Truth

This week, Vonnie is hosting Monday Manna, so be sure to pop over to My Back Door and read the other entries, and link up if you want to participate. And we're also discussing this post at Living By Grace today. Would love to have you join the discussion there!

 Here's today's verse:

"Buy the truth, and sell it not; also wisdom, and instruction, and understanding." (Proverbs 23:23, KJV)

Believing lies is easy - especially when they seem to benefit us or make our lives easier. "Eat, drink, and be merry." "Look out for #1." "He who dies with the most toys wins." Each of these statements, and hundreds like them, are easy to live out. They take very little sacrifice, and they seem to make life more enjoyable.

They are, in a word, free. And, in the short term anyhow, they can make life lovely. But that is ONLY in the short-term.

What we really need is the truth. And the truth is NOT free. It must be paid for. 

Thankfully, we do not need to go bankrupt to receive it. Christ has already given all that is needed. Two thousand years ago, God bankrupted heaven to pay the price for our sins - to give His one and only Son to His creation - first as a baby in a manger, and thirty-three years later as a sacrifice on the cross.

Living by His truth rather than the world's lies will likely not satisfy our short-term, selfish desires. There is often a cost: a cost of inconvenience, of delayed satisfaction, of dying to self. But that cost is miniscule in comparison to the freedom we are given in return: the freedom to live as the Lord designed us. The freedom to fulfill God's purpose. The freedom to know He is there through our struggles.

And once we have the Truth (John 14:6), it is with us forever. Though we can ignore Him, He will never leave. No matter how we stray - how we try to "sell Him off" - He is always, always there.

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Be sure to stop by Vonnie's blog for more Monday Manna - and come by Living by Grace to discuss this post.

 
Traveling Rough Roads With God's Strength