Which of you can truthfully accuse me of sin?
And since I am telling you the truth, why don’t you believe me? Anyone who belongs to God listens gladly to the words of God. But you don’t listen because you don’t belong to God.
John 8:46-47 NLT
The Gospels present the story of Jesus’ life and ministry with claims that Jesus is the Son of God and the redeemer of humanity. Jesus invites us to make a close inspection of his life and to explore his claims. If we find there is an authenticity to those claims, we are invited to accept Jesus’ message as the source for truth in understanding our life and experience on earth.
This informs the way we read the Bible as God’s living word. This means that we might meet Jesus daily within its pages. My own very practical decisions to simplify my life were initiated through my encounter with God in scripture. Having not merely acknowledged Jesus’ invitation to live with one coat, not two, I felt compelled to work out what that meant for the way I choose to live. I sensed God giving me the instruction, ‘low spend, no spend’. Over time I realised that my money was never mine in the first place, but God’s, and therefore God retained the right to decide how I spent it. This was not an easy, or indeed enjoyable, process, yet in time I established a fresh approach.
Then God began to challenge me over the nature of placing my complete trust in him. For example, did I truly accept that God would neither fail nor forsake me (Hebrews 13:5)? The evidence, I realised, must be by the life choices I made. To what degree was I future-proofing my life, rather than relaxing in the truth that God had everything in hand? I felt, and still feel, vulnerable and at times, frightened as I seek to live in response to what God reveals to me through his living word. Reading the Bible becomes an adventure of discovery and a challenge as I read it with an ear listening for God.
QUESTION
How do you make your choices over which source of truth you follow?
PRAYER
Lord Jesus Christ, I acknowledge that you are “the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6, NLT).
Photo – Rathlin Harbour
Image-1-69.jpg