Their Truth, My Truth, and GOD's Truth:

 Three Different Trees

     While praying for one of my clients from the food pantry where I volunteer, I thought about his life story that he told me and how he ended up where he is living now, if you could call that living.  It's a very rewarding and frustrating job to deliver food to these people, especially the ones living in such abject and pitiful situations.  One client, in particular, has everything under the sun gone wrong against him, and he is completely innocent in his dire situation, or so he thinks.  I want to help them in other ways, besides just bringing them their monthly food boxes, but I am powerless to help some of them.  There are just too many problem with their living situations for me to tackle.  I decided its best to help where I can and pray for them about the other things.  I thought that I could offer solutions and ideas to help them, but then it occurred to me that I only know their side of the story.  

     While praying about this one in particular, I told GOD that his story just seemed a little off, and then the wisdom of GOD hit me like a ton of bricks.  The Holy Spirit put it in me like this:  Their stories may be an exaggeration, but to them it's their truth.  To them, it really did happen that way, and their plight is really as bad as they have told me, even if it's not the whole truth.  Then, GOD related it to us, all of mankind, and He hit me with another ton of bricks to really flatten the curve of my own story.  I've been blaming quite a few people for my own plight and situation, while they have been blaming me for being in the wrong as far as they are concerned. There are many people who have done me wrong, as I see it, but I will  use two men in particular to best describe the point I am trying to make. 

     To one, nothing I say is truth to him, it's only truth to me in his eyes, and none of it means anything to him, because it would interfere with his current happy lifestyle.  Biblically speaking, the truth I've been speaking to him comes straight from Scripture.  GOD has already shown me that this man has created God in his own image, an image that is acceptable to him, one who accepts his actions as okay.  His ways are not offensive to his God in his mind. In his mind, what the Bible says is not necessarily truth, well, things have changed, he says.  Things didn't change, he did.  He chooses not to read or pay attention to the passages that speak to his new way of life.  He likes his last seat in the back row of the contemporary mega church, way up in the balcony, where no one will bother him. The soothing message of just how much GOD loves him, regardless of how he lives, makes him feel better about himself, while the Scripture passages I share with him make him uncomfortable enough to ignore them as if they do not exist or as if they are obsolete today.  According to him, this wonderful pastor and the enjoyable music that is played at this mega church speak quite the contrary to the things I've been telling him are in Scripture.  In essence, he prefers his "truth" to the Truth.  The real truth makes him look bad. It says that because he has turned his back on GOD he may have lost his salvation, and well, that's just unacceptable to him.  Regardless of the Truth in the Bible, his truth is as much truth to him as the Bible is Truth to me. 

    The other man has many things against me, none of which I really know, because he refuses to speak to me, but his truth is just as viable and real to him as the first man's is to him.  I can't fight this second man's truth with Scripture, because I don't know what his truth is to him. I only know what my truth is to me, and how it relates to me.  The crux of the problem is that we have two different truths.  I only know mine, he only knows his, and I'm going to venture a guess that neither one of our truths are GOD's Truth.  I can only make assumptions about him  based mainly on misinformation that I myself have had to conclude or deduce, and quite frankly, I could be way off base here.  He has a huge advantage over me because he knows all about me, and I know nothing about him, that is his choice.  The only truth I know about him is that GOD has a huge work for him to do, and there are days when I even doubt that truth, because his actions toward me prove otherwise. 

     So, the moral of this story is, as humans, we make up our own truths, and to us they are rock solid, whether they are GOD's truth, close to GOD's truth, or even way off of GOD's truth.  We are  judgmental by nature, and we judge other people's truths as lies if we believe they are lies.  We can't convince anyone of their lies being lies because our lies to ourselves are truth to us only.  Does that make sense?  What I am saying is that we all lie to ourselves that our truth is the truth.  How do we find the actual truth? Well, the truth is in the Bible, all of it, but unfortunately, we feed our lies into Scripture and pick and choose what truth means from those Scriptures.  We take our personal doctrines not from Scripture, but we force our doctrines into Scripture with select verses that seem to agree with our doctrine.  If I had to use a picture to describe it, I guess I could use a fruit tree.  The roots are GOD's truth, His actual Words, but the leaves and fruit that grow off the stem and the root are our truth. Hence, to us, the leaves and the fruit are just as much of the tree as the root.  The leaves and fruit are the truth we accept because they are the most visible to our naked eye. 

      My fruit tree may be an apple, another's fruit tree may be a peach tree and another's an orange tree.  They are all trees to us, they are all truths to us, but the actual truth for all our trees is in the roots, which are under the ground and they all look exactly alike, because the roots are GOD's truth.  So, what can we do about all these differing lies we convince ourselves are the rock solid truth.  Nothing, absolutely nothing. 

   We cannot ever convince the other that their fruit or leaves aren't really GOD's truth, only GOD can do that. Our own leaves and fruit are likely not GOD's truth.  Somehow, we have to learn to live with each other's lies, and just keep searching our own trees' roots, and pray that somehow, we can live acceptable lives to GOD, and thank Him with all we have that Jesus's death on the cross is the grace that keeps our trees standing, until it's time for our trees to fall. The best we can do is to keep praying, keep studying, and keep believing that the Living Water of Jesus will extend to the next generation we leave behind when our own trees fall to the ground. (Pun not intended, but if the fruit fits, eat it!)

 

Why do bad things happen to good people?

 

But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. (Job 23:10)

 So many people, righteous people, seem to suffer some of the most horrific tragedies, and we are left scratching our heads wondering, why her, why him or even why me? Let’s get one thing straight, NO one is righteous, NONE!  (Romans 3:23) There is only One who was righteous, without sin, I think we can all agree on that. If you believe that you were born without sin, then you can stop reading right here, the rest of this blog will not interest you. Now, if you are like 99.9% of the population, and you believe that in your natural state you are a sinner of some kind, then the rest of this blog might interest you.

I’m a silver jewelry freak. No, I don’t collect it, but it’s all I wear. I don’t know why, but I don’t like to wear gold. So, I’m going to use silver here even though the verse at the top uses gold. Maybe I think I could never reach gold status and silver is all I think I can attain, I don’t know, but it matters not, I love silver jewelry.

So, let’s look at silver in its natural state.  When silver nuggets are mined in their raw form, they are mixed with several elements and impurities which have to be refined out in order to make that beautiful shining necklace, earrings, or bracelet that pretties up our flawed bodies.  Are you starting to get the picture? The only process to remove the impurities of the silver nugget is to boil or melt the silver in hot liquid. The hotter the fire, the more times it is boiled, the finer the silver becomes, until it can reach a point of 99.9% pure. It can never reach 100%, nor can we ever reach 100% pure, so don’t even try. Shoot for that 99%, and you won’t be frustrated.  

And the words of the LORD are flawless, like silver purified in a crucible, like gold refined seven times. (Psalm 12:6)

 The most we can be refined is six times because we can’t make flawless state. Now does that mean you will go through only six trials, of course not, but the heat of the flames determines the refining process.  If you have been selected to go through that refining process, consider yourself considerably blessed and honored in the sight of God. Let’s look at a few people honored by God. 

My favorite is Samson, so we will start with him. Of all the Biblical heroes, he was the most flawed, had the most impurities, yet, God chose to refine him. The trouble he got into was his own fault. The man had an eye for women that took over the commonsense in his brain. He didn’t just love women, but he loved bad women. He wasn’t satisfied with a woman from his hometown or tribe, no, he had to have Philistine women. All of them got him into some hot water, or boiled. It took the hottest test to finally refine him. In the last act of his life, he did his greatest deed, but as a prisoner, chained to columns in a Philistine palace, a man with his eyes poked out while being mocked by a detestable people.  I can relate to this guy!

Now, to name just a few others, Moses, a well-educated man with a temper, trained eighty years in the desert. Forty of them hidden with a foreign people, taking care of sheep, then forty more in the wilderness, leading a group of complainers and whiners to the Promise Land, only never to set foot in it. Jacob, the trickster, 100 years of wrestling with God, the father of the twelve tribes which produced Joseph. He was trained in Potiphar's Prison in order to be the Prime minister of Egypt and savior of the family of Jacob, the line which produced Jesus. Rahab, forced into prostitution to support her family, hung a red scarlet rope out her window, which meant “open for business,” to save her family, also in the line of Jesus. Ruth, a widow Moabite, chose to follow her mother-in-law on foot in the wilderness, with no guarantee of ever finding a husband again, because, truly, people, if you’re a purebred, you are not going to marry a Moabite woman, except if your name is Boaz, again, also in the line of Jesus. 

David, the runt of the litter, trained to be the greatest king of all Israel and in the history of the world, running from Saul in the desert, hiding in caves, faking madness to save his own skin with the king of Gath, where Goliath hailed as his hometown, years before.  And even after Saul died, and David was placed where God had foretold he would be placed, on the throne, it took over seven years for him to finally reign the entire kingdom. Yet, even then, he had a lot of impurities in him, and had to be refined a few more times, including but not limited to, running from his own murderous son, wanting to take over his throne. In all that, he did manage to finish well, as opposed to his son Solomon. He lived in a time of peace with no fiery trials. He had wisdom and riches more than any and ended up with over a 1000 women in his palace at his "disposal," to do with anything he wanted to do, surely, a 'fifty shades of gray' kind of story. He was a man who ended up finishing very badly, causing the kingdom to be divided. 

Last, but surely not least, Paul, a well-educated self-righteous Pharisee, arrogant and on a mission to murder as many Christians as he could get his grubby hands on, who had suffered more than any other human (after Jesus). He lived a privileged life before he became a believer and follower of Yeshua, but after that, he spent the rest of his life in the fiery furnace of affliction until GOD took him Home.  He was whipped, stoned, beaten, and even unjustly imprisoned much of his life, all while writing most of the New Testament, only to be executed in Rome. Are we starting to see a pattern here? 

 So, the next time you are tempted to say, why me? Instead of saying in a groaning complaining tone, I suggest you bend the knee, bow the head, and in tears and humility, say, “Oh, God, why me? What good do you see in me that I should be so honored to go through these fiery furnaces?"