The whole truth

1John 1: 5-10


5This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is
light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from allssin.
8If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives


Here again we are reminded of the duplicity of man. Many people love to say they are a good Christians, that they know the word, and walk in Jesus’ path, yet their actions show a total different picture. We hear through out the New Testament that, “9Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness”, I think this is mentioned so often because it is so hard for us that many stumble. I feel the most important thing is how this passage begins: “9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Jesus is there for us whenever we need him, and nothing is too much to ask, however we must be willing to admit our shortcomings and ask for forgiveness. We have to be honest with ourselves, and with the Lord. True forgivness comes form true honest confession, to ourselves, and to God

It reminds me of something that happened to my daughter. My youngest daughter had saved up her money, and we all went to the Mall. My wonderful daughter made two purchases, a video game for her Nintendo DS, and a cookie with icing on it (pretty good use of funds….especially the cookie!) so while we are shopping my youngest realizes that she has set her cookie bag down at one of the stores we had just left. So we send her off with her older sister to go back and find it. Well as you can imagine, they came back empty handed. It was obvious that she was upset, more than warranted for a cookie. So she comes clean, she did lose her cookie….along with her new video game, it seems that while she did tell the truth, she did in fact set her cookie bag down, it happened to be in the video game bag. As you can imagine, that set off a 3 alarm, and we all jumped in and found the game (and cookie) very quickly!

I think we tend to treat our relationship with Jesus the same way. Sometimes, we don’t mind admitting to the minor infractions, the negligible things in our life that we do, however when it comes to the big stuff, the things that we KNOW are big, we do not want to admit to. We try to rationalize the action, or leave off half the story. Just like my daughter, telling me that she lost her cookie. That is the exact time that we should be asking God for help. If we really think about it, what is the point behind trying to hide it from God? He knows about it before, you even think to lie about it.

Just as I love my daughter, Jesus loves each of us, more than we can fathom. So choose the light, and ask the Lord for forgiveness, he is there for each of us, all we have to do is ask!

Peace,
Rev. T