Writing on the prompt word “True” for…  

Five Minute Friday

TRUE? What’s True?

In the last ten years of my life, especially in the last five, I have been utterly astounded, rocked, knocked to the ground stunned, over how many things and people (really people in all cases, in the final analysis) have proved false that I had thought true.

Close to my life, many were. People of God, or so I thought. People I thought so highly of… People in family, people in church, organizations I’d thought I could trust… on and on. And I’d really thought I was pretty discerning, not easily duped.

I think of the scripture in the words of the prophet who says the best of them is like a thornbush… (Micah 7:2-4)

One day when I had trouble with a skilled debater’s assault upon my beliefs, upon the verity of the very word of God (a person whose occupation supposedly was upholding that verity), Husband sat me down across from him and said, “Now, tell me what you know.”

My start was slow, even begrudging. I said I didn’t know what I knew. I didn’t know if I knew anything.

He just repeated his question.

“Well…” I said, after a while, “I KNOW that there’s a Creator. I know all this didn’t just make itself.”

“What else do you know?” he queried.

Silence.

And then I began to recall the uncanny deliverances in my life and the timing of benevolences and the weirdness of coincidences in answer to prayers…

And I knew He had been there, heard, and helped.

And I knew His word had given me right guidance, and comfort, and strength…

And I knew…

I knew what was true.

I knew He was true!

He’s never proved false. “Slow” sometimes according to my impatience, but never false.

Not always responding with the answer I wanted, but always with my ultimate best.

Always true.

I know that’s true.

 

8 thoughts on “TRUE? What’s True?”

  1. Yes. It is so important and helpful to go back to our own personal experiences and see how God has been there for us. I’m sorry that people have let you down and shown themselves to be false. I pray that others keep coming into your life who remind you, like your husband did, of who God really is and who you are in Him.

    Hopping over from everydayawe.com for Five Minute Friday.

    1. Thanks for your comment, Stephanie. That’s just the truth about real life, once we come to know it. And sometimes circumstances shake us into questioning and not being certain of answers. Most important is knowing we really can trust Him who is forever True. Glad to meet you! God bless!

      1. I ought to add, Stephanie, that it wasn’t really that these people and organizations let me down, but that they proved shockingly untrue to God and presenting a false front. If you haven’t met up with this yet, you are likely to sometime. It has a tendency to rock you, to doubt other things you’ve believed to be true. At such times how very important it is to stop and consider the kind of things my husband steered me into realizing fully once again, the unshakable truths about God, about Christ, and why we know personally and deeply that they’re true.

  2. We have seen it happen when good “christian” friends prove weak to temptation etc. Yet God is faithful and we can know the truth by looking back. Good thing to have a husband help you to remember the Goodness of God.

  3. My family has experienced this same disappointment. It’s hard to keep from becoming entirely cynical. I think it was Gandhi that said “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ”. Nevertheless, the ‘true’ realizations you came to with the help of your obviously wise husband (I have one of those too, and I too wrote about mine just yesterday!) served as an inspiration to me as to how I might revisit this subject with my sons who were entirely disillusioned by the experiences. So thank you for this…and thank that wise husband too. 🙂

    1. Lisa,
      I’m so glad you left this comment. I wasn’t entirely comfortable publishing this post, but went ahead and did it because there are many who have experienced things like you’re referring to—though a lot of others don’t “get” this, thinking it’s maybe somebody just getting their feelings hurt over some momentary injury. Too often that may be because we don’t see what we don’t want to see. How sad, how deplorable, that anyone can truthfully say, like Ghandi, “Your Christians are so unlike your Christ”! None of us are perfect, but I’m afraid Christ’s bride is at present in quite a sick state. I pray that God will make and keep me well and enable me to reflect Him adequately enough that others will see the truth of who He is instead of being confounded in it.
      Thanks so much for visiting. I am going to be praying for you and yours, especially your sons. May this make them ultimately stronger in their faith, and in the understanding that it isn’t groups of people in whom we are to put our trust, or even man’s organized “Church,” but in the living Christ.

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