HIS WORD IS TRUTH

"Make them holy in the truth; your word is truth." [John 17:17 (CEB)]

In Chapter 17 of St John's Gospel Jesus is in the Upper Room with His disciples praying for them and for all the believers to come. How did you come to know the Lord? In order to truly know Him, we must be willing to be open to the Holy Spirit, who Jesus also calls the Spirit of Truth. The Holy Spirit reveals Jesus to us and helps us to believe the truth about who God is and what He hopes for us and expects from us as written in the Holy Bible.

We can only be made holy by the Holy Spirit in Christ Jesus when we abide in Him and He abides in us. We cannot be righteous on our own. Only God is holy and righteous. The Spirit of Truth helps us to know that God exists and that He is all that the Bible says He is. The more we open our hearts to the Lord, the more we come to truly know Him in Jesus Christ.

God does not want people just to believe in Him. The Lord created each one of us for His own sake -- in order to enjoy a relationship based in love with Him. The only way for us to have this relationship with God is to get to know Him day by day as the Holy Spirit reveals Jesus Christ to us and helps us to gain new insight into His character through what is written in the Bible and through how He interacts with us in our lives.

People who truly know the Lord come to believe in no uncertain terms because of personal experiences with Him mediated by the Holy Spirit. The faith that comes from being in this loving relationship is not just faith because of believing tenets and doctrine. True faith is a gift that we receive from God. It does not come just from reading and studying the Bible, but truly getting to know the Lord cannot come without knowing the Bible and the truth of it revealed to us by the Holy Spirit.

If you already know the Lord, my prayer for you is that you will continue to open your heart to Him because there are deeper and deeper levels of faith and the Lord has many more gifts and blessings for you than you have already experienced.

If you don't know the Lord, my prayer for you, as ever, is that you will give Him a chance to show you that He is God and that He loves you. There are many expressions of spirituality in the world. We can live our lives working hard to ignore God and who we are in spirit or we can seek a variety of spiritual realities. But when you truly seek God, you will find Him in Jesus Christ.

The Bible exists as a whole. Its purpose is to be the record of the witness of those who know God the Creator, and who know that the Creator became incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth, the Messiah or Anointed One -- the Savior. Even if we come to believe the Bible through willful decision of our minds, true faith in God in Christ Jesus comes only into our hearts through the revelation of the Holy Spirit. This is the truth that sets us free in Christ Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.

As ever, my prayer for you, Beloved, is that you are free as only the Lord in Christ can make you free from slavery to sin and death -- free to be who you were created to be . . . free in the holiness and righteousness of God in Christ.

May the Lord continue to bless and keep you and yours, today and always.