JUST KIDDING

DAY 6: My son is an aspiring actor.  He dropped out of college to spend 6 months in New York City talking acting classes.  If natural talent is any gauge of success, and I know it rarely is, he is a star in the making.  It makes me proud on one level now that he is a young adult, but I must admit, it caused me no end of aggravation when he was a kid.  The child can act.  Other parents call it "lie" but for Bailey, inventing stories and making up "truths" was all part of the training.  He was so good, I really could not tell when he was making something up and when he was sincere.  The saving grace was that he was also a child with a tender conscience.  He didn't generally wait to get caught, but told on himself before he was found out.  The downside is that even now, at 21 years old, true or false, he is very convincing.  So when I am trying to determine if what he is saying is true or just another "act" for my benefit, I have to pull out the old, "Do you promise?"

Today as I was talking and listening to God as I read His word, he asked me the same question: "Kim, do you have to promise for me to believe you?"  That is what I heard Him ask me as I read Matthew 5 when he was teaching to the crowds that came to hear this man of great wisdom:

 ³³ “You have also heard that our ancestors were told, ‘You must not break your vows; you must carry out the vows you make to the Lord.’^{[o] 34} But I say, do not make any vows! Do not say, ‘By heaven!’ because heaven is God’s throne. ³⁵ And do not say, ‘By the earth!’ because the earth is his footstool. And do not say, ‘By Jerusalem!’ for Jerusalem is the city of the great King. ³⁶ Do not even say, ‘By my head!’ for you can’t turn one hair white or black. ³⁷ Just say a simple, ‘Yes, I will,’ or ‘No, I won’t.’ Anything beyond this is from the evil one."  

God doesn't want me to tell shades of the truth; or most of the truth, or everything I choose to disclose to be true but skewed by what I leave out.  He has an entirely different standard which He made clear to His listeners and to us when he concluded: 
  
 v48 Be perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Of course perfection is a mark we will NEVER reach. But then that is exactly why He was was on earth in the first place, walking around in mankind skin.  He came to BE THE STANDARD for us because we could not meet it ourselves.  That being said, it doesn't change His goal; He wants me to be like His father whose word, all of His word, can be counted on all the time.  God is truth and that is my standard.

What I say, and what I don't say, should always convey the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  I should never have to "swear" or "promise" to be taken at my word.  

Convicting isn't it, if you apply it to everything... no more "the checks in the mail" when it is sitting on the desk.  Or "I must have missed your call" when the call was purposefully ignored. God's grace covers all the ways we miss the mark, but God doesn't change the mark He has set. Tell the truth.
 

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Day 6 of 365
Genesis 13:5-18
Genesis 14
Genesis 15
Matthew 5:27-48
Psalm 6:1-10
Proverbs 1:29-33