The Way, The Life, The Truth
"There is a difference between knowing the path and walking the path." (Morpheus, in the film "The Matrix")
"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'" (John 14:6)
The term "I am the way...." literally means Jesus is saying HE is the well worn path.
Do you know about the path?
ORRRRRR do you walk it? (Is His WAY your habit?)
"Christianity is not a theory or speculation, but a life; not a philosophy of life, but a life and a living process." (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'" (John 14:6)
Jesus is THE LIFE.
We experience this LIFE as a process which reveals just how saturated we have become with the world and world systems...even ones that look spiritual.
Over time, as we walk the way...the path of Jesus...we will see His life unfolding in us as He processes the world out of us.
"and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."
("Turn Your Eyes Upon Jesus" a beautiful and simple hymn written by HelÂen H. LemÂmel in 1922)
Let's look to Him today.
"To look at something as thought we had never seen it before requires great courage." (Henri Matisse)
"Jesus said to him, 'I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.'" (John 14:6)
Many of us who love the truth have been duped into thinking that what we already believe about everything IS the truth. After all, we believe it and often act upon it precisely because we think it is true.
Let's reason this out for a little bit.
What does God know? God knows everything. How accurate is His grasp of what He knows? His understanding of all things is perfectly correct.
In contrast, what do we know? Hardly anything.
And, what do you think are the odds that what we do know is perfectly accurate? I can estimate that the odds are not in our favor.
I say this to make a point.
To be passionate about JESUS means that we will be more apt to seek HIS thoughts on all things and not be so in love with what we believe that when HE confronts an error in our belief we will repent and choose, instead, to agree with Him about whatever it is.
At the same time we are to walk in integrity which means that when we believe something we are to practice it.
At the age of 60, I have now lived for as many years as a born again, Holy Spirit-filled, committed Christian as I did as a lost person, spiritually dead and rebellious toward God.
In my 30 years as a child of the Most High God I have tried to live as best I could in obedience to what I believed Jesus would have me live. Often, though, I have learned that my understanding of the truth on any one thing was incorrect.
At times I found this to be distressing. I want to be right. I want to honor God by believing correctly. I want to teach what is true and worship Him in that way. Yet, I've often learned I was wrong about this or that.
I've found that too many times I have assumed something was true simply because that was how it was always presented to me by others I respected and seemed right about other things. I've found that I've too often skimmed over things in the Word of God because I already knew what I believed about those topics and then, later, would learn that what I believed about them wasn't quite correct.
As I write this I am thinking that whoever reads this will be feeling something like what I feel right now. Thinking that I cannot fully trust what I believe to be true in my finite human mind has caused me to feel some anxiety. So, I prayed and what I heard in my spirit was this from the Lord: "You trust your mind more than you trust Me."
If this applies to you please join me in repenting and asking the Lord to reveal whenever we do that. Its only natural that we trust ourselves but, in Christ, we are supernatural beings.....living a tiny portion of our eternities on the earth....in human skin. One day we will be free of this "earthsuit" but in the meantime, God is at work in us (Philippians 1:6).
We cannot forget that that God says that "the Word of God is LIVING and ACTIVE and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing as far as the division of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and able to judge the thoughts and intentions of the heart." (Hebrews 4:12)
This means that our live and active and powerful and all-knowing God will be working through His Word to address things we believe that, often through no fault of our own, are incorrect. His desire is that we have full discernment of what truly is.
"For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2:3-4)
He want us to "come to the knowledge of the truth" and it seems to me that He wishes to walk the way...that well-worn path (He spends a lot of time on that path) with us.
In other words, a HUGE part of this way and life (John 14:6) is spending time with God as He introduces us to what HE sees and knows to be perfectly true.
So, having said all this, how shall I choose to live?
My confidence is not in my own ability to be right. Rather, it is in GOD'S ability to correct my course at any time. The Bible is FILLED with incidences of Him intervening in the lives of others but most of the time it is when those corrected desire to be in His will and are at least trying to do so.
Therefore, I will know what I believe to the best of my ability and endeavor to use that to do my part to allow God to build His kingdom in me and to build God's kingdom in others and, through them, in the world.
I won't live tenuously....afraid I might make a mistake. I WILL make mistakes but believe with all my heart that I can't break anything beyond God's ability to fix it should He desire to do so.
I will seek God as constantly as I know how, inviting and welcoming Him to correct anything I am wrong about.
I will actively walk the path with Him. I will repent and choose to BELIEVE (the word literally means to "be living") the things He teaches me directly in my heart and through the Word of God and other Christians yielded to Him.
If what I have written here has touched you, perhaps you will join me in this.
And join me in seeking the comfort of Holy Spirit in this because it is VERY uncomfortable sometimes to be confronted by God Himself about something we believed to be true but that turns out not to be.
This is also uncomfortable because it means that many things we trust like we trust our own minds will change. We might not be able to any longer lean on "we've always done it this way" about anything: how we work, how we worship, how we pray....etc.
This WAY of living can be uncomfortable but it IS good. The Apostle tells us to "be clothed with humility, for 'God resists the proud, but gives grace to the humble" (1 Peter 5:5) Built into this style of approaching Jesus is humility and submission to our God and humility is good for us.
Let's get uncomfortable AND comforted together IN Jesus.
Pastor Mike McInerney
Mike McInerney Ministries, Inc.
Decatur, Texas
© October 30, 2015
(For use with permission)