The Truth

I need to know the truth.  You need to know the truth.

And we won't know the truth by listening to our culture - it is full of lies and half-truths and rationalizations.
Where's the only place we can find real truth?

God's Word.  The Bible.

 I have a huge thirst to know the real truth.  I don't need to hear what he thinks or she thinks or they think or even what you think.

What God thinks - that's what is important to me.

This thirst has taken me on an 11 year journey of reading through the Bible every year.  Somewhere in the middle - like year 4 or 5 - I started saying things like "that's not in the Bible' when people quoted something that just isn't in there.   One of these quotes you and I hear often is not true - "God doesn't give us more than we can handle".  Not in there.

Does that surprise you?

I know if what someone is saying is in the Bible about 90% of the time.  If anyone says something new, I always look it up.  Sometimes I learn something new and other times I realize that what they were telling everyone was not true.

What's also important is that I know what's missing when listening to a someone teach from from the Bible.  One of the reasons I read the entire Bible is to get a big picture of God, an overall understanding.  So I can tell when someone is leaving something out because its too controversial or maybe they don't agree with it.

I don't care if its controversial or you don't like it.  It's in the Bible.  That's the truth.  God calls us to adjust our lives to his truth - not the other way around.

Unfortunately, I'm hearing about more and more pastors who are adjusting God's truth to make people happy.  They leave out the tough parts because, well, maybe people won't like it and they will leave the church.
 
I've talked to several good Christian people I know who have left their church because the pastor started veering away from the truth.  A denomination that I was a part of for many years is currently deciding whether they are going to take the Bible literally or change what they preach to fit what people 'think' is right.  What??

The prophet Amos predicated times like these.  "The days are coming," declares the Sovereign Lord, "when I will send a famine through the land - not a famine of food or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the Lord.  People will stagger from sea to sea and wander from north to east, searching for the word of the Lord, but they will not find it."  Amos 8: 11&12.

We don't have to stagger around searching for the Word of the Lord.  His Word is in the Bible if we make sure we have a credible Bible.  Be careful picking a Bible.  People have actually changed words in the Bible to fit what they think as well.  

Is there any doubt that there is a famine?

Our Bible can be and should be in our hands and entering our minds every day as we read and apply God's truth to our lives.  You can't count on anyone else to make sure you know the truth.

God has given my husband and I an awesome new church in Denver with a pastor who preaches the Word unapologetically.  When he gets on a controversial subject - which he does often because he wants us to be very clear on the truth -  and boldly proclaims what God says about it, my church family erupts in clapping and 'Amens' because we know we would not be hearing this truth in some other churches.

We are in a famine but we have what we need to feed ourselves - God's Word.