What do you believe about yourself? What do you believe about God? Many of us have come to hold many things as truth which are mere traditions. We’ve heard them over and over until they have become truth to us.
Dave Ramsey demonstrated this beautifully when he told the story of a woman and the ham. A married couple was in the kitchen as the wife was preparing a ham for dinner. She took the ham and cut the end of it off and discarded it before she put the ham in the oven. When the husband asked his wife why she discarded the end of the ham, she replied, “Because my mother did it.” It made no sense to the husband, so he called his mother-in-law and asked her. She said “Because my mother did it.” Now he had made his mother-in-law curious, so she called her mother to ask her why she cut the end off of the ham and discarded it. Her mother replied, “I don’t know why you do it, but I do it because otherwise it won’t fit in my pan.”
I’m guessing you’re laughing and think that was ridiculous, but many of us do the same thing with our personal beliefs about ourselves and about God. Our beliefs have been passed down from others and we have blindly accepted them as truth. Beth Moore said “We are a direct result of our belief system.”
If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you’ve heard me say over and over, we should sift everything we hear, read and see through Scripture and the things that stick are truth and the rest should be cast aside. In John 1 we read that Jesus is the Word. In John 14 Jesus tells us He is the truth. Then He states in John 8 that we will know the truth and the truth will set us free. If Jesus is the Word and He is truth, then we can state the Word is truth. Once we settle that in our hearts and minds we can embrace 2 Timothy 3:16 which says “All Scripture is God breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness.”
No matter what you have been told, no matter what you’ve read, and no matter what you’ve witnessed, it is only truth if it lines up with the Word of God. There have been families broken up and churches have split over differences of opinion. If we will use the Word of God as our standard and allow it to be the benchmark for our belief system, we will not be cutting the end off of a ham just because our mother did it. Instead, we will always “be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have” as found in 1 Peter 3:15.
Take time today to ask the Lord to reveal anything you’ve believed about Him that isn’t truth. He desires for you to know Him so He will speak to you. Then ask Him to reveal to you the lies you’ve believed about yourself. This may take longer than a few minutes. In fact, it may take days for you to work through this process. As you uncover the lies the enemy has so cleverly sold you as truth, ask the Lord to reveal His truth about who you are. If you do, you will find yourself on a great adventure.