Episode Transcript
[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to the Erickson Covenant Podcast. We're so glad that you've joined us today.
We confess that we don't have all the answers, but as a community, we seek to find and follow Jesus and to discover daily the life he has always wanted for us.
We hope this message will be encouraging and will inspire you to take the next steps on your spiritual journey.
If we can help you in any way, please connect with us. The easiest way is through our website at Erickson Covenant CA let's get Started
[00:00:38] Speaker B: what is truth?
Do you know?
It was Pilate who expressed the question of his generation when he stood before Jesus and blurted out, what is truth?
Jesus, having been decried and soon to be crucified, stunned Pilate with a truth claim that the Roman governor couldn't accept.
As a king of higher rank than Pilate himself, Jesus said, the reason I was born and came into the world was to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.
Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.
Imagine how that sounded from Pilate's point of view.
A governor representing the most powerful nation on earth, holding life and death in his hands, looking down on this raggedy young rabbi, claiming that everyone on the side of truth listens to him.
You can just hear in his voice this dramatic rebuff, dripping skepticism as he retorts, what is truth?
What is truth? And then Pilate, as though to demonstrate for all time which side of truth he really was on, he simultaneously declared Jesus innocent twice while having him flogged and then crucified.
What is truth? Indeed, Pilate didn't have a foggy clue, even though truth was standing right in front of him.
What is truth? It's still a question, isn't it?
Whether it's skeptics or seekers or agnostics or believers or philosophers or theologians who are asking the question. Whether it's being asked in humility or it's being asked with hubris, and ask it we must, and ask it we will. What is truth?
But rather than simply wondering if truth exists, a lot of people today believe it does.
The truth can be known, and it must be widely proclaimed.
Many people believe that they in fact do know the truth and can set themselves free as a result.
That is, as long as it's my truth we're talking about, it's my truth that's being proclaimed in the world.
Here's what we're seeing today.
Instead of pursuing objective truth, plenty have adopted a kind of relative stance on truth that is more concerned with its perspective or its source or its location, rather than the facts or the claim that's actually being made.
People now often ask, who's saying this truth? Or whose truth is this? Rather than grappling with the content or the facts, people consider first, is this truth I can trust? Or is this truth that lines up with what I already agree with?
Or do I like the person who is saying this truth?
Or worst of all, is this truth that, if I proclaim it loudly enough, will make me a good person in the eyes of others?
And those questions, as you can see, are a far cry from the simple query what is truth?
Truth is now a popularity contest. Truth now has to compete for favor.
We now live in a world where people firmly believe they have the truth because they're part of the group that has the truth, the group that's sitting on the right side of history and therefore has the holy right to judge all of the truths based on whether or not it lines up with what they already believe and hold to what they already think is true and true for them.
The big objective question what is truth? Has largely been shaved down to the subjective point what is my truth? Or what is our truth?
Perhaps it's like people aren't really asking a question anymore, but some simply making the bold statement, this is my truth?
How can we untangle this welcome to today's Catchphrase conundrum.
Speak your truth.
In this teaching series, we've been decoding four common cultural catchphrases in order to discern what's true about them and what is false. We're doing all of this so that we can better understand the cultural messaging that we receive and better engage friends and family with the good news of Jesus Christ. If you've missed the first two weeks, I do encourage you to go back and listen to them on YouTube or Apple Podcasts, on our website, even on Spotify, because all four of these weeks build on top of each other. And so let's quickly recap where we've been so far. Our first catchphrase conundrum was say it with me. You be you, or you do you, or be yourself, or to thine own self be true, whatever it might be. And what did we decode from this catchphrase? We explored how all people are created in the image of God and how you, as a creation in the image of God, were created for a unique, one of a kind relationship with with the Father.
But sin has made all this you be you stuff kind of problematic.
We can't be ourselves without God saving us from ourselves first in order to be our truest selves, we need Jesus to redeem us. We need the Holy Spirit to recreate us into the image of the perfect human Jesus Christ. And then, and only then, can we begin to be the you that God has created us to be.
Last week, we then decoded the pervasive advice, follow your heart or trust your feelings. And we highlighted how God gave us moral consciences, and that's important.
And how Jesus does speak to our hearts. The problem, of course, is that our consciences can be off kilter and our hearts can be contaminated.
You know, we feel when things ain't right, but we also feel things that ain't right.
Do you follow me? There's a problem there.
We need the Holy Spirit's help at a heart level to give us new hearts. But that's good news.
Because we learned how. The more we know the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit as revealed through the Scripture, the more we submit to the Holy Spirit's work within us, the more that we solicit godly advice and wise counsel, the more we are actually able to recognize God's voice when he's speaking within us, even with our feelings.
And today, we're moving on to the next catchphrase conundrum, Speak youk Truth. Well, in a world that is overflowing with competing truth claims, you know I'm right. She's right, they're right. We're right.
We're told to speak our truth and to do it we with boldness.
And everyone you might have noticed seems to be getting the message.
More than ever, people declare their truth with utter confidence. I am stunned by this.
Even if the facts have largely been ignored, even if the issue is far more complex than they understand, even if they only heard about this problem or a conflict or offense for the first time last week, it's no problem.
A couple YouTube videos and a podcast and you're good to go.
A little dank meme helps, too. The one you can circulate online helps.
You just gotta get a general sense of what side you're supposed to be on.
And whatever you lack in deep understanding, you can make up for in drastic overstatement.
When we decoded the catchphrase last week, follow your heart. You might remember our discussion about how the locus of authority has shifted in our culture over the last several hundred years. Shifting away from something that is outside of us, external to us, something that we're accountable to. It shifted inward.
Something internal now determines our inner feelings.
Psychologized selves now have ultimate sway over what it is that we deem to be good and right.
And speak your truth builds directly on top of follow your heart, given what you know to be true inside, now boldly express your truth.
Well, let's start by discerning a bit more of what's false about this catchphrase, because the call to speak your truth can obscure objective reality.
You see, objective truth can be rejected in favor of a relativistic conviction that what is true is what I believe to be true. Or worse yet, what is true is true because I believe it is true.
But just like the law of gravity, just like our need for oxygen, just like historical events like, I don't know, The War of 1812, the Norman Conquest of 1066, the death and resurrection of Jesus in AD 33, truth exists whether we like it or or not, whether we think it or not, whether we believe it or not, whether we know it or not.
Truth is truth, whether it's yours or not.
As human beings created in the image of God, we're not the source of objective truth. Rather, we're subject to the truth. And as it is the Creator, the Father is the source of all truth, and all truth we experience is ultimately derived from Him. To be created in his image is to know by definition that we are not the source of truth, but can at best only know, understand and reflect what is already true outside of us.
Believe whatever truth you want, but if you step off a cliff today, the reality of objective gravitational truth will rise up to meet you.
The truth will very quickly become your truth.
But having made our inner psychologized selves the source and arbiter of of what is true, objective truth can be then obscured because we don't like its implications.
We don't like what's demanding of us. We don't like what it might mean for how I live. We don't like what it might mean for how I think.
We can dismiss objective truth as what you pick it oppressive, patriarchal, constricting, uncomfortable because it disagrees with our truth. We live in a cultural moment when we can claim our personal power, first to shape the truth and then to speak our truth out into the world.
And this has an obscuring effect.
It affects us and how we think. By claiming that our truth is the truth, we then can feel we've placed ourselves beyond criticism.
I can now deflect or deny any alternate truth claim that contradicts mine. Speaking my truth can shield me from contrary opinion. If what you say doesn't match my truth. I don't need to accept it.
I don't even need to consider it.
I mean, what a moron you are.
I might not even hear it, actually, because I'm so shielded from it.
But if I do hear it, if I do hear it, I can rightly condemn, is now all the rage. To denounce any claim that doesn't line up with my truth, to denounce it as wrong or as false or even as evil.
And this on topics that adults just discussed normally around a table with only a modicum of heat, just a few years ago, now denounced, now awash with muck and slurs.
And it's not just truth claims that are being rejected like that. Anyone who happens to hold the wrong opinion is routinely ridiculed and castigated.
Woe betide the person who holds the wrong opinion today. Can I get an amen?
However relativistic speaking my truth may sound at first, we've now entered into an era where power and rhetoric holds sway, where might makes right, where people can be ruined for wrong. Think.
And in the end, when you think about it, truth isn't that relative. When I'm going to use any means necessary for my truth to triumph over your truth and become the the truth for everyone.
But we shouldn't be surprised by this. As Christians, we shouldn't be surprised at a turn toward power and might. That's the sinful self emerging in a world where the locus of authority has shifted away from the external and God ordained to the profoundly personal and arbitrary. When it's been cut off from history or tradition or God or reality or accountability. When humans with bent hearts, and we all have bent hearts determine what is right in our own eyes, the only way truth will be decided will be through a grappling for power, through ideological wars and sadly, even violent struggle. That's all that's left. When truth is determined by humans, that's not what we believe. As Christians, we believe that we have a Father who is truth, a son who is truth, the Spirit who is truth. We believe that we've been equipped by our Creator, through the gift of rational thought, through the Holy Scriptures, by the Holy Spirit, to identify and recognize truth for what it is. We aren't always good at that. We have made lots of mistakes.
We struggle to know it.
We have at times in history used power when we shouldn't have.
This is all true. We need a good dose of humility. But we can know the truth.
We can pursue it, we can submit to it. And a Huge part of that truth recognition is grounded in the fact that truth is something that is over us, that is outside of us. It's not something that I just chose to believe or chose to make. Truth is not something that I just prefer or I just like.
It's not something that depends on my feelings or requires my perspective in order to be true.
Whatever truth I am speaking out, it's not my truth. If I mean by that that truth comes from me or is determined by me. Truth can only be discovered and understood through the various means that God has given and appropriate to given areas of study.
You know, there's different things that a physicist looks at, different things that a mathematician looks at, people that study history and theology are looking, but they're all ways of discovering and knowing what is true, whether that's medicine or art or logic.
The biggest problem with speak your truth is that it can obscure objective reality.
Just because it's my truth doesn't make it the truth.
But, and this is very important, if it is the truth, I should make it mine.
I should make it my truth.
And this is where the challenge to speak your truth is not all wrong. There's something important here, something we need to recognize, something true and right. Something that if we can decode the cultural pitfalls and if we can discern this relativizing truth, tribalism, it needs to be embraced by biblically astute Christians.
So how can we decode what's true about Seek your truth, speak your truth.
Well, we need to understand that the call to speak your truth can empower sincere conviction. And that's a good thing.
First, let's start by just exploring speaking the truth before we get to speaking your truth. The Bible, as we probably know, is full of commands from for truthfulness in life and in speech from start to finish. As people created in the image of an honest holy God, we're called to speak the truth to one another and about one another.
Falsehood and deceit has no place among the people of a holy God. God doesn't lie, and neither should his human images in the Ten Commandments sandwiched right between the command not to steal people's stuff and the other commandment not to want to steal people's stuff.
Stealing and covetousness, we are told, you are not to give, you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.
And then among the prophets, they're constantly talking about this from Zechariah, we heard this earlier. These are the things you are to do. Speak the truth to each other and render true and sound judgment in your courts. See how it's both personal and societal.
Do not plot evil against each other and do not love to swear falsely. I hate all this, declares the Lord.
Yahweh is an honest God, and he demands honesty among his people. Yahweh hates lying, trickery and deception, not only because it contradicts his character, but because it ruins society. A people who lie well can't love well.
It's not possible.
And when lies and falsehood seep into society, trust erodes, relationships fail, civilization crumbles, words matter. What you say counts. You know, Jesus said that we would be held accountable for every empty word that we spoke.
Just imagine how accountable we're going to be held for the lies we speak as well.
Well, as you can see, God doesn't soften his stance on honesty. When we move into the New Testament, Jesus, who is the way, the truth and the life, calls his people to be honest. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told his followers not to even swear oaths. Quite popular in his time. Don't swear oaths. Be the kind of honest truth tellers. Jesus says that your yes means yes and your no means means no.
I think that means you're not even supposed to spit in the palm of your hand when you shake, which we can all be thankful for.
The Holy Spirit, who Jesus calls the Spirit of Truth, who goes out from the Father.
The Holy Spirit is sent to live inside of us in order to guide us into all truth and enable us and empower us to work, worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
As people of the Holy Spirit of truth, we're reminded again and again to be truthful in our relationships with one another. In Ephesians 4:25, we read, Therefore having put away falsehood, let each of you speak the truth with his neighbor, for we are members one of another.
Colossians 3:9, 10. We are commanded, do not lie to each other, since you have taken off the old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.
In one of the most shocking judgment passages in the New Testament, Acts Chapter 5, if you want to look it up later, a husband and a wife are both struck dead. But from lying to the Holy Spirit about the amount of money that they had decided to give to the church, which I think would have made people really sit up and pay attention both to their honesty and to their giving.
Our truthfulness reflects God's truthfulness. When we tell the truth to each other, we're reflecting God's character in our relationships, we're bearing the image of God in practice. And that's why truth is always the right action.
Honesty is always the best policy, the only real way forward. Despite how difficult it may be in the moment to speak the truth. It's the only path to life.
And that is why the truth needs to become our truth.
The spirit of truth takes up resonance within us. Truth needs to get down into us. The truth that we speak to one another, about one another, to the larger world, even to ourselves, needs to be truth that we own personally. We've got to claim it as ours.
To say that doesn't mean that truth is now just subjective and up for grabs. And whatever you want to think it is, to say it's our truth doesn't mean that we're making it up on the spot. It doesn't mean we're the only ones who have it.
Truth is objective, but it's not abstract, it's not nebulous.
Truth is not dependent upon us, but it does need to become part of us. Truth is personal, but it's not relative.
Truth exists outside of us and it will be true with or without us. And yet truth can come and reside within, within us as a person, as something settled and strong.
Jesus said, you shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.
And that's why when people really do know the truth, and I don't mean just head knowledge or spouting facts, but the kind of truth that is at a heart, knowing an experiential, knowing a whole person, knowing they really do become free truth, real, objective, living, ordained truth. When that gets down inside of us, when it permeates our being, it can break chains and open hearts. It can bring people who were dying in the dark out to live in the light.
Knowing the truth about who God is, knowing the truth about who you are, the truth about your situation, the truth about your past, the truth about God's grace and forgiveness, the truth about your potential and your giftings, the truth about what happened to you, the truth about the lies you believed, and the truth about the new you that God is making you to be. That is truth that transforms you personally.
That is if the truth becomes our truth, not just something floating out there without connection, without application.
You could be told that you inherited a bunch of money from that long lost uncle, but until you actually click and transfer that money into your account and then start to put that inheritance to work, it's just an idea, it's just an abstraction.
It's just theoretical, useless.
You can be told that the prison door is unlocked and that you're free to leave. But until you get up off your mat and swing the bars open, the truth of your freedom remains only an idea, only a wish.
Truth must become personal in order for freedom to be realized. Truth can't stay out there. It's got to take up residence in here.
And when it does, when it does, then it is important that we speak that truth, that we share our truth. Not in the sense that we are suddenly the source of it, but that truth has become truly ours. It's truly mine. And I want to tell you about it.
When truth gets down deep and transforms the way we understand who God is and who we are and what it means to live as God's images in the world, when we can begin to speak our truth with a kind of boldness that only comes when we've made that truth our own.
And this is where the challenge to speak your truth with boldness gets really important. We need to be a people who speak what we know to be true with proper conviction, with good faith, with a clean conscience. Yes, with conversations that are seasoned with salt, but also conversations where we know how to answer people who ask.
We need to be bold enough to stand up for what we believe to be true and yet humble enough to admit when we really don't know or we're still working things out.
We need to stop being fearful about speaking the truth, stop feeling ashamed when the truth may not always be well received or applauded by others.
When by speaking the truth we we won't look good in the eyes of those around us, we might even look bad.
We need to be honest about what we believe, not hypocritical about it.
We need to say what we mean and mean what we say, because personal convictions really do matter. Paul, the Apostle Paul, he was very eager to proclaim the good news of Jesus in Rome, the capital of the Roman Empire.
And he reminded us all of the power of personal conviction when he said in Romans 1:16 For I am not ashamed of the gospel. Gospel meaning good news. I'm not ashamed of the good news because it is the power of God that brings salvation to everyone who believes.
First to the Jew, then to the Gentile. For in the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed. A righteousness that is by faith, from first to last. Paul knew this gospel, this good news about Jesus to be true, and he knew it to be true down to his deepest guts. He felt it.
Jesus had changed his Life forever.
This was true and true for him, true and true for the world.
And Paul spoke his truth everywhere he went. And he wanted to speak it in Rome. He did get to, by the way, even if it was chained to a guard while he did it. But he spoke his truth as he knew it, as he loved it, as he trusted it, as he believed it, as he owned it. Because this is the good news that had transformed his life. And that's why he was not ashamed.
And that word doesn't strike us so much today. We think ashamed. I don't want to feel ashamed. But in that culture, what he was proclaiming was very shameful.
Paul was proclaiming in a culture that valued only power and mocked, stepped on the necks of the weak, tossed babies in the trash, didn't care about those who couldn't make it on their own. In that culture, Paul was proclaiming a crucified Jewish messiah, very shameful, who rose again from the dead. Let's add to very shameful, very stupid.
This is the message he was proclaiming. A message that was ridiculed and slandered and rejected by Romans, by Greeks, by Jews alike. And his lack of shame is tied not only to the glorious truth of Jesus resurrection, but to the fact that that truth had transformed his life profoundly and personally and powerfully.
When you know that what you know is truly true, you can say with Paul, I'm not ashamed of this.
I'm not ashamed of this. I'm going to speak this truth with personal conviction, with unwavering voice, with passionate resolve. People can mock me, they can reject me, they can think me stupid, they can call me a bit.
They can slander me or hate me or not me, invite me to their barbecues. They can hate me like they hated Jesus. But I know this to be true. Not only true for me, but true for the world. And I'm going to unapologetically and unashamedly proclaim this truth for the good of the world.
When you've encountered Jesus Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life, and the only hope that Jesus has become your truth, then you can speak your truth to the world. That's a good and holy thing. So speak your truth.
Let me add two other ways that the phrase speak your truth can be helpful.
First, the encouragement to speak your truth can be a way of highlighting each other's voices in the body of Christ.
Because we were all created unique in the image of God. Because God has gifted us each with special gifts and unique talents. Because we have all been shaped through experiences and suffering and education and mentorship and family, we do have an important voice that needs to be shared in the body of Christ. And so as we lean into friendship with each other, into fellowship with each other, as we keep showing up to learn from each other and with each other other as we serve one another, it is so important that we hear one another's voices, that we hear one another's stories and struggles. God has called you to be part of this fellowship of this church. Not just when you sit here in a seat Sunday mornings and listen to me blather on, but in the larger life of our church together, Whether that's over coffee time or during the week when you run into each other or meeting at groups or wherever it might be, you are called to be part of this fellowship. You're here for a reason, and your voice matters. You've got something to share, you've got something to give. And in fact, some of you who aren't doing that, who are keeping it to yourselves, who aren't sharing what's going on inside of you, who aren't speaking out your truth and having us learn from you, you're doing us dirty.
Don't be hiding on us. We need you and we need your voice. You're part of this community, so don't hide your light. And so being encouraged to speak your truth can help. Can I say it the more timid among us? Share what you have to share because we need it. That's very, very good.
The second way that Speak youk Truth is helpful is within the context of healing from trauma, abuse, grief, suffering and addiction.
It is so important, important that recovering people have an opportunity to speak their truth, especially if they've been regularly silenced or they've been ignored, they've been shamed, they've been abused, they've been told their voice doesn't matter. They've been given little to no opportunity to express their hurt, their lament, their agony, to really say what happened to them in the context where someone will hear it and acknowledge that that was wrong, that was sinful, but also an opportunity for them to share what they did that was wrong and sinful.
To gently whisper to someone, just speak your truth, can unleash people who have never been asked to speak before, who have never been given voice to their pain, who have never thought they had the right or the power to say what it is that they want to say about their story, about their healing, about their family. And for those of us who have wrestled with family dysfunction, I know there's only a couple of us. But you know, for those of us who have wrestled with family dysfunction or who have experienced abuse or have known the power of abuse, addiction in our lives or in the lives of our family, those of us who've been moving through stages of recovery, you know, the healing power when people can speak, finally speak their truth in a safe and accepting circle. It's vital. It's vital. It's one of the reasons why we as a church have decided to host and support and put our weight behind to Celebrate Recovery ministry. The Julie and Steve are leading here along with Cal and Judy on Thursday evenings at 6:30 they're gathering here for Celebrate Recovery, for open sharing and it's exactly about that. A circle of trust where you can lean into healing, hearing what God has to say, but also hearing what each other have to say. It's vital. It's important. It's for anyone who's been struggling with hurts, hang ups and habits. It's not just for people who've struggled with drugs and alcohol. It's for, is for anyone who feels like I am stuck and I need to, I need to experience healing, the healing and transformation of Jesus. I need Jesus truth to come into my life. This is for you. And so if you need to explore that, I want to encourage you to do that in the healing journey. Speaking your truth is so important because you need to be heard and we want to hear from you.
So can we use the phrase speak your truth? Can we use that one?
You know, I gave Ubu a pretty unqualified yay. As long as there's some caveats, follow your heart.
This one I'm a little more tentative about it, I'll admit, but I'm going to still give it a qualified yes. As long as we know what we're saying and what we're not saying when we use it.
The fact is when we survey the scriptures, we don't ever hear the command speak your truth. We hear a lot about speaking the truth and to do so with love and with grace and with boldness and with consistency and with a clear conscience. And we're told to personalize the truth.
We're told to make God's truth our truth. We're even told to put truth on like a belt around our waist that holds the pants up, you know, holds the clothes on.
We're told to know the truth and to know that the truth sets us and sets others free.
So while we must discern the ways that speak your truth can obscure objective reality, it can Elevate relativism. It can escalate conflicts.
We must also embrace the ways that Speak youk Truth can empower sincere conviction.
Sincere conviction that is vital for growth and for fellowship, for healing and recovery, for evangelism.
So let's finish today. I'll finish with one challenge, but it includes both kind of a practice and a reading suggestion.
The challenge is this to become a more courageous truth teller.
To decide I'm not going to tell lies, period.
But I'm gonna start with the person I know best, which is me.
I'm gonna stop telling lies to myself. I'm gonna be honest about myself to myself. And I urge you with one other person, find someone else you can be truthful about yourself to.
To begin to strive for radical self honesty before the Lord.
Perhaps through journaling, through prayer, through conversation, to finally say, as we all can say, there are areas of my life that I am not honest about.
There are areas of my life I have been hiding even from myself.
Lord Jesus, help me be honest about who I am.
Help me to be committed to radical self honesty.
We do that not by centering ourselves, but by centering our life in God's truth as revealed in scripture.
The truth that you can know, the truth that has been revealed to us, the truth that can set us free. Because we begin to understand, perhaps for the first time, who God really is and who we really are as a result. And that flows out in our lives so that God's truth can begin to determine my truth.
God's truth can become your truth.
And whatever growth the Lord wants to bring into our lives, whatever healing journey we're on, it requires honesty. So again, I want to reiterate for some of you that does mean making the decision to come out on Thursday nights at 6:30 and join Celebrate Recovery. You need to be here.
More of you need to be here than you think.
It's really important, but in general to be a kind of people that say, I'm going to commit myself to radical self honesty, to radical truth in my relationships. Yes, we're going to do that in love. Yes, we're going to do that in grace. Although it might not feel like it sometimes, for those of you who've been lying for years, I mean lying to your spouse or lying to your friends, when you finally step up and start being honest, they might not feel like you're being nice anymore and you won't be, but you're being truthful in love.
And so be committed to that. Yes, have the humility to know that you may not know the truth, but the truth does exist. You can reject brashness and arrogance and overstatement. You can adopt a humble stance of a learner who listens. But you can begin to center in your lives those kind of honest good faith conversations among spiritual friends, brothers and sisters, rejecting outrage and hate, submitting to the truth together rather than seeking to shape it. And to let the Holy Spirit guide you in all truth, as he promised he would do to sharpen our critical thinking, to help us be more open to where he is leading us to be as we submit to his leadership. We're told in Proverbs 1:3 that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.
Let's center our fear of the Lord radical honesty. Let him grow us well in this to become a more courageous truth teller. I also want to recommend for you a book. Peter, can you throw that book to me?
I lent it out to numerous people, but I got it back this morning. I want to recommend this book to you, to every single one of you, actually.
Even if you're not yet a person of the Christian faith. This book will help you have better conversations with yourself and with others.
This book is very well written, as you well know. I read lots of books. I very, very rarely read a book that is so well written where they actually tell you what they're going to say, tell it to you in a helpful way, and then summarize what they said at the end of every chapter. So here's a little life hack for you. You could go through this book in about 20 minutes by reading the last page of every chapter.
Done.
But I want to recommend this book called Tactics. It is all about how we express the truth of our Christian convictions. It will really help you think through what is going on in our conversations around these things that matter. Yes, right around the things of Jesus, but also around topics that are difficult to discuss, topics where there's a lot of rage going on, topics that are uncomfortable. It will help you think these things through in a really helpful way. He has good illustrations. He will help you think of good questions to ask. He will sharpen your own thinking. Greg Koukl is great, really, really helpful. He'll also help you. Or this style of thinking will help you discern the lies, the half truths, the different things that we confront every day. You will have better conversations as a result of of reading this book.
So I encourage you to do that. I encourage a few of you to read it and discuss it together. Go after it, you'll learn lots. You'll be better at expressing your biblical and understood convictions. You'll be better at speaking your truth to the world.
So those are my recommendations. Let's become more courageous truth tellers. The world needs it. We need it. You need it.
Pray, Jesus, thank you for being the truth.
We want to be, Lord Jesus on the side of truth, which means we want to listen to you, because everyone who listens to you is on the side of truth.
And today, as we sit before you and under your word, we acknowledge that there are things, lots of things, we don't know about, we don't understand.
There's lots of confusing things going on.
But Lord Jesus, we look to you as the one who is the way, the truth, the life.
We look to you and we listen to you because we trust you and know that you are the one who speaks the truth, who embodies the truth, who sent us the Holy Spirit, who is the Spirit of truth, to guide us into all truth.
And with that, we can have a kind of proper confidence, a kind of holy boldness that isn't brash and isn't arrogant, but it's also not ashamed.
And so I pray, Lord Jesus, that you would increase within us this sincere conviction that we would be able to boldly proclaim the good news of who you are and what you've done, of who you are and who you've created us to be.
We'd be able to proclaim that to a world that needs to know the truth, the only truth that can set them free.
And so, Lord Jesus, fill us with your spirit of truth.
Give us the boldness to proclaim the good news of you.
We pray this in Jesus name, Amen.
Well, that was the third of our catchphrase conundrums. I encourage you to join us next week. Ditch whatever holiday plans you had for the long weekend in July and join us for the final one, the catchphrase, love is love.
[00:43:48] Speaker A: Thanks for listening in today.
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