Garry continued his series on ‘Living Wisely’ tonight by looking at how we respond to mistakes and how truth needs to shape our lives and determine how we live. All of us have made mistakes and most of us have tried to cover up our mistakes in the hopes that we will not be found out! Some mistakes, however, are so great that there is no way we can cover them up. Eve discovered this in the Garden of Eden when she believed what she was told by the serpent rather than believing the truth God had told her.
Garry’s favourite chocolate is 100% plain chocolate (with no milk added), but anything over 65% is officially classed as ‘plain chocolate.’
However, anything less than 100% truth is ultimately mixed with lies and we must be careful not only to learn from our own mistakes, but to learn from the mistakes of others, as Eleanor Roosevelt advised. Wisdom is the product of survivable mistakes, so we need to be careful not to repeat the same mistakes over and over again. Paul reminded the Corinthians (1 Cor 10) that we need to learn from history and from God’s Word so that we do not make the same mistakes as our forbears.
Truth ultimately is the thing that will guide us and enable us to live wisely (see Ps 25:5). Jesus is truth (Jn 14:6, Jn 1:14) and He wants us to learn from the Spirit of truth and to be sanctified by truth. The truth has the power to set us free, but this will only happen to the extent that we take truth in, assimilate it and live it out. Cosy half-truths are more comfortable at times than the plain, unvarnished truth which can be challenging and hurtful. Half-truths are dangerous because they sound so plausible (the devil is the father of lies but is adept at mingling truth with those lies to make us believe what he tells us.) We have to act in line with the truth of the gospel (Gal 2:14), allowing the truth to see us free as we embrace it and live it, if we are to live wisely.