We can be stubborn about receiving truth we don’t want to hear.
Doctors must tell surviving family, “You’re loved one has died.”
Avoiding euphemisms is crucial because in the moment, the mind grasps at any heartbeat of hope. Presenting a vague truth is cruel and delays acceptance of what is real.
Jesus-followers must speak truth. We must not withhold it. We cannot be cruel.
We must be relentless in our commitment to truth. Even hard truth. Because people we love are at risk of dying—forever.
And they will grasp at any counterfeit hope that drops from the compartment above them to keep their vague notions of afterlife for everyone afloat, even if what is being pumped into their masks isn’t oxygen after all.
In Jesus’ final days, He spoke hard truths clearly. Time was short and He loved the people who were listening.
He also loved the ones who weren’t.
If the religious leaders of His time had had Facebook, their relationship status with Jesus would have read, “It’s complicated.”
It didn’t have to be.
All their lives, they’d waited for Messiah.
They studied the Torah. They lived the Torah. They taught the Torah. If only they’d believed the Torah.
Instead, the focus of all their hopes stood in front of them and they plotted ways to end His life.
Most people like to give others the benefit of the doubt.
They like to believe that in troubled relationships, there are always two sides.
There are always two sides but sometimes one side is lying—or deceiving even themselves.
In my experience, sometimes when there’s smoke—there’s a smoke machine.
The Pharisees, Sadducees, and scribes—the leaders of Israel—were missing the Messiah. Not only were they missing Him, but they resented Him because He pulled back the curtain that exposed their Oz-ness as so much smoke and mirrors.
They liked looking in mirrors, but only mirrors that flattered them. Mirrors that hid their flaws, softened their lines, and reinforced how they saw themselves.
The mirror Jesus was holding didn’t flatter, soften, or reinforce their comfort. It reflected the truth.
So, they refused to look any longer and decided, instead, to kill Him and bury the ugliness within the mirror in a tomb, sealed so no one would ever find it again.
We still try to do that.
The Pharisee in our souls clings to the righteousness we’ve created for ourselves like Gollum’s ring, “My precious.”
It isn’t filthy rags, no! It can’t be. I’ve worked hard at being good. I’ll get credit for that. Why wouldn’t I? This Son of God offends me. I will stop listening and wrap my own righteousness around me like a shield against Him.
Jesus was on to them. And to us. He knew (and knows) what was coming just down the road.
Even still. He knew a greater truth. One that would extend further into time than any of them (or us) could imagine. And so, He began to say things clearly.
We love studying the Sermon on the Mount. We’re happy to spend hours in those chapters of Matthew.
But then we skulk past Matthew 21-25 afraid we’ll wake the sleeping giant of truth and have to decide about Jesus NOW.
He made His triumphal entry and was greeted like the king He is. Then, He fashioned a whip and cleansed the temple.
Cursed a fig tree.
Told stories with unhappy endings and words we refuse to hear, even now. Read the verses listed below this post. Uncomfortable truth from Jesus.
But if we represent Him, we must represent ALL of Him.
Jesus’ Words, gentle or firm, are the overflow of a heart “not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9b
Some will perish. Know this because Jesus warned us.
When we have spent all our persuasive, kind, gentle words on wandering souls.
When we have exercised patience, demonstrated power, performed miraculous acts of love, and provided all they need.
When they continue to ignore our warning that they are heading into danger, we must employ plain words that speak of irreparable consequences, hoping that at last, they will listen.
There will come a day when people will be permanently excluded, uninvited, left out from everything that is loving, good, merciful, beautiful, kind, holy, refreshing, righteous, and desirable for life.
They will be shut away from God forever.
Will we appeal to them by every means as Jesus did?
Or will we be standing on that day still clutching the truth to our chest so afraid to upset people that we refuse to love them like Jesus loved?
It’s not a question I want left hanging. How about you?
Have we exhausted every resource so that no one will be left out, shut out, cut off from all beauty, light, and life? Why not? https://t.co/Ec8wEYWQ1R #amwriting #hardtruth
— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) October 13, 2022
Could I invite you, dear reader, to visit my new business website, Take Heart Coaching and Freelance and share it with your friends? Thank you! I knew I could count on you!
The Conversation
Oh now you’ve quit preaching, Lori, and gone ta meddling.
GOOD for you!
Let me just add this.
At our home group this week, we were sharing with one another how we each came to believe in Jesus Christ. One of our group who grew up a California Girl in 1970s San Diego, went astray as a teen with pot and booze, wound up strung out on methamphetamine, traded her body for drugs with numerous men who used but never loved her, knew she was going to hell when she soon died, just happened to hear another woman say during a random and rare conversation about spiritual things, “I’m READY, because I KNOW where I’m going when I die. I’m going to Heaven.” Our friend said that she thought to herself, “I WANT THAT!”
Guess what soon happened?
The writer Andree Seu once wrote a wonderfully empowering article she entitled “Lame Evangelism.” I can’t recommend it highly enough!
https://world.wng.org/2003/10/lame_evangelism