.... continued...
This is why Jesus spoke so much about suffering. This is why the disciples suffered so greatly. It is because in our suffering, our reliance on our flesh, and its knowledge falls off, and we recognize just how weak we are, and it is in that place that God’s glory can come in and rest upon us. If we want to know Him, and walk in Him in truth and humility, we must be willing to suffer with Him. We must understand that the truth we think we have is indeed mixed with some deception, and GOD HAS ALLOWED THIS! It is only by allowing ourselves to go through the fire with Him, that we will be able to let the deceptions go, and His Truth will reign in us. The more we walk in the fire, the more we will understand just how little we know about Him, and the more we will desire to seek after Him, and to know Him.
Don’t be afraid to admit you have both truth and deception in your life. This is the avenue God has given us to seek after Him, to hunger and to thirst after Him, and for Him alone. He wants to reveal the deception to us, as we seek after Him, instead of us being content with one revelation, or truth about Him. He wants us to be willing to spit out the seeds of deception continually as we seek after the meat and truth of who He really is.
Another illustration of why truth and deception dwell together, much as good and evil at the same time coexist together in this world, is to look at the simple illustration of a battery. If a battery had two positive ends, and no negatives, there would be no power source produced. However, because there is both a positive and a negative, these work together to produce the necessary power. It is so in the world we live in. Without the forces of evil and good coexisting, there would be nothing productive accomplished. If all were positive, or good, what kind of a boring world would this be? If all were negative or evil, can you even imagine such a place? So then, in order to fulfill the need that God has in His heart desiring of fellowship, and communion with a being that chooses to love Him, He, in all his wisdom and knowledge, created both good and evil, positives and negatives, truth and deception, along with giving human beings a choice to choose. In this freedom, good and evil are allowed to coexist. It is only in the person of Jesus Christ that mankind can be freed to rise far above and beyond the negatives that are in this world, and from which life comes forth producing power that cannot be gained by any other means. Evil and good, the tares and the wheat, the positives and the negatives, truth, and deception will continue to remain an innate part of the world as we know it because that is how the power of Christ comes forth vibrantly in our lives.
Indeed, we will never “arrive” in this life at the complete essence of truth and knowledge of our Lord. Instead, the Bible tells us that we are pilgrims, and strangers, and our whole life will be spent in search of Him. We will continue to hunger and thirst after Him through all the days of our life. As humans, we cannot attain complete and total knowledge of Him, for it is too great for us! Yet, in His mercy, He will reveal Himself in dimensions, and facets to those who never cease to hunger and thirst after Him, and who are willing to pick up the cross and carry it daily, who continue daily in their unceasing hunger and thirst after Him.
This is indeed the truth… and anything else less than this will be deception.
Paul sums it up in this verse, one of the last epistles that he wrote before his death,
Philippians 3:10 “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death; if by any means I might attain unto the resurrection of the dead.”
And again,
Phil. 3:13-15 “Brethren, I count not myself to have apprehended, but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those things which are before,
I press towards the mark for the prize of the high callings of God in Christ Jesus.
Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you.”
Paul knew he hadn’t arrived, or apprehended, but what did he say we must do – forget the things that are behind us, and continue to reach forth unto Christ.
We must ever press towards Christ Jesus, being willing to suffer with Him, and in doing so, God will continue to reveal Himself to us, as we remember that we are pilgrims and strangers on this earth, and will never know or understand it all, but are content to live in humility, humbleness of mind with our focus on Christ Jesus and the prize that is set before us.
This is truth.
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