Freedom in Truth

I’ve said this before, and I’m sure that I’ll say it again because it bears repeating: God does not expose our wickedness out of spite. When the truth about us is exposed, whether it’s through confession or confrontation, we are not meant to remain in our evil. We’re meant to come out of it, to be cleansed and healed and freed.

Until I was exposed to the Light, I believed that there were any number of ways that I could change. Surely intercession, deliverance, fasting, and intense prayer were the keys to a brand new me! How about intense sessions of revoking curses, rebuking Satan, and replacing those curses with blessing upon blessing? Offering a sacrifice of thanksgiving in a place of great personal bitterness? Taking responsibility for my wrong response to the life God gave me? All of these are wonderful and even necessary, but they are no substitute for the simple truth. In fact, I know firsthand that if you avoid the truth, then none of these dealings have the power to change you or heal you or save you. I know this because I tried.

In the dark, I thought that the worst thing in the world was being exposed. I didn’t think that I could bear the shame and reproach. And the main reason that I thought that was because I believed that I would be exposed and then left to sit in my wickedness. Because I had tried everything BUT telling the absolute truth about who I was, I didn’t believe that I could ever truly change. Life stretched out before me like an endless AA meeting, where I was always a sinner with no hope of true, complete healing. Honestly, in that scenario, I’d rather keep the booze.

I thought that the truth would kill me. I was a little bit right and a lot wrong. The Light of the truth did kill me, but that wasn’t a life worth living anyway. What did I lose? Torment, doubt, crippling fear, repugnant arrogance, gnawing bitterness and envy, grief that I couldn’t bear, depression, fatigue—I lost all the things I’d been trying so unsuccessfully to exorcise in the first place.

God exposed me through HUGE and ongoing confrontation – wrathful, righteous, unflinching confrontation that pulled no punches and saved me. It killed me, yes, but I knew the truth and the truth had set me free, just like Jesus said it would. In fact, receiving the whole Truth enabled a new and totally different Jennifer to come into being.

There was no other way out of the old me, the horrible me, the “me” that I wanted so desperately to change. Jesus was pretty clear on this point when He said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (Jn. 14:6). It’s really simple, but it’s absolutely not easy.

You will never know the strange and wondrous power of Truth apart from dealing with Him directly. If you devote your entire life to memorizing scripture and partaking of every kind of spiritual healing/growth endeavor but refuse the truth when it comes, you will never die. So you will also never live. You will stay the same, day in and day out. And no matter how hard you try, you’ll never know God.

The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him sincerely and in truth.
Psalm 145:18 AMP