a practical solution and we
want it now.
Perhaps you have already discovered
that a Band-Aid approach to daily living doesn't work. Why not? Because you
need an adequate foundation of truth to live a practical life of faith. How can
you hope to "stand firm against the schemes of the devil" (Ephes. 6:11) if
you have not internalized that you are already victoriously "raised . . .
up with Him, and seated . . . with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ
Jesus" (Ephes.
2:6)?
How can you rejoice in hope and
persevere in tribulation (see Romans 12:12)
without the confidence of knowing you have been justified by faith and
"have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ" (Romans 5:1)? When
your basic belief system about God and yourself is shaky, your day-to-day
behavior system will be shaky. When your belief system is intact and your
relationship with God is based on truth, however, you will have very little
trouble working out the practical aspects of daily Christianity.
Positional
and Progressive Sanctification
Most Christians are aware that salvation for the believer
is past, present and future tense. By that, I mean we have been saved (past
tense; see Ephes.
2:4, 5, 8),
we are being saved (present tense; see 1 Cor. 1:18;
2 Cor. 2:15)
and someday we shall fully be saved from the wrath that is to come (future
tense; see Romans
5:9, 10; Romans
13:11). We have not yet experienced the totality of salvation, but I
believe we can have the assurance of it.
Paul says, "You were sealed in
Him with the Holy Spirit of promise, who is given as a pledge of our
inheritance, with a view to the redemption of God's own possession, to the
praise of His glory" (Ephes. 1:13, 14).
John says, "These things I have written to you who believe in the name of
the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life" (1 John 5:13).
In reference to the believer,
sanctification is also past, present and future tense. We have been sanctified
(past tense, see 1 Cor.
6:19; 2 Peter
1:3, 4), we are being sanctified (present tense, see Romans 6:22; 2 Cor. 7:1)
and we shall someday be fully sanctified (future tense, see 1 Thes. 3:12,
13; 1 Thes.
5:23, 24). The doctrine of sanctification begins at our new birth and ends
in our glorification. Past-tense sanctification is usually referred to as
positional sanctification, and refers to the position or the status the
believer has in Christ. Present-tense sanctification is referred to as
progressive or experiential sanctification.
The positional truth of who we are in
Christ is real truth and it is the only basis for the progressive
sanctification that follows. Just as the past reality of salvation is the basis
for the present-tense working out of our salvation, so is our position in
Christ the basis for our growth in Christ. In other words, we are not trying to
become children of God; we are already children of God who are becoming like
Christ.
It is my firm belief that if we fully
appropriated the first half of Paul's Epistles, which establish us in Christ,
we would naturally (or supernaturally) live the second half. For a
comprehensive study of sanctification see The Common Made Holy, which
I had the privilege to coauthor with Dr. Robert Saucy.
Victory Over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your Identity in Christ.
---------------------------more
tomorrow------------------------
God bless
you all!
Join our “Victory
over the Darkness” or “The Bondage Breaker” series of Discipleship Classes via
the mt4christ247 podcast!
at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is
also available on Google Podcasts, Amazon Podcasts, and Audible.com.
Email me
at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and to be
encouraged.
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