Caminando en la verdad

Annamarie Sauter: How do you know if you are really a child of God?

Nancy DeMoss of Wolgemuth: You can have grown up in the Christian world, in a Christian family, in a Christian church, in a Christian school, or in Christian homeschooling, without actually being a child of God! Your life reveals who your true Father is, because, spiritually speaking, you will look like your Father.

Annamarie: You are listening to Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss de Wolgemuth, author of the book, Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free , in the voice of Patricia de Saladin.

Nancy: All this week we have been anticipating the celebration of the newly revised, updated and expanded version of Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free , in Spanish.

We have heard testimony after testimony from women who tell us, “I just did a study of this book with women, and this is what God did. . .» or “I just shared this with my newlywed daughter, and this is what God is doing. . .» So I have been hearing stories and testimonies of how God has been using the original book, Lies Women Believe , published seventeen years ago, to lead women to freedom.

It's not because it's a great book, but because it points to the Book, the truth of God's Word, the truth of Christ, which is what sets women free!

And now we have an expanded version. About a third of the content of this book is new, it has a completely new chapter on sexuality, and the rest of the book has been edited, trying to bring it up to date.

It has been edited to share the changes in culture from my perspective now as a married woman and as an older woman, and some of it is simply born from applications of my own walk with the Lord in this season of life. I am grateful to have had the opportunity to do this with this new book.

"The truth will set you free". I came across a Latin phrase that means just that in my research this week. The phrase is: veritas vos liberabit . I tried to pronounce it several times and I'm still not sure I did it correctly, because I don't speak Latin.

This is the motto of many of our higher education institutions today, including Johns Hopkins University. That is their motto: "The truth will set you free." In the original CIA headquarters building, carved in stone at the United States Central Intelligence Agency, is the complete phrase: "And they will know the truth, and the truth will set them free."

Now, it is safe to assume that most people who see those inscriptions on the walls of a school building or on the wall of the CIA building, do not know the original source of it, told by Him, who claimed to be the Truth: "You will know the Truth and the Truth will set you free."

So today I want us to focus on the Gospel of John, chapter 8, and look at just part of the context. What was happening and what Jesus was saying with that phrase. This is something that many of our academic institutions used to understand when they were founded, that the truth was what would set people free.

Now we have strayed from the truth and are into all kinds of things, beliefs that are not true at all! But this was where many of our institutions, including the CIA, had their origin, their foundation; They were rooted in truth.

Let's go to John chapter 8, starting at verse 31. I'm getting into a long conversation that Jesus was having with various people, with crowds, but for the sake of time, let me start at verse 31:

"Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in Him: If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples."

Now, it says that these Jews had believed in Him. Were they His disciples or were they not? Were they really his disciples? He said there was an "if"... Well, these were Jews, as I understand it, who had recognized that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.

But Jesus tells them, “That is just the first step in the process of becoming a true disciple, a true follower.” The evidence that your faith is genuine is if you habitually remain in my teaching. It's not just hearing someone say, "Oh, I believe that," and then you go on and live like you don't believe it.

To those who said they had believed in Him, what He was saying was in essence, “Try it! Where is the evidence? If you abide in My Word, then you are truly My disciple. The evidence is not just that you hear the truth or that you know the truth, but that you love it, you obey it, you practice it. You live in the truth and let it live in you.

And as you do, as you remain in that Word...“You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (v. 32).

So, “if you abide in My Word, you are truly My disciple. If you are really my disciple, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

“As you abide in My Word,” as you live in it, as you immerse yourself in it, as you meditate on it, as you let it live in you, “you will come to know the truth,” the firm, unalterable objective reality of the doctrine of Christ.

And He says, “You will know the truth.” That's the Greek word ginosko . It is a word that not only speaks about casual and intellectual knowledge. It is a word that means "to perceive, understand something or someone as a result of a personal experience."

You will not only know about the truth, you will know. . . the truth! You will know it from personal experience. This word "know" used here , often implies an intimate relationship between the person who knows and the object or person who is known .

He's talking about a relationship. “You will know the truth,” not just in your head, but by a relationship with the truth. This is a knowledge of the truth that you can never have if you do not have a heart commitment to Christ, and if the Holy Spirit does not reveal the truth to you.

We can never know this with our finite minds. We will not know the truth. We can search for it and pursue it; That's what many philosophers do, that's what many of the world's religions do. They are trying to get to the truth. But until God opens the eyes of our hearts, gives us the gift of His Holy Spirit, and causes us to say, “yes, Lord, whatever You say I will believe, receive, and base my life on,” then you will know the truth, YOU WILL KNOW the truth and the truth will set you free.

"If you are My true disciple, My true follower, you will know Me firsthand because I Am the truth and that knowledge will be the key for you to be free."

Now, when Jesus was speaking to those who said they believed him, at least some in that crowd, the implication was, “You are not free right now. You will know the truth and the truth will set you free. The implication is, “You are not free, you are in some kind of captivity or slavery. You have to be freed!

Well, and this resulted in some of Jesus' followers withdrawing because they were very religious people, religious Jews. They answered him, in verse 33:

«We are descendants of Abraham and we have never been slaves to anyone. How do you say: “You will be free”?

These were observant Jews who observed the customs; They were descendants of their father Abraham. They had the truth, the Scriptures about the true God. So what did Jesus mean when he said to them, "The truth will set you free"?

Jesus made it clear to them what kind of slavery he was talking about, from which they needed to be freed. He told them in verse 34:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin (who habitually sins, everyone who does this) is a slave to sin.”

That is the slavery He speaks of, from which the truth will set you free.

This slavery to sin is a condition in which every human being is born, regardless of their religious heritage or roots. That is the ultimate slavery! And Jesus said that all those who habitually practice sin are slaves to sin. Sin is your master!

Can anyone in the audience relate to that? Have you ever known what it's like to feel like "the things I want to do, I can't do, I don't do them?" What's wrong with me?! » What happens to you is that we are born slaves of sin.

So the question is: "How can we be liberated?" Verse 35 of John chapter 8 says:

«The slave does not remain in the house forever; the son  does  remain forever. Then, if the Son sets you free, you will be truly free” (vv. 35-36).

Now, Jesus told them that they would know the truth and that the truth would set them free. He is telling you that the Son will set you free. What is it like then? Is it the truth that sets me free or is it the Son that sets me free? Yeah! The Son is the truth! The Son will set you free; The truth will make you free. Jesus is the Son of God who came to free us from the dominion of sin!

Now, in verses 37-43 (I won't read all of that), Jesus explains to these Jews that being physical descendants of Abraham was meaningless if they did not have God as their Father. In fact, he tells them, “You are not true sons of Abraham nor sons of God” (see verse 37).

That had to be like a slap in the face to these people who were proud to be children of God because they were children of Abraham. He said to them, "They are neither of your children."

In fact, He tells them: “If you were his true children (the true children of Abraham or the true children of God), you would be like your Father; They would demonstrate the kind of faith Abraham had. If God were your Father, you would love me, because I have come from God. Instead, they are trying to kill me for telling them the truth about God! So I will tell you who your real father is.

Everyone was listening: “Who is our real father? He is not Abraham, and he is not God. Who is he? "

Jesus says, in verse 44…and I want you to know that this was a religious crowd. This was not a pagan crowd, remember this. Jesus tells them:

"You belong to  your  father the devil and you want to do your father's wishes."

Wow! Can you imagine those religious Jews recoiling? Can you believe what He just told them?

I mean, just imagine the murmuring, the withdrawal, the disgust, “He said we're not children of God, we're not children of Abraham. He said we are children of the devil! »

Jesus continues,

«He (his father, the devil) is a murderer from the beginning. . . (You are trying to kill me, he is a murderer). (He) is a murderer from the beginning, and has not stood in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks lies, he speaks of his own nature, because he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I tell them the truth, they do not believe me” (v. 44).

He is saying, "You believe in the devil's lies instead of believing in the truth of God that I am telling you."

Now, let me remind you: There is a real devil, and since the beginning of time, he has intended to destroy the people God made for Himself. He wants to keep you enslaved to sin, and he does it through deception, through lies.

He lies to us about God. He lies to us about ourselves. He lies to us about our sin, about our relationships, about marriage, about family, about joy. . . above all! And the inclination of your heart and mine to believe lies or the truth reveals whether you belong to the devil or whether you belong to Christ .

If you belong to Christ, then the evidence is that your inclination is to believe what God has said is true. If you do not belong to Christ, if you are still a son or daughter of the devil, the evidence is that you will believe the devil's words instead of God's.

«He who is from God listens to the words of God; That is why you do not listen, because you are not of God” (v. 47).

Could Jesus have been more clear? Can you imagine Jesus standing in one of our churches today and saying: “He who is of God hears, listens, believes, receives, acts according to the words of God. But the reason you don't listen to them, you don't care about them, you don't live them, you don't practice them, is because you are not of God! Are you not a daughter of God?

I think this could be said of many, if not most, of our churches today. Not about everyone, but about many who are religious, who have been there all their days since they were born but they do not have life, they do not have Christ, they do not have the truth, they are not of God.

You see, you can profess to believe in Jesus. You can even take the first steps to believe in Him, as we read at the beginning of this passage, without actually being His follower, His disciple, without being united with Him. Jesus said in verse 31: "If you continue in My Word, you will be truly my disciples.

The evidence of being His follower is that you abide in His Word, or as verse 47 says, “you listen to the words of God,” and that listening carries with it in Scripture the concept of obeying. You don't just listen to them, you obey them, you do them! You know the truth, You know Christ, and the truth sets you free. But if you do not abide in his Word, if you do not know the truth, you are a slave to sin.

You can have grown up in the Christian world, in a Christian family, in a Christian church, in a Christian school, received a Christian education at home, without actually being a child of God! Your life reveals who your true Father is, because spiritually speaking, you will look like your Father.

Do you have a heart for the truth? You love her? Does His Word remain in you? Or are you, from the center of your being, still a slave to sin? Now, once you are a child of God, a follower of Christ, that does not mean that you will never sin or that you will never feel the pull of sin, because that remaining sin is still in us. It takes time for us to transfer our loyalty, our affections, and our practice to the truth.

But if you are a daughter of God, your tendency, your inclination, the desire of your heart will not be to continue walking in lies, but to walk in the truth. Jesus said, "You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free."

At Revive Our Hearts we have a section we call True Leader , which is a blog for women's ministry leaders. If you are serving your church as a women's ministry leader, please visit our website. It's a great way to resource yourself with practical ideas for ministry.

Our team recently published a blog in English, titled: “ How the truth sets us free .” It says, "The truth frees us from everything that is rooted in sin." The article talks about the different things that the truth frees us from: from pretending to be what I am not, desperation, cultural expectations, the need to control, fear, isolation, confusion, lies and self-sufficiency . The truth frees us from all that and more!

Some of you have heard on this program from my good friend Jennifer Smith, who learned the truth that freed her while she was imprisoned at the McPherson Women's Prison in Newport, Arkansas.

Now she is out of jail; For a time she was a chaplain in that prison. She now runs a halfway house called Cornerstone . It is a home for women leaving prison, helping them prepare to walk in the freedom of Christ once they are released from prison.

She wrote to me recently, just a week ago, about the book Lies Women Believe , which has been a very important part of her discipleship and she is now using it to disciple others. She said,

«This book has had a great impact on my life, inside prison and now outside. It has been key in helping me identify the lies that held me captive for so many years! It prepared me to handle conflict, difficult relationships, circumstances, failures, the unknown, suffering, and so much more!

It has helped me identify God's voice in a world full of noise! (I love it! The truth breaks through the lies.) Because of the freedom I have experienced through this message I want to share it with others. Teaching this book in prison and at Cornerstone has been vital.

The joy I experience watching the chains fall from these women's lives is like no other! Seeing their understanding as they realize for the first time that they are free of the lies that once held them captive and watching them begin to make decisions based on the truth!

People are slaves to many types of sin because somewhere in their lives they have believed a lie and lived that lie. Lies that women believe gives them the key to their prison cell . Jesus is the truth that allows you to leave prison and enter freedom!

Now let me remind you that walking in the truth, learning to walk in the truth, is a journey. It is a process. It doesn't happen overnight . If we are daughters of God, if we are followers of Christ, we are all on the path, together, in that process.

You may be in a different place on your journey than I am, and you may be in a slightly different place than the person next to you, but it doesn't happen overnight. There are a few things I want to encourage you to do as you seek to walk in the truth, so that you can experience the freedom that Jesus promised to those who know the truth.

First of all, stay alert! Don't be foolish. Evaluate what you read, what you see, what you hear from others. Magazines, movies and music. I hear kids say, “I just like that song,” and they don't think about what it says.

There are many adults who know every word to many of the most popular songs of past generations, but have never stopped to think about what those songs say. Some of them may be very true, but some of them are not true at all!

You will say: “Oh well! that doesn't make any difference. "I just like music." Listen, listen to what you put. . "garbage in, garbage out." So stay alert. Don't be foolish. And as you read or watch things, like magazine articles in the supermarket, movies on TV, things you hear from your friends, ask yourself all the time: “What is the message here? It's true? Is it consistent with a biblical perspective or worldview?

There is no such thing as a harmless lie ! For as you think in your heart, so are you (see Prov. 23:7). So be alert. That was one of my goals in writing this book, Lies Women Believe , that we could start thinking.

Many women have told me: "When I read the index, all the lies I list, I thought, 'I don't believe those lies.' And then many come back and say, “Wow! "I didn't realize how many lies I believed!" So, be alert; don't be foolish.

And then, renew your mind daily with the Word. You cannot know the truth if you do not enter this Book. Saturate yourself with the truth. Become a student of the truth, immerse yourself in it, become familiar with it. She loves wisdom, she loves truth, seek it seriously. Seek Christ fervently, renewing your mind daily with the truth.

And then, consistently advise your heart according to that truth . One lady wrote in and said, “A Bible study I recently attended completed Lies Women Believe . "It revealed lies to me that I had been believing." So what will she do now? She learned to advise her heart according to the truth. How do you do that? She wrote,

«I have now memorized the twenty-odd truths listed in the last chapter. Every time I am attacked by Satan's lies, I have a truth and a scripture to help me. The truths I trust most are: “God is enough,” “God can be trusted,” and “The way to true joy is to give up control.”

If you have that book, Lies Women Believe , I hope you turn to the last chapter and periodically read it aloud to yourself.

Advise your heart according to the truth:

• God is good
• God loves me and wants the best for me
• I am complete and accepted in Christ
• God is enough
• God is trustworthy
• God makes no mistakes
• God's grace is enough for me
• The blood of Christ is enough to cover all my sins
• The cross of Christ is enough to conquer my sinful flesh
• My past doesn't have to haunt me
• And so on. . .

Listen, if you are dealing with a past that torments you. . . There are passages in Scripture for all of this. Memorize that truth. Immerse yourself in the Word of God and know the Scripture. Then you can remind yourself when Satan comes to hit you with those lies: "My past doesn't have to haunt me."

What does Paul say in 1 Corinthians 6?

«And those were some of you. (You used to be like that, but you're not like that anymore!) You have been washed, regenerated, justified, purified by the blood of Christ” (v.11, paraphrased).

Begin to advise your heart according to the Word of God. And as you do, the truth will change you. It will transform you from the inside out. It may not change your circumstances, but it will change you, and it will set you free! Amen? Amen!

Annamarie: This is Nancy DeMoss from Wolgemuth. She will return to pray. She has been reminding you of the importance of building your life on the truth. Through the book, Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free , she helps you focus your mind on the truth.

Nancy has revised this book based on what women face today, in 2018. About thirty percent of the book's content is new or revised, so I encourage you to purchase it. Learn more about the availability of this new edition of the book by visiting us today at ReviveOurHearts.com.

How do you build a home that honors God? On Monday, Robert Wolgemuth will talk to you about some things that will help you establish strong connections within your family and build a home that glorifies God. Learn the value of praying together, resolving conflicts with humility, and listening to each other. We are waiting for you on Monday, here at Revive Our Hearts.

Now Nancy returns to pray with us.

Nancy: Oh, Father, when I think of these truths (and others we don't mention here at this time), they are so valuable. They are so powerful, so rich, so life-giving. It is good to speak the truth to our own hearts, especially when we hesitate, when we are afraid, anxious, or believe things that are not true. Help us appreciate these beautiful truths about You and Your ways.

It is my prayer that you take this new, updated version of Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free , and bring it into the hearts and homes of women in every country and around the world.

And, Lord, it is not the book that I have written that will do this, but that as they see Your Word highlighted there, as they see Your ways exalted, women everywhere can experience the truth that sets them free.

May Jesus' words to that Jewish audience thousands of years ago speak to our hearts today: "and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free" (John 8:32). We pray in the name of Jesus, amen.

Knowing the truth that sets us free, together, Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss of Wolgemuth is an outreach ministry of Life Action Ministries.

All Scriptures are taken from The New American Bible unless otherwise indicated.

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