How to Handle Truth

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Monday, February 12. Owning or casually reading the Bible just isn't enough. Today's podcast helps followers of Jesus know how to handle the truth faithfully. What is truth? Well, in a society where every man does what is right within his own eyes, it is difficult to define truth or to find much of it. But if you look in the dictionary, it would probably say something like this, that truth is conformity to reality.

Conformity to reality or conformity to the facts. But if you were to ask in the scripture what is truth, the Bible says, thy word is truth. Jesus said, I am the truth. But now how does a man begin his first step to a truth? Somebody says, well, he goes to school the first grade. No. Somebody says, well, he learns truth from his mother's knee.

Well, maybe to some degree, but not necessarily. What step, what is the first step every man must take in order to find real truth about life? You know, personally, I could care a little about many facts in life, but there's some things that I want to know with all of my heart. Those truths that deal with life and death and present and future.

But where does a man go? What is the first step? This is the first step any person takes toward real, genuine truth about life. And that is to accept by faith that Jesus Christ is the son of God. He is the son of the only God, Jehovah, Yahweh, Elohim.

And that not only is he his son, but he is the savior whom that God sent into the world to save and redeem man from his sins. Now, listen, until a man makes that first vital step, he will never discover the truth. You show me anyone anywhere who denies Jesus Christ is the son of God, who refuses to have him in his life. And you will find attitudes and ideas and philosophies of error, about morality and everything else.

Why? Because Jesus said, I am the truth. I am the way.

He said, I am life. And to avoid him is to miss the truth. And you see, this is the reason many people not come to church. They are avoiding the truth.

They are resisting the truth of God. But all of us who are saved, we have accepted Jesus Christ as their savior. We've taken the first step toward the discovery of truth, because all truth about life is to be found in him. So how do you respond the truth? And let me give you seven ways that you and I need to handle truth and they all begin with A's so you can remember them.

The first one is availability. A believer ought to make himself or herself available to the truth. That is, when someone is going to share the truth, you ought to make yourself available to the truth. So that when you want to know the truth about life, what do you do? You go to the source book, you have the person of the Holy Spirit within you who is the teacher to expound and reveal to you and illuminate your mind to understand the truth. And you have in your hands the word of God, which is the truth.

All truth that you and I need to know about life is to be found in that book. So to close that book is to avoid the truth. To close that book is to ignore the truth. To close that book when God is convicting you is to resist the truth of God and to resist the truth is to do what? To resist the truth is to choose error, to choose evil, to choose a lie. And you see, that's exactly what the devil wants. That's why we have a battle today going on about whether the Bible is true or not, whether it's in Aaron or not, whether it's the word of God or not. That's the devil's lie. Because the devil knows when you and I accept that as the source book for direction and instruction, he knows he's sunk.

So first of all, let me ask you a question. Are you making yourself available to the truth that God wants to implant within your life, to work into your life, to make it a part of your life? And you see, when people merely go to church to hear sermons, they can turn this off and turn that off. But if they're listening for truth, if they have a desire to know truth, they're not simply listening to sermons, they're seeking God. And I want to ask you, are you as available to hear the truth of God as you are available to hear your favorite television program? I'll tell you how you can answer that. You look back this past week and see if you stayed up later to read the Bible and to pray or you stayed up later to watch a television program.

Then you'll decide whether you're making yourself available for weeks. The second word I want you to get down is accept. Not only must we make ourselves available to hear the truth, we must accept the truth when it is spoken. It is one thing to be in the presence of truth. It is one thing to make yourself accessible to truth. It is something else to accept truth. Now let me ask you a question. Why is it when we hear the truth and know the truth, we will not accept it as true?

I'll tell you why. We do not accept truth oftentimes because we're afraid, we're afraid it's going to require something we either feel like we're incapable of doing or we don't want to do. And so what do you do? If you say, I want to be what God wants me to be, but don't tell me about that. I want to be what God wants me to be, but let's leave this area out. If we want the truth, we must be willing to accept the truth, face the truth. We must be open to the truth. He says, I have chosen the way of truth. He has to accept the truth. The third word I want you to get, and that is apply. It is one thing to make yourself accessible to it. It is something else to accept it, but it is something even more that you and I begin to apply the truth.

Now watch this. Truth on applied will be lost .Truth on applied will be lost. You can hear all kinds of things, but if you're not willing to apply to your life, Satan will steal it out of your life. It is application that makes truth yours. It is application that makes truth real to you and me. Truth is the life of Christ. Truth is the teachings of the Lord. Truth is God on earth living within humanity. But you see, if you don't want to live that kind of life, you must avoid it.

How many of us are applying half what we know? Let me give you two or three verses. In Psalm chapter 40 and verse 11, listen, he says, Withhold not thou thy tender mercies from me, O Lord. Let thy loving kindness and thy truth continually preserve me. Now listen, it is interesting to me how many times the Old Testament that loving kindness and truth are together. The loving kindness of the Lord, the truth of God. Now listen, he says, Let thy loving kindness and thy truth continually preserve me.

Listen, watch this. Truth preserves a nation. Truth preserves a family. Truth preserves individuals. Truth helps us to see things as they are. Truth helps us to see reality. We're not fog and faded and blinded by error when we know the truth and are willing to apply that truth to our hearts. You see, truth cuts through all the fact of the philosophies of life that are meaningless, full of error and lead to destruction and ruin and chaos. But a believer has the truth within him and it is truth applied that makes the difference in our heart. For example, the Bible says, We not deceived, God is not marked. For whatsoever man soweth, that shall he also reap.

He'll reap what he sows later than he sows more than he sows. That is the principle. Now listen, now watch this. You may deny the truth. You may avoid the truth. You may resist the truth. You may ignore the truth, but it does not render the truth, truthless. And you see, this is what people seem to think. If I don't want to believe that, that makes it null and void. Listen, if all the people who filled this earth of ours, if we all got together and had a vote and we all voted that Galatians chapter six and those verses that say, Be not deceived, God is not marked.

Whatever man sows, that shall he also reap. We all vote unanimously that that is no longer the truth. What do you think that would do? It wouldn't alter one single iota or facet. One single bit of that truth, not one bit of it would be altered. The truth still remains because the Bible says, Thy truth is eternal. You cannot destroy the truth and we are breaking and destroying ourselves by error because we refuse to accept the truth. Instead of applying the truth, we want to pad it with error, with Satan's error. We send our children to school and they hear all kinds of things and mom and dad, we have the responsibility of making ourselves accessible to the truth, accepting the truth and applying the truth in our lives so that our children will see the application and will develop the habit likewise of obeying the truth. Fourth word I want you to get down is aggressively seeking truth, aggressively seeking truth. Now back to Psalm 119 for a moment and verse 72. Listen to what he says. By aggressively seeking the truth, it is one thing to make yourself available to it. It's something else to apply it in your life and accept it as a fact.

But it's not just that God's people ought to be aggressively actively seeking truth. Who is God? What is he like?

Who is he really? What is the Lord Jesus Christ like? What is the truth of the word of God?

Aggressively seeking truth. In the, let's see, in the 72nd verse of this 119th chapter, what does he say? The law of thy mouth is better unto me than thousands of gold and silver.

Now I'll tell you there are not many folks who can say that. That is that the word of God is more precious to them than gold and silver. Now let's just be honest for a moment. If you and I believe that gold and silver was no match for truth, we would spend more time seeking truth. It would be a priority in our life. We would seek to know the truth in our business. And we'd be looking for truth and ways to express truth. We'd be expressing truth and living truth in our home. We'd be building truth in the relationship with our friends. We would search out the truth about finances. We'd search out the truth about the future. The search, the desire, the hunger, the thirst for truth and the application and the living out of the truth would have a number one priority in our life. But I want to tell you something you sit week after week and watch one television program after that and fill your minds with rot and filth and junk and error. I want to tell you what are you doing?

You're choosing error and filth and garbage the truth. What would happen if somebody came to your house tomorrow morning? I mean one of those big garbage trucks and right on your front door just dumped the whole load. You laugh today because you know it hadn't been done.

You wouldn't laugh if someone were to do it. But you see if you open your minds to garbage and filth what are you saying? You're saying I prefer error. I prefer sensuality. I prefer untruth. I prefer humanism. I prefer hopelessness.

I prefer examples and illustrations and pictures of things that can do nothing but destroy me and wreck and ruin my family. I prefer all of those things to the truth that will make it possible for me to survive when everything else around me is fallen. And the truth of it is that is the truth. Amen?

Then you ought to stop watching it. Truth unless it is applied is of no value. But you see aggressively seeking truth. Are you motivating your children to read the Bible? What are you doing dad to stir and motivate your children to search the truth? What are you doing to explain the truth to them?

Are you taking the time to share with them? Truth. They're looking for truth and dad you and I we have the greatest opportunity of anybody in the world anywhere anytime under any circumstance to instill within the hearts and minds of our children the truth because they trust us to be trustworthy, faithful and truthful to them. Verse 127. Therefore, I love thy commandments above gold.

Yea above fine gold. Do we love the law of God more than we do money? Do we love the law of God more than we do success? Do we love the law of God more than we do the approval of men? All right back to another word not only to aggressively seek it, but the fifth thing is to abandon ourselves to that truth.

Now what do I mean by that? When the Lord brings into your life a truth we have one or two or three responses as a Christian we can say well now Lord I want to consider that. Now listen if you do not abandon yourself to the truth if you do not accept it as the truth and then take the leap this is the way I'm going to live I'm going to live in the truth of what God is teaching me then each time you face a given situation you have to make a decision whether you're going to be truthful or untruthful whether you're going to do the right truthful thing or one that is not. Abandonment says this is the truth of God and I give up my rights to myself the desires of my heart to live in the truth that God has given me. The truth of God involves every single area of our life and there is nothing you and I need to know that God has not placed in this world. Look at the 25th Psalm for a moment in the 25th Psalm and the fourth and fifth verse listen David said show me thy ways oh Lord teach me thy paths lead me in thy truth and teach me for thou art the God of my salvation on thee do I wait all the day is that the prayer of your heart show me thy ways oh Lord lead me into truth if that is not our prayer it may be because we already know the truth and we're not quite sure we want to abandon ourselves the truth so that we can be trustworthy before God walking in truth you see to walk in truth is to walk in the light of our Lord next word allow others in on the truth that God is teaching you allow others to share the truth that God is teaching you see why does God give us truth why does he teaches those things that change your life he teaches them first of all that we might be conformed to his likeness and his will in our life the second reason he gives them is that you and I may become the channels through which other people can receive truth you see God has given us his men and his women saints committed godly men and women learning the great lessons of life and you and I come along and they're able to pull that truth out and we're accessible willing to accept it willing to apply it right on down the line then that truth becomes a part of us it becomes a working part of our life practically and we're able to share it with someone else and their life is changed and so truth is disseminated in that way you see but too many of us know far more than we've ever been able and been willing to share with someone else all of us know something this morning that will change someone else's life if we just share it with them and then one last thing and this is the key assume responsibility for the truth that you know you know what that says it says my friend that all of us who know truth and we know we don't know all the truth we have it right here and we're in the process of the Lord teaching us all that truth but now watch this one thing listen do you know why some of you have not been able to come to some truth that you'd like to come to because you're unwilling to listen on God's terms you're waiting for God to pat it waiting for God to soften it down waiting for God to trim it up a little bit waiting to shape it into your mold he's not going to do that truth shapes us we don't shape truth truth shapes us into God's mold and all of us any man who's willing to assume responsibility for the truth that he knows is saying dear God I also assume the responsibility that one day I will be accountable for what I've done with that truth some of you are unsaved never trusted Jesus Christ as you're saving the truth says turn your life over to Christ you'll be saved some of you never walked in the spirit the Bible says turn your life over to him he'll teach you how to walk in the spirit the Bible deals with our faith our family our finances our future our relationships our friendships there is no area in our life that God will not take care of if we will trust him and walk in truth thank you for listening to how to handle the truth if you'd like to know more about charles stanley or in touch ministries stop by in touch dot o-r-g this podcast is a presentation of in touch ministries atlanta georgia