Notes From Telling Yourself The Truth

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Someone posted a WhatsApp status about forgiveness at Christmas and how the hardest times can be right at our own family gatherings. That made me think about the untruths I tell myself when I'm not forgiving so I read over notes I'd taken from the book, Telling Yourself The Truth by William Backus and Marie Chapian. I have kept this tattered book in my bedside bookstack for many years now . I often write notes from it but even those notes will be from my viewpoint of what connects with me. I'll just put them here in case someone needs some truths from the book and hopefully, God can create peace upon family gatherings for us at this Christmastime.

(Many of the quotations are Bible verses the book used and I failed to put in references. )

if you have ideas of how to focus on God's truth, add them in the comments. I always need help identifying and living the truth.

Telling Yourself The Truth excerpts:

Godly motives say, “You are important and so am I. Jesus loves us-and He loves us equally.”

   You can be released from self-hate and un-forgiveness when you fully know the approval of God is worth far more than the approval of others. And you can leave others’ wrongs in the hands of God’s judgement.

   Faith means stepping out even into a vulnerable area for you. Look at the risk God took when He set out to build His Kingdom. He sent His only Son in vulnerable fleshly form down to a wicked earth. God created man with a free will to choose or spurn Himself. Then humanity spurned Him. “All we like sheep have gone astray.”

   “Be ye therefore imitators of God.” Go walk out onto the trembling waters and keep your focus on your Saviour. It’s okay to be scared.

   Allow yourself to fail. Allow yourself to feel hurt and lean into it with honesty. Ask yourself why something hurt you and examine the misbeliefs you tell yourself and fight them with truth.

   Allow others to fail. Allow others the space to be hurt at you. Keep an openness to others without expectations. If you do not venture, you do not gain.

   “I count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for Whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ.”

   Christ Jesus is more important than our own life or our own comforts.

God is concerned with quality in our relationships. He wants to be at the Center of each relationship. Quality is obtained only through love. Love says, “it’s alright with me if you be you. It’s alright with me if I be me too. I set you free from obligations and expectations I might contrive. I set myself free from your unrealistic obligations and expectations too.”

  It’s a matter of bondage versus Liberty, law versus freedom, and code versus Spirit and Life.

   Avoid words like “I ought to, I must, I should,” in self-talk. Did God create robots, rigidly programmed to do His will? Can a machine doing it’s expected function be said to love? God’s love is a love of free choice. True freedom is the opportunity to choose to act and live with a focus on Christ. We can choose love over manipulation, guilt, or false obligation. The answer is not to learn to love everything we must do, it’s to stop hurling ungodly demands at one another. Expectations hurts ourselves as well as one another. When we demand that someone fulfill our expectations, we create a target for defeat. What happens when these expectations we’ve taught ourselves to have for others and even ourselves are left flapping in the wind, fruitless and empty? Identify where and what those expectations originated from.

   Visualize a tree growing from its source, motivated by earth and natural causes to grow and bear fruit. This is how you will grow in the Holy Spirit, naturally. You are made loving when you choose to become a new creation of Jesus and have Him dwell in you because He is love. Look at yourself the way God does. He loves you a lot while knowing all your faults. The Bible tells us it is love that fulfills the law, not duty or obligation or responsibility. Focus on your relationship with Christ and want what He wants for you. “Delight thyself also in the Lord and He shall give Thee the desires of thy heart.” Those desires will be felt by others even when we feel we've done nothing.

   Speak honestly to others while leaving manipulation, guilt, hurt, and hostility out. State what you want in a clear way. Be honest about your own weak tendencies. If you’re wanting what Christ wants for you, your desires are for Him. If you need something, you can ask for it without manipulating by guilt. You can also talk to or help someone else not out of a sense of obligation, but out of a pure happy desire to serve Christ. This also frees you to say no without guilt when it doesn’t suit. Your relationships deserve truth and love. You deserve the respect such relationships bring.

  Keep Jesus as the only answer when helping someone. He is The Indispensable One. He is the High Priest and we must point to Him. We are here to help each other keep a focus on Christ.

   Jesus heals both confusion and error. Have mercy on yourself when you are hurt. It does not make you a failure. Hurt feelings are the God Compass within you pointing you back to Christ. The Christian’s completeness comes through Christ alone and it is back to Him we must turn when failures cause confusion. Do not heap blame upon yourself, just hand their words and actions to Christ and listen to what He says to you. The blessing of knowing Him is to be our happiness when circumstances threaten our life, spiritually or physically. He must become our Life. “If God be for us, who can be against us?”

   There are no pat answers for emotional suffering. You teach yourself to be contented because you know you are a worthwhile person because God says so. "Fear not, for I have redeemed you, I have called you by name, You are mine."

Our joy is to identify the truth and build on it. Bible verses of promise are the best truth to start from. Thank God for making you complete in Him. Pray His promises.

   “I am more than a conqueror through Him Who loved me. For I am sure that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate me from the love of God in Christ Jesus, my Lord.”