Anyone who knows me well will tell you that I am all about truth. I want facts, clarity, a stark representation of what is right or correct. The world around us holds a very different view. The world wants to cast everything in shades of grey. The world wants everything to be relative and arbitrary.
The troubling aspect of truth, however, is that it is persistent. Call a chair a flower, but it remains a chair. You can spend a lifetime convincing others of the flower-ness of the chair; even if the whole world comes to agree with you, the chair will still be a chair. You see, real truth is something that exists independently of how man chooses to accept or define it. We have lots of theories about how life began on this planet. Without getting into that discussion, the truth is that life did begin somehow, and whether or not our studies or our faith lead us to the correct answer is irrelevant. Simply put: our behavior or belief has no impact on the truth. Truth simply is.
Could this be why God tells Moses that he should be known to the Israelites as “I AM” (Exodus 3:14)? God was declaring that His existence was sufficient evidence of His power and authority. The bedrock of the Judeo-Christian belief system is that God exists. As we worked through our Collide series the past several Sundays, we were able to hear the stories of several Old Testament men and women of faith whose actions were predicated on the foundation of a very real and interactive God. While these individuals were far from perfect, their starting point of belief in a known truth gave them confidence in the outcome of their situations.
What an incredible blessing and challenge this is for us today. If God simply is, then surely He has characteristics. If that is true, wouldn’t it be great to know more about who He is? Fortunately, the Bible is filled with just such instruction. As we learn more of God’s character, we learn of His intense love for us, a love so sacrificial that he sent His son Jesus to die for us. As believers, we can strip our truth down to its simplest form: God is, and He is love (1 John 4:8).
My prayer for the Midtown Bridge family, and for anyone else who may come across this post, is that we would root ourselves firmly in the truth of God and His word. I pray we hold to the truth of Jesus’ death and resurrection, and that this truth would inform and shape our thoughts, words and actions on a daily basis. And I pray that during these times of relativity, where man is his own god and the path to heaven is wide and varied, we would cling to the truth that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6).
“Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:32)
