Continued from yesterday...
Titus 1:1b
. . . and the acknowledging of the truth which is after godliness;
Acknowledging truth seems so elementary, yet sometimes we reject truth based on the bad taste it can leave in our mouths. Much like the Israelites in the Wilderness with the manna, just enough for today was the word of God. Yet those hoarders would have it turn wormy in their mouths on the next day except for the Sabbath.
• Have you ever found yourself with a worm in your mouth when God intended to provide for you day by day?
But sometimes we think that by simply ignoring truth that it will somehow change. Good try, but Truth is bigger than me or you. It’s kind of like raising kids. They will pester and pester you to change the world. . . . “Daddy, why can’t we have more daylight to play in?” The truth is, no matter how big my children may think I am, and that I am omnipotent, I will never affect daylight.
There are three ways that we acknowledge truth.
With our lips
Acknowledging truth requires that we give voice to the Truth. What is seemingly obvious is sometimes overlooked. There are times where we will omit certain things because they seem so obvious that it seems childlike to say them, yet Jesus would tell us that we must become as a child. .. .that is a hard thing to do at times.
But it is with the instrument of your voice that we find that God chooses to establish truth in your own life.
II Corinthians 13:1
This is the third time I am coming to you. In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established.
This is amazing. Every word? From the mouth.
Yet it is that tongue that is deadly in other instances; James would identify it as a unruly member, full of deadly poison. But the amazing truth is that when we are filled with the Holy Ghost, God chooses that as his mechanism for letting those around know that He has filled them with His Spirit. Other things will affirm the continued indwelling of the Spirit later, but initially, it is by speaking in that unknown tongue Peter spoke of.
• God takes the unholy, what is set on fire of the flames of hell and places the utterance of the Spirit in our lives so that we understand the ultimate power of God.
• When Isaiah saw, in the year Uzziah died, the train filling the Temple, Isaiah 6:5-7 Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. His lips were touched by a live coal and what was impossible happened in two worlds-the natural world was defied, and his lips were not blistered and burned, and in the spiritual world, his iniquity was taken away.
It’s pretty nice that it is with our lips that we confess truth at the infilling of the Holy Ghost the confirmation of acknowledging Truth by our mouths. God fills our mouths, controls our tongue, and speaks truth in a language that we don't understand and have no training in.
Giving voice is the first step in acknowledging the unchanging nature of Truth.
Tomorrow, we will look again at acknowledging truth in other ways...but until then, let give voice to the Truth in your life.
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