Episode 1. Love Rejoices in the Truth
There are so many people in this world who are living a lie. It’s a bold statement I know but just take a look around, how many people see themselves for what they truly are? How many people …
There are so many people in this world who are living a lie. It’s a bold statement I know but just take a look around, how many people see themselves for what they truly are? How many people see others for what they truly are?
I have to be honest with you, for the first thirty-six years of my life I was pretty much living a lie, here is what that lie looked like. You’re told in this world that if you work hard enough you can do anything you want to, you can be anyone you want to be, you can have just about anything you want to have, just work hard and you’ll make it, just work hard and you’ll be successful.
So I did, I worked incredibly hard as a military officer and then in my own IT consulting firm and with my business partners we were pretty successful, we had an international consulting practice. I drove a big expensive car, I lived in a big house and you know what, I was on my way to real success.
The problem was that, on the inside and let’s face it that’s where you live, that’s where your emotions and your feelings and your thoughts are, it just didn’t satisfy me. This was a real insight for me, success isn’t satisfying. The world will tell you that it is, but it simply isn’t, it’s hollow. Any happiness or satisfaction it brings you is fleeting, here today, gone tomorrow.
So in a very real sense I felt like a fraud. Other people looked at me and they saw success but I was discovering something else entirely. And when other people looked at me they saw a tough, hardnosed so and so who’d climb over anybody to get where he was going.
You see that’s the other part of the lie that I was living, I didn’t see people for who they really were, I didn’t see other people’s gifts and abilities and talents and creativity. Other people didn’t really have any worth to me except to the extent that they could act as stepping stones for me to walk over to get where I was going.
Now that’s quite an admission really isn’t it? But there you go, that was the lie that I was living and these days as I look around I see so many other people living out their versions of life’s lie. “You’ll be happy if you have this, if you buy a cute puppy then you’ll be happy, if you hit budget this month, if you do this, if you do that, then you’ll be successful”. And so what happens is that the world has become uber- competitive, the world has become transactional and in the middle of all that love has become conditional.
As I said earlier we’re in the middle of a series of messages called Love Is based on that powerful Scripture about love that we find in 1 Corinthians chapter 13. Let’s just have another listen, 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verses 4 to 7:
Love is patient, love is kind. Love isn’t envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It doesn’t insist on its own way, it’s not irritable or resentful. It doesn’t rejoice in wrong doing but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.
And the part that I’d like to take a brief look at today is the bit where it says that love doesn’t rejoice in wrong doing but it rejoices in the truth. To be honest I think most of us don’t think all that often of love and truth in the one sentence, what does truth have to do with love after all, good question? And the answer is rather a lot.
I mentioned earlier how badly I treated people back in those days when I was living my personal version of the lies that we live and that’s what happens. When we’re living a lie, when we’re kidding ourselves and we’ve lost sight of the truth we end up treating people badly and we justify that by telling ourselves that our career is more important, our success is more important or whatever it is that we’re striving for is more important.
And so what we end up doing is exactly what the Apostle Paul writes here in 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 6, we end up rejoicing in wrong doing instead. Now not everyone is a Type A driven personality like me, some people live their lie at the opposite end of that spectrum, some people believe their lie that they are worthless, no good, failures, there’s no hope, nothing is ever going to change.
These days we have a label for all of that, we bundle it all together and we call it low self esteem and those people end up living lives as victims. And in the process they treat other people badly as well because they have no love to give, they’re so insecure that when anyone ever disagrees with them, whenever anyone doesn’t treat them exactly the way they believe they ought to be treated they start behaving badly.
Love doesn’t rejoice in wrong doing, love rejoices in the truth. Makes sense when you look at it that way. There’s a parable that Jesus told that’s had a huge impact on my life in helping me to see the truth. Have a listen, Luke chapter 18 verses 9 to 14:
He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: Two men went up to the Temple to pray, one a Pharisee, the other a tax collector. The Pharisee standing by himself was praying thus, ‘God I thank you that I’m not like other people, thieves, rogues, adulterers or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.
But the tax collector standing far off wouldn’t even look up to heaven but he was beating his breasts and saying, ‘God have mercy on me, a sinner.’ I tell you this man went down to his home justified rather than the other one. For all who exalt themselves will be humbled but all who humble themselves will be exalted.
I used to be like the Pharisee, all full of self righteousness, the thing that changed me was encountering Jesus. Having a personal encounter, getting to know Him, giving my life to Him. It didn’t take long for me to realise in the presence of Jesus that I was living a lie. And now when I go to God I feel so much more like that tax collector totally reliant on God’s grace to deliver me from my sin.
Jesus said this very same thing in a different way during His Sermon on the Mount, Matthew chapter 5 verse 3:
Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
In other words those who are going to inherit the Kingdom of God are the ones who realise their spiritual poverty; those who get real with themselves, those who see things for what they are, who see themselves and others for who they are. Okay so I’ve laid my soul bare to you today, I’ve shared with you part of my journey from a life of lies to a life of truth, a journey which by the way has a long way yet to run, none of us has arrived yet, at least I haven’t.
But what about your life, to what extent are you living a life that’s tainted, distorted, misdirected by some lies that the world’s dropped on your head and into your heart? What are you striving for, perhaps or what sense of inadequacy is robbing you of the ability to love? I know they’re hard questions but they’re questions that need to be asked and answered if you’re going to live in the freedom that Jesus came to give you.
It can be scary to confront those lies, it’s hard to admit that we’ve not been loving people the way we should because we’re the ones who’ve been getting things wrong. But there’s no need to be afraid, the Apostle John puts it this way, 1 John chapter 4 verse 18:
There is no fear in love but perfect love casts out all fear. For fear has to do with punishment and whoever fears hasn’t reached perfection in love.
My friend Jesus came to set you free and as He said it Himself when the Son of man sets you free you’ll be free indeed. The reason we’re chatting about this today is that I believe that Jesus wants to set you free, today, not just a little bit but completely. Free indeed, how about it? Love doesn’t rejoice in wrong doing, love rejoices in the truth.
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