Choosing a Trustworthy Guide - Martin Wiles

The Lord says, “I will guide you along the best pathway for your life. I will advise you and watch over you. Psalm 32:8 NLT

Although I had never seen this person before, I chose him as a trustworthy guide—at least for the next hour.

My wife and I were on vacation in the mountains of Tennessee and wanted to visit somewhere we hadn’t been before. Forbidden Caverns popped up in our search as near our location and on the way home. I visited caverns as a child, but many years had passed since I had walked beneath the earth’s surface.

We anxiously waited in the lobby for our guide to appear. After he did, he led us down a hallway and stopped us at the end of the ramp. He introduced himself and explained what we would do.

As we toured our designated pathways, I noticed many more walkways spinning off in various directions. Knowing how dark it would be if the electricity failed, I was glad we had a guide who knew the layout, had the means to contact help, and could provide accurate information about the cave’s history and the present forms of life that lived there.

God told David he would guide him along life’s pathway—advising him along the way—and David trusted him to do so. After all, he had guided him while he was a shepherd boy and did the same when he became king of Israel.

God Is Competent

God is a trustworthy guide because he’s competent. Our cave guide didn’t make the cave, but he knew it intimately. He had been trained and could now lead others.

God Is Sovereign

God is sovereign. He made the earth, currently guides all the affairs on earth, and will culminate the end by making a new heaven and a new earth. He is all-wise and all-powerful. He dwells in the future we’ve not experienced. He knows our future, has good plans for our future, and will guide us into it if we let him.

God Is a Helper

God can also provide the help we need along life’s journey. When trials, tribulations, and confusing times affront us, he can give us the power to overcome and the wisdom to make the right decisions.

All the above make God a trustworthy guide. I’ve used maps, people, GPSs, and phone apps to guide me, but they all failed at some point. God never will.

God Is a Guide

Choose God as your trustworthy guide to maneuver you through the often-confusing thing called life.

Father, I trust you to guide me through the dangerous and confusing obstacles along life’s journey. 

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The Hunt for Truth - Lynne Phipps

Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; he who seeks finds; and to him who knocks, the door will be opened. Matthew 7:7-8 NIV

Easter morning is always an exciting and bustling time within our household as my granddaughters search for Easter eggs. These goodies have been cleverly hidden by their parents, and the girls must search diligently to find them. What happiness ensues when all have been discovered, and their Easter baskets are overflowing with yummy treats. But the hunt for truth should bring even more excitement. 

Searching for Easter eggs brought to mind the treats of truth and wisdom God has hidden for us within his Word. The Scriptures hold the secrets of life. They reveal who God is and how we may come into a relationship with him through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. They teach us how to deal with any situation life can throw at us. We learn how to praise God and the best way to treat our enemies. 

God’s Word has the power to correct our behavior and convict us of wrong thoughts and actions. It can restore us spiritually and emotionally. The Scripture makes the simple wise and promotes hope and joy. It prepares us for the future and relieves us of the burdens of our past. Indeed, within God’s Word are found treasures beyond compare.

Like hunting for hidden Easter eggs, however, we too must be prepared to hunt for these gems of truth within the Scriptures. We must be willing to ask God for a hunger in our hearts for his Word as well as guidance as we read it. We must be persistent in searching the Word for new truths that we may have missed. Some, we may not have been mature enough to see or understand at a previous time. We must also be tenacious in seeking enlightenment regarding how to apply these precious truths to our everyday lives.

When the girls hunt for their eggs, they are rewarded for finding them. They gather them and eventually pop them into their mouths to enjoy the tasty morsels. Likewise, when we seek, ask, and knock to discover the truths in God’s Word, we too are blessed as we discover, embrace, and taste their goodness by putting them into practice and seeing that they are good.

Make sure your hunt for truth takes you to God’s Word daily. 

Father God, thank you for your precious Word. Encourage and motivate me to hunger for its truths.  Strengthen me to be tenacious when asking, seeking, and knocking. Grant me enlightenment, wisdom, correction, and teaching through them, so that I might live a good and productive life. Help my life to be a witness of your lovingkindness and mercy to all those around me. In Christ’s name I pray, amen.

Lynne Phipps and her family live on a small hobby farm in the heart of Alberta, Canada’s farming country. She has been writing devotions for forty years and never tires of the spiritual correlation the Holy Spirit blesses her with. He uses normal everyday events and the behaviors of the multitude of glorious creatures He has brought across her path to point her to the truths of God. Lynne is a devotion writer for VineWords: Devotions and More, Christian Devotions, and Love Lines from God.

I invite you to try my book Hurt, Hope, and Healing in eBook or paperback. If you seek hope and healing because of the hurts you have faced, this book is for you. Click on the title above to order your copy. And thanks to all our faithful followers who share our posts on Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin.

 

 

Truth That Never Changes - Martin Wiles

All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. 2 Timothy 3:16 NLT

I don’t remember whether Mom and Dad explained the importance of what I watched on television, but I remember watching with great interest.

Just shy of nine years old, I sat in the den of our church-owned home and stared at a small black-and-white television. The date was July 1960, and American Neil Armstrong was about to become the first man to set foot on the moon.

Although I didn’t know it then, I discovered later that many Americans didn’t believe anyone was on the moon. I suppose they still thought a space machine couldn’t be launched from earth and land on the moon—much less that someone could walk on it. Despite evidence to the contrary, some wouldn’t believe it.

In giving instructions to a young minister, Paul reminded Timothy about the nature of God’s Word. He, too, would encounter some who would not believe its message despite evidence to the contrary.

Almost two thousand years of history haven’t changed anything. Opinions about the Bible vary. Some believe every word in it is truth, while others think nothing in it is true. Many are in the middle. They believe it records truth when it addresses faith and some historical matters but have no confidence in it when it speaks of scientific things. For them, it’s mostly a collection of myths, legends, and fairy tales.

Regarding God’s Word, we have only two choices: complete truth or not truth at all. If we can’t trust what it says about scientific and historical matters, how can we be sure it speaks truth when it addresses faith matters?

Accepting God’s Word is an act of faith, just like our belief in Jesus Christ as God’s Son and our Savior. We must believe God breathed the words and that those words show the way He wants us to live, think, and speak. Measuring our actions and attitudes based on the Bible’s teachings shows where we need to make changes. Believing its teachings and promises and watching them fulfilled in our lives reinforces its validity. What we think about God’s Word will show up in our lifestyle.

Think about what you think about the Bible.

Father, give me the courage to take a leap of faith and believe the Bible is your true Word. 

Tweetable: What do you think of the Bible? 

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Holding to the Truth - Martin Wiles

Instead, we will hold to the truth in love, becoming more and more in every way like Christ. Ephesians 4:15 NLT

He was a hell-fire-and-brimstone preacher who held to the truth . . . regardless.

My dad preached for forty years. He labeled himself a “fundamentalist.” I re-discovered the truth of this when I listened to the only recorded sermon of his I have. He was a young man at the time, in his late 30’s. His voice undulated with passion. He preached the “unadulterated” gospel with zeal. He didn’t mince words to be politically correct; he simply preached what the Bible said. If the Bible called something sin, he did, too—regardless of what anyone else thought.

Dad held to the truth, as Paul instructed early believers to do. Only Paul included to do so with love. As early believers took the gospel into the world, they encountered pagan lies. Confronting those lies meant speaking the truth, but getting the people to listen required speaking it in love.

Spiritual truth isn’t always pretty. It can cut to the quick and raise the hackles on necks. When violating it and having someone call our hand, we can follow our gut reaction, get angry, and snap back. Truth reminds us of how ugly we can act.

The truth of the matter is we are born sinners. We may have been a pretty baby, but we had an ugly nature. It just didn’t show up initially. We didn’t arrive with a clean slate that was later corrupted by a sinful environment, although our circumstances can affect it. All Satan must do is capitalize on what is already present.

The truth is also that we will live and die the same way unless we allow God to do something about our nature. He can change it but won’t unless we agree with Him that we have sinned.

But the prettier truth is God can change us. By repenting of our sins and believing in Jesus Christ as our Savior, we can exchange our ugliness for Christ’s righteousness. This new nature won’t take away our struggle to obey—in fact, it will intensify it. But now God has something to work with. He can bring us into a state of obedience to His commands. A condition we could never enter before.

Have you accepted the cold hard truth about your nature?

Father, may I never shy away from the truth but speak it boldly to people who need to hear. 

Tweetable: Are you holding to the truth? 

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Out of Date - Martin Wiles

God, your name is eternal, God, you’ll never be out-of-date. Psalm 135:13 MSG

After one sip, I knew something was out of date.

Before I became lactose intolerant, I loved a good cold glass of milk in the morning with my breakfast. Sometimes, I would drink another glass at night before going to bed, especially if I’d eaten something for supper that didn’t agree with my stomach.

But on one morning, I knew something wasn’t right. After the first sip, I smacked my lips, trying to figure out what I tasted. Usually, I look at the date before pouring my glass of milk. Then again, I typically consume a gallon of milk long before the date expires. Tasting that something was wrong, I returned to the refrigerator and checked the date—two days out of date. I took a whiff. It smelled as if it were a week old. I poured my glass of milk down the drain, as well as what was left in the container. Reluctantly, I chose something else to drink with my breakfast.

Life is filled with out-of-date things, milk being one of them. Fresh meat has a good use date, and so does cereal. Some items last longer than others, but eventually, they all go bad. The same happens with non-food items, such as my computer. Goodness knows, how many I’ve had since I bought my first one. Hard drives fill, updates from manufacturers consume space, new technology kills RAM, and the workings of the computer gradually grind to a halt, necessitating the purchase of a new one.

The psalmist says something different about God: He never goes out of date. Instead, He is eternal.

In a world where things spoil and deteriorate, having a God that surpasses those categories makes for a nice life. His moral commands and principles remain true, even though thousands of years have passed since He issued them. 

What God said comprised truth in the beginning and still constitutes truth now—and will until the end of time. We can hang our hats on what God says, knowing it is absolute and never changing.

Others may call our beliefs old-fashioned, but in this case, old-fashioned is good. We have the privilege of telling others we have the final word. After all, this is what people are searching for.

Take a minute to thank God that He is never out of date.

Prayer: Father, we thank You for never being out of date. 

Tweetable: Is God's Word out of date for you? 

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Lying to Myself - Martin Wiles

Keep me from lying to myself; give me the privilege of knowing your instructions. Psalm 119:29 NLT

I was telling myself a big one—lying to myself—and the trouble was, I believed it.

My lie began about the time I turned fourteen. It went something like this: “You don’t need school.” If I didn’t need school, I didn’t need to study either. So I did little of it. After I started driving, another lie popped up. If I didn’t need school, why go? Every opportunity I got, I ditched class.

By the time I reached the twelfth grade, the lie had grown. School wasn’t necessary, studying wasn’t essential, and attending was optional. Why go at all? So I quit. I found a full-time job at a grocery store but had to lie about being out of school to get it. After several months, they cut my position. I finally decided to tell myself the truth: I needed an education.

Knowing God’s Word is a privilege. One which keeps us from lying to ourselves. When we know God’s Word, we won’t lie by telling ourselves we’re okay and don’t need God. Instead, we’ll believe the verse that reads, “For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23).

Neither will we lie by telling ourselves we’ll live forever. We might as well live it up without worrying about whom we’re hurting. “For the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23) squashes that lie.

If we lie to ourselves by believing there’s no God we’re accountable to, we read, “The fool has said in his heart there is no God” (Psalm 14:1).

And if we imagine we can get to heaven by any route we choose, we find, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No man comes to the Father except by me (Jesus)” (John 14:6).

Lies are always harmful, but the ones affecting our present happiness and eternal destiny are more so. Others may lie to and about us. We may lie to ourselves. But God will never lie. His Word contains unchanging truth that doesn’t vary by time or culture.

Feed on the truth from God’s Word.

Prayer: Father, thank You that we can always depend on You to tell us the truth about sin and ourselves. 

Tweetable: Are you lying to yourself? 

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Meandering Monday - God Can’t Lie - Martin Wiles

Welcome to Meandering Monday, where we take a trip back to an earlier post and enjoy it again.

These two things are unchangeable because it is impossible for God to lie. Therefore, we who have fled to him for refuge can have great confidence. Hebrews 6:18 NLT

He spread the cell phone bill before her on the table.

Earlier, he had perused the calls. He had his suspicions, and as he looked over the calls, his misgivings were confirmed. Now came the unpleasant duty of confronting her. On one day, an out-of-town location appeared. He remembered the day. She had left early, telling him and the kids she was going to work. They believed her, even though they had reason to doubt her. Sure enough, she had lied once again. It had become her pattern. When questioned, she said, “I was at work.” He produced the bill. She held her course. Only after an hour of lawyer-type interrogation did she finally admit what he and the children already knew. 

God won’t do what the unfaithful wife did. He made a promise to Abraham and sealed it with an oath. He would bless and prosper him and give him many descendants. Since God can’t lie, the promise was as sure as the sun rising the next morning. Abraham lived to see a portion of the promise fulfilled, and I’m witnessing another portion of it presently.

God’s promises can be trusted because they are unchanging and trustworthy. They must be because they reflect his nature. He doesn’t change—although it may appear he does—and he never goes back on his word. What he says, he will do.

God promises forgiveness and salvation to all who ask. Since he’s allowed his Son to pay for humanity’s sins, all that remains is for us to reach out for it. When we ask, our sins are removed as far as the east is from the west. They’re cast into the bottom of the sea…into God’s forgetfulness. He promises abundant life in the present—a quality of life we could never experience otherwise. And even better is the promise of eternal life in heaven. A place that is indescribably beautiful and fulfilling. A place where ultimate healing in all areas of life will be experienced.

Have you taken God at his word?

Prayer: Thank You, Father, that we can depend on Your promises. 

Tweetable: Are you a truth-teller? 

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Walk-on Wednesday - Can We Know the Truth? - Martin Wiles

Welcome to Walk-on Wednesday. By Hump Day, we are struggling, but we believe a good devotion can strengthen us to finish the week strong. 

Series: Hey God…I Have a Question?

“What is truth?” Pilate asked. Then he went out again to the people and told them, “He is not guilty of any crime.” John 18:38 NLT

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but the truth isn’t.

What is truth? Is there truth? Where can I find it? Is truth for me truth for everyone? Does it change?

All questions people wrangle with and reach different conclusions about. Relativism makes truth relative, or changeable. Individual relativism allows the individual to set the parameters. Cultural relativism lets each culture define truth.

Imagine the missionary’s surprise when, after telling a native tribe about Judas betraying Jesus, he noticed they praised Judas instead of seeing his error. In their culture, betrayal was an honorable trait.

As Jesus stood before Pilate, he proclaimed to represent the truth. Pilate contemplated his statement and asked his infamous question, “What is truth?” Jesus said he was and is the way, the truth, and the life. Not all agree.

Truth is not relative…either to individuals or cultures. What I think is the truth matters not; nor does what others think. Truth for me cannot not be the truth for you. But individual relativism promotes this concept. You do what you want, and I’ll do the same. Stay out of my business, and I’ll stay out of yours.

Cultural relativism manufactures the same mistake. What is true in one culture is true in another. Just because a culture may accept rape as legal doesn’t make it so in God’s eyes.

Individuals and cultures don’t erect the rules for determining truth. Moral absolutes transcend individuals and cultures, and God establishes them. They are viewed most clearly in God’s Ten Commandments and in the two commands Jesus said were the most important: love him with all one’s heart and our neighbors as we do ourselves.

God established moral absolutes...truth…in the beginning and recorded them in his Word. Jesus represented truth when he resided on earth. What we think should be or is the truth is immaterial. It only matters what God proclaims.

Have you discovered the truth?

Prayer: Thank You, most glorious Father, for giving us the truth. 

Tweetable: Have you discovered the truth? 

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Flashback Friday - Facing the Truth - Martin Wiles

Facing the Truth

And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. John 8:32 NLT

The old adage is true: “The truth hurts.” Not only is hearing the truth difficult but telling and admitting it are also. 

Frank Serpico was one of those rare individuals that was willing to face and tell the truth in spite of the risks involved. He was a New York City policeman who was well acquainted with the graft and illegal acts of his cohorts. Failing to expose the truth would make him a part of the corruption. Telling the truth would invite their ostracism and scorn and perhaps put his life at risk. He chose to tell the truth—yet not without cost. His revelation helped clean up the city police force, but his personal and professional life suffered heavily. Death threats, faltering health, and eventually leaving the force were all consequences. Read more...

Tweetable: Have you faced the ultimate truth? 

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Throwback Tuesday - Can I Know the Truth? - Martin Wiles

 Can I Know the Truth?

Series: Hey God…I Have a Question

“What is truth?” Pilate asked. Then he went out again to the people and told them, “He is not guilty of any crime.” John 18:38 NLT

Beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, but truth isn’t. 

What is truth? Is there truth? Where can I find it? Is truth for me truth for everyone? Does it change? All questions people wrangle with and reach different conclusions. Relativism makes truth relative, or changeable. Individual relativism allows the individual to set the parameters. Cultural relativism lets each culture define truth. Imagine the missionary’s surprise when, after telling a native tribe about Judas betraying Jesus, he noticed they praised Judas instead of seeing his error. In their culture, betrayal was an honorable trait. Read more...

Tweetable: Do you know the truth? 

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Throwback Tuesday - What Truth Does - Martin Wiles

What Truth Does

Determining the truth isn’t always as easy as one might imagine.

From the time I entered this world, I was taught to obey God’s standards. As I aged and could comprehend them better, my parents explained why I needed to do this or leave that alone. They never questioned God’s truth, nor did I…until I became an adult. Occasionally, the thought would race through my mind, “What if all I profess to believe is a lie or wishful thinking?” I once questioned an older man about this very possibility. He replied, “I’d rather live like I do and be mistaken in the end than live the opposite way and find out I was wrong.” Read more...

Tell us how you determine what truth is. 

Tweetable: Are you struggling with the truth?

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