Given this very great Truth — Jesus came to us, for us, died and rose again — what are we supposed to do?  We’ve heard the Truth.  We understand the Truth.  We know what the Truth is.  

Now we must believe the Truth.  To believe it is to love it.  

Romans 10:9-10 — “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.”

(A quick sidebar: if it’s starting to feel like the only book of the Bible I’m familiar with is Romans, it’s sort of true. It just so happens that my Read the Bible in a year plan has me in Romans the first half of October.  It’s been helpful.)

Once we’ve been told the Truth, we are to believe it.  And once we believe it, we are saved. Forgiven. Redeemed.  

So simple and yet so hard.


For me, it’s often easier to believe this big Truth than the “smaller” ones that come as a result.  I know God loves me and gave His Son’s life for me, but I doubt that He actually likes me.  It’s that kind of thing that we will spend the rest of the month savoring.


(and yes, it is October 9 and I am writing Day 8. I forgot yesterday until I was already in bed. now to write #9)

Today I begin right where I left off yesterday.  You see, if we look again at some of the verses I posted yesterday, we find just what I promised we would…a big BUT. The biggest BUT of all time.  A life-changing BUT! (Ok, ok, I’ll stop)

Romans 3:23–“All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.”

Romans 6:23 — “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

God saw our wretched state, the prison of our own making, and sent His Son to set things right. Jesus came and walked in the same broken world we live in, felt the same fears, experienced the same hurts, and faced the same obstacles.  He tasted the full measure of our humanity, but responded differently than every one of us.  He never sinned.  He lived the type of life we’d all say was worthy of “good karma”, or eternal blessing.  But instead of receiving the glory due Him, Jesus was crucified on a cross — the most humiliating and tortuous death.  This was our punishment that He bore.  God’s wrath for us on him.  And then he died.  Not at all the ending He deserved.

Romans 5:8 — “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

He died and was dead three days.  BUT (this is the biggest of all the buts) on the morning of the third day He rose from the dead.  He reigns in life and invites us to share in His reward.

Romans 5:17 — “For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”



So now what? I will tell you tomorrow.

Today we will look at Scripture to see what it says about our condition, about the world in which we live, and the potential outcomes of the way things are.  It’s not going to be a happy day.

I’ll let the Truth of God’s Word speak for itself.

Romans 1:18 – “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men who suppress the truth by their wickedness…Therefore God gave them over in their sinful desires of their hearts…They exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than their Creator.”

Our world is broken. Men have turned from the Almighty God to worship themselves. God, who is all powerful, could have prevented their hearts from turning to wickedness, but he did not. He gave us the ability to choose – a risk on His part – so that we would also have the ability to choose Him.

But we did not choose Him.  Not one of us has.

Isaiah 53:6 – “All we, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to our own way…”

So what now? What does it mean.

Paul tells us in Romans 3, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.”

And the consequence?

Romans 6:23 – “The wages of sin is death.”

Eternal death. Eternal judgment. 

Romans 2:8-9 “For those who are self-seeking and who reject the truth and follow evil. there will be wrath and anger. There will be trouble and distress for every human being who does evil…” [and we already established that’s all of us]

Like I said, not a happy day.  We have fallen short of God’s standard, both unwillingly and quite willfully.  And our punishment is clear: trouble, distress, DEATH.

It sounds so hopeless. What now? What’s the point?  

Don’t worry.  There’s a big BUT coming tomorrow.

This week we will begin to answer the question: What is the Truth?  Today I want to look at our Source of Truth.  

John begins his gospel with an answer to this question: “The Word [Jesus] became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”

Jesus, God’s one and only Son, came to us full of Truth.  Earlier, John wrote that Jesus “the Word” was God, meaning that God, too, is full of Truth.  

Jesus Himself furthers this idea, telling his disciples, “I am the truth.”  

John later gives Jesus the name “Faithful and True” (Revelation 19:11).

The Old Testament also testifies to God as Truth.  “And the words of the Lord are flawless, like silver purified in a crucible, like gold refined seven times” (Psalm 12:6).

He is our Truth.  His words are flawless and pure.  They’ve been tested and found to be trustworthy.

Tomorrow we will look more closely at His words and uncover the Truth that changes everything.

Today I find myself asking this question: Where is Truth? Where has it gone? 

Yesterday I told you were haven’t lost all sense of Truth, but yet even this week our country has been devastated by the actions of those who clearly have completely disregarded it. 

Scripture tells us that this is nothing new.  Isaiah speaks again and again about this. He mourns that justice and integrity have disappeared. 

“Justice is driven back, 
and righteousness stands at a distance; 
truth has stumbled in the streets,
honesty cannot enter.
Truth is nowhere to be found,
and whoever shuns evil becomes a prey.”
~Isaiah 59: 14-15~

Our world needs Truth.  People are desperate for it.  Dying for it.

So what is it? Where is it? I promise I’ll get there next week.

I guess you can blame my mom and dad for this one.  In a way, truth was destined to be a part of me.  My name, Allison, means “little truthful one.”  While ultimately they chose my name because they liked it, they were well aware of the meaning and for that reason I like to think I’ve been called to love the truth.  To testify to the truth.

So why is truth so important?

Here are a few verses that give us a hint.

John 8:32 “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

1 John 2:20 – “But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.”

3 John 3-4 – “It gave me great joy when some believers came and testified about your faithfulness to the truth, telling how you continue to walk in it. I have no greater joy than to hear my children are walking in the truth.”

Because once you hear it and believe it, Truth changes everything.  It frees us.   We must learn to love the Truth because our very lives depend on it, as it says in the verse I posted yesterday.

Truth is also important on an ethical level.  Even those who don’t believe in God acknowledge that some socially accepted degree of truth must exist for the sake of humanity.

Think about it.  The very art of communication requires that we tell the truth.  Imagine living in the world where we didn’t have at least the expectation that people tell the truth.  Life would quickly become chaotic without the norm of honesty.  Similarly, truth is necessary for human dignity.  If you believe human life is of any amount of value, you must live honestly and assume that others are telling you the truth as well.  How would you ever even make a decision? 

I know some of you may think we already live in the chaotic world described above.  I assure you that while things seem bad, we aren’t there *yet*.  We are still more or less surprised when big lies are exposed and people behave dishonestly.  We still appalled by those actions and are outraged to have been deceived and betrayed.  The day someone’s double life is exposed and no one bats an eye: that’s when we’ll know we’ve lost sight of all Truth.

Truth is absolutely necessary for society to function.  Our lives are ultimately dependent on Truth.

I guess you could call this my October resolution.  I am participating in 31 Days – a writing challenge in which you pick a topic and post about it every day in October.  I’ve read several of these series in the past couple years and I’ve always thought about trying it but always wimped out….mostly because I never had anything I was anxious to write about for 31 consecutive days.

But here I am.  Writing.  I guess you can thank Emily Freeman, because last night I finished her book, A Million Little Ways: Uncover the Art You Were Made to Live and I felt convicted.  I need to stop giving myself excuses for why I’m not “ready” to share my art with the world. I want to write. I’ve wanted to since I was a girl.  I’ve written so many blog posts that I never shared because they weren’t good enough.

But here I am, God’s poem.  And today and the rest of October I will stop censoring myself and I will write.  And I will write about Truth and what I have learned to love this year.

My inspiration comes from 2 Thessalonians, and that is where we will start today.  The phase “to love the truth” is actually found in a word of judgment in chapter 2 verse 10: “They perish because they refused to love the truth and so be saved.”

Wow. There’s already so much write here.  To love the Truth brings our salvation.  I’ll be looking at Truth these next 31 days.  What is Truth?  How do we love it?  Join me this month as I think through it right here.