You can't handle the truth!

Okay since so many of you read this blog, I thought Matt's devotional for the BRIDGE was good for this page today, more of you look at this than get our e-mail from the BRIDGE, so here it is and if you would like to be added to our e-mail just let us know. Joelle
ps (I still have not figured out how to get our web page up for the BRIDGE) if you know anything about godaddy.com give me a call......
and from my good friend Susanne, maybe there is a sermon in here somewhere???????

Jon Benet. Just one name, yet currently it brings all kinds of thoughts into our heads. Many of us have seen the reports on the news recently of an arrest of a man living in the Far East who has confessed to the murder of Jon Benet Ramsey, the little beauty queen whose murder captured the headlines nationally ten years ago, and since that time has remained one of the most compelling of unsolved mysteries of our time.
Yet very quickly after the arrest, questions regarding the truthfulness of the confession arose. Was this really the perpetrator, or was it someone who wanted his name and face plastered all over the headlines in a sick ploy to get attention? It comes down to the question; What is the truth?
I'm reminded of a conversation that took place over two thousand years ago between two men; one possessing tremendous earthly power standing before a man he took to be completely powerless, a man whose life he held in the palm of his hands. Say the word Pilate, and this man before you dies. Practice mercy, and he lives. There conversation is brief, and ends with a question, a question that you may have considered at some point in time.

Pilate asked him, "Are you the king of the Jews?"

"Is that your idea," Jesus asked, "or did others talk to you about me?"

"Am I a Jew?" Pilate replied, "It was your people and your chief priests who handed you over to me. What is it
you have done?"

Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews.
But now my kingdom is from another place."

"You are a king, then!" said Pilate.

Jesus answered, "You are right in saying I am a king. In face, for this reason I was born, and for this I came into the world,
to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me."

"What is truth?" Pilate asked.
(John 18:33-38)

If we thought we were the first generation to struggle with what truth is, we see that the struggle is over two thousand years old. We desperately search for that which is true in our lives, knowing that if we can discover truth, it can form the foundation for all of our decisions, all of our actions, all of our yearnings. In effect, to discover just one thing that is true is to uncover one king in a world of jesters, and ultimately to uncover something worth living, and dying for.
One of my favorite bands, The Call, sing a song with a four phrase chorus that sums up how much truth is worth to us. It says this,

What do you live for?
What would you die for?
What do you stand for?
What are you made of?

If just one thing is true, or if just one person is true, or if we serve a God that is the source of truth, then He is worth living for, He is worth dying for, He is worth standing for, He is worth us being made from His stock. At one point Jesus told his listeners that He was the resurrection and the life, after which he asked them, "Do you believe this?" Well, do you? Do you believe that He is the truth? Do you believe that He is the resurrection? Do you believe that in Him we find life? If so, then live for Him, die for Him, stand for Him, and be made of Him. Anything less would be to treat Him as if He were a lie. Let us not be people who say we believe, then act as if it were all a lie. If we do, we say to God and to the world that we can't handle the truth. And if we can't handle it, we can't expect to help anyone else handle it either.

Matt