How Do You Feel About Truth? Well... what's the answer? How do you feel about truth? The answer does not affect truth, of course, but does indeed make a big difference to your own life. Truth is truth. Yes, truth exists. Yes it can be known by mankind (John 8:31,32). God intended for truth to trump feelings, but modern culture puts feelings above truth. Here a danger arises for your children. Many of their friends believe that feelings are truth! Searching for what feels good eventually roadblocks true progress in life and begins to kill a one's relationship with God. The belief that feelings are the basis of truth will eventually replaces one's relationship with God with a ³feeling² that one can know spiritual truth without God and His word. The loss of genuine spiritual truth is the inevitable result. What many do not see until it is too late is the terrible result of losing truth. Since it is the truth that makes you free (spiritually speaking, John 8:31, 32) then it follows that without spiritual truth you will not be spiritually free. That is exactly what is happening to our children! When they do not abide in the word (v. 31) they do not become true disciples of Jesus. Net result: they do not know His truth and are not spiritually free. In Jeremiah 6, we see the brokenness of God's people, the loss of blessings and the impending doom of their nation. The only thing that could restore their blessing is a healthy dose of truth and living by that truth. But the prophets and the priests are dealing falsely with the people rather than dealing in truth! Read carefully: Why do we, even as adults, often prefer false peace of ³feeling good² to truth? Because we are spoiled. We live in such a blessed nation at such a blessed time that we can fuel the facade of falsehood and still hold on to material blessings for a while. We can put on as if we are pulling it off! We can live a fairly full life in a land of plenty and do so with little deference to Jesus and His truth. Kids see it clearly. Mom and Dad rely on jobs and not God. Mom and Dad are careful to build a facade of earthly peace but no foundation of spiritual truth. The siren song of psychology supplants a biblical quest for truth in scripture. The lure of logic without Lordship steals trust in God's truth. For a teen seeking acceptance from peers, going along with the crowd becomes an exercise in rejecting God's truth. The peer group then commends actions based on feelings and the teen is on his or her way to placing feelings above truth. But eventually the truth catches up with us. Eventually we can no longer convince ourselves that peace is a reality. The facade fails and truth triumphs. Divorce, loss of respect and breakdown of the family are the symptoms that most fail to see as the outcome of a simple consequence of replacing truth with feelings. There is hope! OPEN THE BOOK! Read together. Help the kids understand Colossians 2. Help them pre-think the ways that the world can take them ³captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ (Colossians 2:8). When children see mom and dad using God's book in actual, practical ways, they begin to trust its truth! When parents help them see how biblical truths combat worldly philosophies they seek God's truth as a guide for life and stop placing feelings above truth. The best approach is to bow to God's truth, respond to that truth and live (abide) in it (John 15:7). Then and only then will your family overcome the sinful luxury of living from feelings rather than truth. Then and only then will your children find the truth that makes them free. Ray Wallace
"For from the least of them even to the greatest of them, Everyone is greedy for gain, And from the prophet even to the priest Everyone deals falsely. And they have healed the brokenness of My people superficially, Saying, 'Peace, peace,' But there is no peace.² - Jeremiah 6:13-14.
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