Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:32)
“Baggage” and “filters” are two of my favorite analogies for those things inside us that keep us from seeing truth.
Baggage – because over the course of our lives we have gathered bags full of ‘stuff’ that we carry around with us wherever we go. The stuff may be good, bad, or neutral, but it all adds up to a heavy load.
Filters – because we will view every new input in our lives through the filters of our previous experiences, unless we consciously lower those filters.
Are you willing to test your beliefs?
If your beliefs are true and correct, and you confirm them to be so, then you can hold fast to them with even more devout conviction. If your beliefs turn out to be incorrect, then you are better off for having discovered that, are you not?
Let’s start here:
Do you know who you are?
Are you sure?
Would you make a conscious decision to discover and recognize who you are? To organize the fabric of your identity? To celebrate the wonder of your authentic self?
I am convinced I cannot overstate the importance of this message in our lives, nor can I explain it in enough different ways to amount to overkill.
Here is the basic concept:
You are the product of the accumulation of your life experiences. Everything you have seen, heard, smelled, tasted, touched, read about, heard about; every person you have known, met, befriended, loved, hated, ignored; books, movies, television, music – every kind of input that has touched you in any way has contributed to who you are today.
Some of these influences you have cherished and nourished, some you sought after, some just happened unexpectedly, some you have struggled to forget, some have haunted you relentlessly, some came and went like a whispering wind, some thundered and clamored and crashed into you and over you and through you.
In one sense, every scrap of it is vital to you, your identity, and your future. In another sense, all of it needs to be examined and categorized as useful, extraneous, or toxic. You can decide what should stay and what needs to go.
Of course, deciding to put away some element of your personality, what you think makes you you, is a major turnstile in your life. Even when you have decided to lay something down, often it does not stay laid down.
At some point, in order to walk in freedom, we must put aside the things that prevent us from seeing who we truly are. There are things we have learned or experienced or chosen to believe that are hindering us. We must figure out how to face those things and lay them down in favor of the things that contribute to our authentic identity.
You see, some of the things that have influenced you are lies.
Bold statement. Am I right?
Do you doubt the truth of it, though?
All of us would certainly prefer it if, all through the course of our lives, we had only and ever recognized and retained truth. But sometimes we have been convinced of the truth of something when in fact it was not true. We have held tenaciously to untruths for years. Decades. Our whole lives.
I know for sure that I have advocated many things I was convinced were true. I have persuaded others to believe them, too. Now I know some of those things were not true at all.
It’s not like these things used to be true, but have somehow now become untrue. They were always untrue. I was just convinced otherwise. In other words, I was deceived; and I was contributing to the deception of others. All with the best of intentions, of course. We like the (false) absolution of declaring the sterling sincerity and sanctity of our good intentions.
My point here is that none of us can claim honestly that everything about who we are and how we behave is based on nothing but the truth. Many of us certainly want that to be the case. Most of us will probably say we would do whatever it took to get as close to that ideal as possible; i.e., the ideal of living only in truth all the time.
Now that we have accepted – and I trust you have, however reluctantly, accepted – that we may have some elements of our identity that are operating according to faulty information, what do we do about that? How do we know if something inside us is true or false? What is our standard of truth?
For most, if not all, of my life, I have understood the prime standard of truth to be the volume commonly called The Bible.
Scripture itself has convinced me that certain things I once believed to be true are not true. How could anything we have believed based on The Bible not be true? Let me remind you that the enemy of our souls, HaSatan, used scripture against YHVH’s only begotten Son, Yeshua. Of course, Yeshua was not swayed. (Matthew 4:1-11) Nevertheless, scripture can be used to convince us of all manner of things that are untrue.
Here is an example. I was taught, and I believed for many years, that The Church replaced Israel as YHVH’s Chosen People. We were told that Israel rejected Messiah, so YHVH rejected Israel. Not true.
YHVH’s gifts and callings are irrevocable. (Romans 11:29) His covenants are eternal. He is a covenant-keeper. (Hebrews 13:20) Even when we are faithless, he remains faithful. (2 Timothy 2:11-13) We are grafted into an existing tree and root, which is Israel. (Romans 11) We are Israel.
Scripture says that Judah and Ephraim will be brought together as one in the end days (Ezekiel 37).
Are you ready to understand that you are Israel?
Are you ready to explore what that means?
Glossary to 40 Days of Repentance and Personal Change
ADULTERY
Strong’s G3430: adultery
from G3431: to commit adultery; have unlawful intercourse with another’s wife; a Hebrew idiom (the word used of those who at a woman’s solicitation are drawn away to idolatry)
ANGER
Strong’s G3709: anger, the natural disposition, temper, character; movement or agitation of the soul, impulse, desire, any violent emotion, but esp. anger; anger, wrath indignation; anger exhibited in punishment, hence used for punishment itself.
ARGUMENTS
Strong’s G3055: to contend about words; to wrangle about empty and trifling matters
BACKBITINGS
Strong’s G2636: defamation, evil speaking
BACKBITER
Strong’s G2647: a defamer or evil speaker
BITTERNESS
Strong’s G4088: bitter gall; extreme wickedness; a bitter root, and so producing a bitter fruit; metaph. bitterness, bitter hatred
BLASPHEMY (Evil Speaking)
Strong’s G988: slander, detraction, speech injurious to another’s good name; impious and reproachful speech injurious to diving majesty
Do Not BOAST
Strong’s G2620: to glory against, to exult over, to boast one’s self to the injury (of a person or thing)
BOASTERS
Strong’s G213: an empty pretender, boaster
CLAMOR
Strong’s G2906: a crying, outcry, clamour
COARSE JESTING
Strong’s G2160: pleasantry, humour, facetiousness; in a bad sense, scurrility, ribaldry, low jesting
CONCEITS
Strong’s G5450: a puffing up of soul, loftiness, pride
CONTENTIONS
Strong’s G2054: contention, strife, wrangling
COVETOUSNESS
Covetousness Man
Strong’s G4124: greedy desire to have more, covetousness, avarice
Strong’s G4123: one eager to have more, esp. what belongs to others; greedy of gain, covetous
DECEIT
Strong’s G1388: craft, deceit, guile
DECEIVED
Strong’s G4105: to cause to stray, to lead astray, lead aside from the right way;
DECEPTIVE Words
Strong’s G4112: moulded, formed, as from clay, wax, or stone; feigned
DIVISIVE man (Heretic)
Strong’s G141: fitted or able to take or choose a thing; schismatic, factious, a follower of a false doctrine; heretic
DISOBEDIENT
Strong’s G545: impersuasible, not compliant, disobedient, contumacious
Obsessed with DISPUTES
Strong’s G3552: to be sick; metaph. of any ailment of the mind, to be taken with such an interest in a thing as amounts to a disease, to have a morbid fondness for
Strong’s G2214: a seeking; enquiry; a questioning, debate; a subject of questioning or debate, matter of controversy
DISSENSIONS
Strong’s G1370: dissension, division
DIVISIONS
Strong’s G4978: a rent; metaph. a division, dissension
from G4977: to cleave, cleave asunder, rend; to divide by rending; to split into factions, be divided
DRUNKENNESS (revelings)
Strong’s G2970: a revel, carousal
Strong’s G3178: intoxication; drunkenness
ENVY
Strong’s G5355: envy; for envy, i.e. prompted by envy;
Strong’s G4089: bitter; metaph. Harsh, virulent
Strong’s G2205: excitement of mind, ardour, fervour of spirit
EVIL DESIRE
Strong’s G2556: a bad nature; of a mode of thinking, feeling, acting; troublesome, injurious, pernicious, destructive, baneful
Strong’s G1939: desire, craving, longing, desire for what is forbidden, lust
EVIL-MINDEDNESS
Strong’s G2550: bad character, depravity of heart and life; malignant subtlety, malicious craftiness
EVIL SPEAKING (Blasphemy)
Strong’s G988: slander, detraction, speech injurious, to another’s good name; impious and reproachful speech injurious to divine majesty
EVIL SUSPICIONS
Strong’s G4190: full of labours, annoyances, hardships; bad, of a bad nature or condition
Strong’s G5283: a surmising
from G5282: to suppose, surmise
FILTHINESS
Strong’s G151: obscenity, filthiness
FILTHY LANGUAGE
Strong’s G148: foul speaking, low and obscene speech
FOOLISH
Strong’s G453: not understood, unintelligible; not understanding, unwise, foolish
FOOLISH DISPUTES
Strong’s G3474: foolish; impious, godless
Strong’s G2214: a seeking; enquiry; a questioning, debate; a subject of questioning or debate, matter of controversy
FOOLISH TALKING
Strong’s G3473: foolish talking
from a compound of G3474: foolish; impious, godless
and G3004: to say, to speak
FORNICATION (Sexual Immorality)
Strong’s G4202: llicit sexual intercourse, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, intercourse with animals, metaphorical the worship of idols
Strong’s G4205: a man who prostitutes his body to another’s lust for hire; a male prostitute; a man who indulges in unlawful sexual intercourse, a fornicator
GENEALOGIES
Strong’s G1076: a genealogy, a record of descent or lineage
GREEDINESS
Strong’s G4124: greedy desire to have more, covetousness, avarice
HATERS OF GOD
Strong’s G2319: hateful to God, exceptionally impious and wicked
HATEFUL
Strong’s G4767: hated, detestable
HATING one another
Strong’s G3404: to hate, pursue with hatred, detest; to be hated, detested
HATRED
Strong’s G2189: enmity, cause of enmity
from G2190: hated, odious, hateful; hostile, hating, and opposing another
HERESIES
Strong’s G139: act of taking, capture: e.g. storming a city; choosing, choice; that which is chosen; a body of men following their own tenets (sect or party); dissensions arising from diversity of opinions and aims.
HYPOCRISIES
Strong’s G5272: an answering; an answer; the acting of a stage player; dissimulation, hypocrisy
INDIGNATION
Strong’s G2372: passion, angry, heat, anger forthwith boiling up and soon subsiding again; glow ardour, the wine of passion, inflaming wine (which either drives the drinker mad or kills him with its strength)
IDOLATRY
IDOLATER
Strong’s G1495: the worship of false gods, idolatry; in the plural, the vices springing from idolatry and peculiar to it
Strong’s G1496: a worshipper of false gods, a idolater; a covetous man as a worshipper of Mammon
INVENTOR OF EVIL THINGS
Strong’s G2182: an inventor or contriver
Strong’s G2556: of a bad nature; of a mode of thinking, feeling, or acting; troublesome, injurious, pernicious, destructive, baneful
JEALOUSY
Strong’s G2205: excitement of mind, ardour, fervour of spirit; zeal, ardour in embracing, pursuing, defending anything; an envious and contentious rivalry, jealousy
LEWDNESS
Strong’s G2845: a place for lying down, resting, sleeping in; the marriage bed; cohabitation, whether lawful or unlawful
Strong’s G766: unbridled lust, excess, licentiousness, lasciviousness, wantonness, outrageousness, shamelessness, insolence
LIE
Strong’s G5574: to lie, to speak deliberate falsehoods; to deceive one by a lie, to lie to
LUSTS and PLEASURES
Strong’s G1939: desire, craving, longing, desire for what is forbidden, lust
Strong’s G2237: pleasure; desires for pleasure
MALICE
Strong’s G2549: malignity, malice, ill-will, desire to injure; wickedness, depravity; evil, trouble
MURDERS
Strong’s G5408: murder, slaughter
Overflow of WICKEDNESS
Strong’s G2549: malignity, malice, ill-will, desire to injure; wickedness, depravity; evil, trouble
PASSION
Strong’s G3806: whatever befalls one, whether it be sad our joyous; a feeling which the mind suffers
PROUD
Strong’s G5187: to raise a smoke, to wrap in a mist; to blind with pride or conceit, to render foolish or stupid
Strong’s G5244: showing oneself above others, overtopping, conspicuous above others, pre-eminent; with an overweening estimate of one’s means or merits, despising others or even treating them with contempt; haughty
PUFFED UP
Strong’s G5448: to make natural, to cause a thing to pass into nature; to inflate, blow up, to cause to swell up; to puff up, make proud; to be puffed up, to bear one’s self loftily, be proud
REVELRY/REVELRIES
Strong’s G2970: a revel, carousal
SCHISM
Strong’s G4978: a rent; metaph. a division, dissension
SELFISH AMBITIONS (strife)
SELF SEEKING
Strong’s G2052: electioneering or intriguing for office; in the NT a courting distinction, a desire to put one’s self forward, a partisan and fractious spirit which does not distain low arts
SEXUAL IMMORALITY (Fornication)
Strong’s G4202: Illicit sexual intercourse, adultery, fornication, homosexuality, lesbianism, intercourse with animals, metaphorical the worship of idols
SORCERY (witchcraft)
Strong’s G5331: the use or the administering of drugs; poisoning; sorcery, magical arts, often found in connection with idolatry and fostered by it; metaph. The deceptions and seductions of idolatry
STRIFE
Strong’s G2054: contention, strife, wrangling
STRIVINGS about the law (Torah)
Strong’s G3163: a fight or combat
TUMULTS
Strong’s G181: instability, a state of disorder, disturbance, confusion
UNCLEANNESS
UNCLEAN PERSON
Strong’s G167: physical; in a moral sense the impurity of lustful, luxurious, profligate living
Strong’s G169: not cleansed, unclean; in a ceremonial sense: that which must be abstained from according to the levitical law; in a moral sense: unclean in thought and life
UNDISCERNING
Strong’s G801: unintelligent, without understanding, stupid
UNFORGIVING
Strong’s G786: without a treaty or covenant; that cannot be persuaded to enter into a covenant, implacable
UNLOVING
Strong’s G794: without natural affection, unsociable (Rom 1:31 marg.), inhuman (2Ti. 3:3 RSV), unloving (2Ti. 3:3 NKJV)
UNMERCIFUL
Strong’s G415: without mercy, merciless
UNRIGHTEOUSNESS
Strong’s G93: injustice, of a judge; unrighteousness of heart and life; a deed violating law and justice, act of unrighteousness
UNTRUSTWORTHY
Strong’s G802: uncompounded, simple; covenant breaking, faithless
USELESS WRANGLINGS
Strong’s G3859: constant contention, incessant wrangling
VAINGLORY
Strong’s G2754: vain glory, groundless, self esteem, empty pride; a vain opinion, error
VIOLENT
Strong’s G5197: an insolent man; one who uplifted with pride, either heaps insulting language upon others or does them some shameful act of wrong
WHISPERERINGS
Strong’s G5587: a whispering, i.e. secret slandering; of the magical murmuring of a charmer of snakes
WHISPERER
Strong’s G5588: a whisperer, secret slanderer, detractor
WICKEDNESS
Strong’s G4189: depravity, iniquity, wickedness; malice; evil purpose and desires
(OUTBURSTS OF) WRATH
Strong’s G2372: passion, angry, heat, anger forthwith boiling up and soon subsiding again; glow ardour, the wine of passion, inflaming wine (which either drives the drinker mad or kills him with its strength)
We look forward to hearing from those who are called to participate in this work of restoration.
