May 10th - "Belt of Truth - Believe the Truth" - Ephesians 6:14b

Here's why this is important for us Christians, and I hope you hear this. God's word is not one voice among many. God's word is the very authority by which every voice is to be judged. I hope you heard that. God's voice is not one voice among many voices. God's word, god's voice is the very voice by which every other voice is to be judged, which means when you hear something, you ought to take it back to does this line up with scripture. [00:52:37] (38 seconds)  #ScriptureIsAuthority

But the truth is that you're made in the very image of God. You're loved of god. And if you're in Christ, you're redeemed by his blood. You're fully forgiven. You're declared righteous. You belong to him. Next time the enemy shows up with a lie that you're not forgiven, You need to look to the very cross of Christ, and you need to stop and ask yourself the question, what does the Bible say about my salvation? Not what does the enemy say. [01:06:21] (34 seconds)  #IdentityInChrist

Truth is first. Objective. It's true whether you believe it or not. Praise God for that. How crazy would it be if truth was only true if you believed it? Truth is not true because we believe it. Objective truth means it's verifiable. We can look at the reality of it. We can recognize it to be true because it is. It's verifiable. It's fact. [00:39:21] (31 seconds)  #ObjectiveTruthMatters

And, the primary way that the devil fights against God's people is through deception. Satan lies about everything. He lies about God. He lies about the truths of the gospel. He lies to us about our identity. He will lie to you about what will bring you joy. And if you believe his lies, if you listen and allow those lies to stick around in your mind, in your heart for very long, what you'll find is that those lies are meant to destroy you. [00:29:54] (47 seconds)  #ResistDeception

What does that mean for us as it relates to fighting the enemy? It means that we don't stand simply by mastering information. We stand by trusting a person, and that person is Jesus Christ. The one who is the truth is already defeated the father of lies. You know, we're fighting a battle that Jesus has already won, but we're still in the middle of it. And so we're fighting an enemy who is fatally wounded. [00:42:39] (31 seconds)  #TrustJesusNotInfo

You would think that that would lead us to greater wisdom, but interestingly enough, it's revealed just how little wisdom we actually have. We're a culture that is drowning in information while simultaneously starving for truth. That's the reality of what it means to live in our culture today. Part of this is because information is constant and conflicting. Even Christians find ourselves at times questioning just about everything. [00:48:15] (33 seconds)  #StarvingForTruth

We discover what God has put in place. We don't get to discover something and go, look, I found something out about the universe that even God doesn't know. It doesn't work that way. You're discovering the very thoughts of God. You're discovering the very reality of how things work together. So, when you're confronted with something, we first need to ask, what does God's word say about this? If it contradicts scripture, it doesn't matter how persuasive it sounds or how many people believe it. It's just not true. [00:54:39] (31 seconds)  #TestEverythingWithScripture

God is the author of reality. All truth is God's truth. Lies sound convincing, but they collapse when you measure them with the way God has made the world to work. No. Relativism eventually eats itself. It eventually dries up and dies. If you take a a relativist, somebody who believes in some sort of subjective truth to the top of the Empire State Building, and you tell them, go ahead and jump off. Objective truth would cause them, if they're not suicidal, to stop and say, I don't think so. Well, why not? Because if I jump off, there's something called gravity. [00:55:21] (41 seconds)  #GodIsAuthorOfReality