Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “I will not violate my covenant or change what my lips have said.” Psalm 89:34

Our thought for today: “My word is my bond”

The other night in our men’s group we had a discussion about the old phrase “My word is my bond.” It means that you can count on me to keep my word. If I say I’ll do something then I will do it – no excuses. In previous generations this was the measure of a person’s character and integrity. If a man looked you in the eye, shook your hand and gave you his word about something, it was as good as a legal contract. His word was his bond.

In our day this is much less common. Today situational ethics are the standard – truth and reliability changes depending on the situation and depending on what a person determines to be most beneficial to them personally at any given moment. Often a person will promise to do something, mean it at the time they said it, but then later change his or her mind. They fail to fulfill their promise or obligation and think nothing of it. Their excuse is, “Well, I meant it when I said it, but since then I changed my mind.”

Meaning it when you say it is only the first half of the truth equation. Actually doing what you said is the second half. We’re not dealing with the full and complete truth of the matter unless the promise was kept. When it’s all said and done, you weren’t really fully truthful if you promised to do something but then didn’t do it.

I have a friend who has a servant’s heart and the skills to fix almost anything. He is always off fixing a plumbing problem for an elderly person, or taking down a big tree in a friend’s yard, or building a wheelchair ramp for a handicapped person, or any number of other projects. However this man has also spent decades working in a highly demanding and very physical profession. As a result his body is wearing out and he is finding it more and more difficult to do his job, and to do the projects he likes to do for other people.

He has one more year until he can retire from his job and somehow he needs to stay healthy enough long enough to make it to his retirement date. In order to do that he has decided he has to clear his plate of all the extra projects and focus just on taking care of himself and getting through this last year on the job. He really, really, needs to do this.

However, there are still some projects he has promised to do and which he is determined to do. As badly as he is hurting and as much as he needs to stop all the volunteer labor, he refuses to renege on a promise made. He is a man of character and integrity. His word is his bond and he will do what he promised to do, even at great personal expense.

Our world needs more people like my friend. We need men and women of integrity, people who do what they say and who can be counted on to keep their promises. Doing so is a Biblical standard, and Psalm 89:34 is just one of many verses that teach it. I encourage you to be a man or woman of integrity. Let your word be your bond.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “How far will you go to tell the truth about Jesus?”

The last devotional message in this series that you received from me was on Saturday October 6^th. In that message I explained that I was leaving the USA to take a short-term mission team to work for a week at the El Arca Children’s Home in the Amazon Jungle in Peru. We returned safely home yesterday afternoon. It was a great time of ministry and fellowship with our missionary friends the Lenz family. (You can learn more about the ministry of El Arca by visiting their website at www.elarcafam.org, or check-out their Facebook page “El Arca Children’s Home of Peru”). Our team will be giving a full report at Oak Hill Baptist Church this Sunday evening (October 21^st) at 6:00. If you’re in the Crossville area we would love to have you join us.

Also in that last devotional message I said that the words of Jesus in John 14:6 are the most important words of truth you can share with people, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” Jesus is the way – the only way. There is no other way. People need to know this, and in Acts 1:8 Jesus commanded us to spread that truth far and wide, even to the ends of the earth. My question for all of us this morning is “How far will you go to tell the truth about Jesus?”

From Crossville, TN to Puerto Maldenado, Peru is exactly 3,503 miles. That’s how far our mission team traveled to help share the love of Jesus with people in the Amazon Jungle. We then left one of the young men on our team to stay there for a full year. That’s 3,503 miles plus 12 months of his life in order to share Jesus with people.

The Lenz family gave up their home in the USA and lives in the Amazon Jungle permanently in order to share the truth about Jesus with those people. While our team was on our short-term mission some friends of ours, Southern Baptist long-term missionaries Jeff and Rachel Gayhart and their three children, completed their sabbatical in the USA and returned to their home in Southeast Asia. They have made it their life’s work to share the truth about Jesus with people in that part of the world.

But it’s not necessary to go that far to share the truth about Jesus. You don’t have to travel to the other side of the world and spend decades of your life in a foreign land. You also don’t have to spend a year in the Amazon Jungle, or even a week. You don’t even need to leave your hometown. Each of us can and should share the truth about Jesus with our family members, our neighbors, our friends, our co-workers, and those we encounter right there in our own hometown everyday.

My question remains, “How far will you go to share the truth about Jesus?” It’s the most important truth that has even been told, and the Lord has given us both the privilege and the responsibility to tell people that truth.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “Jesus told them, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” John 14:6 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “There is no greater truth to be told.”

Jesus is the only way to heaven. He is our salvation. It is through faith in Him that our sins are forgiven, and it is because of Him that we can enter into the Father’s presence in heaven. There is no other way. That’s the greatest and most important truth there is and as followers of Jesus we have a responsibility to spread that truth far and wide.

Instead of taking you straight to heaven the moment you placed your faith in Jesus, God left you here so you could become part of His kingdom-building work on earth. As His children and as disciples of His Son Jesus we have a responsibility to be involved in spreading the Gospel. This is what Jesus meant in Acts 1:8 when He said, “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

This will be the last daily devotional message you will receive until Wednesday October 17^th. That’s because this morning I will be taking a mission team from our church to the Amazon Jungle in Peru. We will be doing construction work, farming, animal care, and child care at the El Arca Children’s Home in the southern Amazon basin in Peru near the Bolivian border. American missionaries Bud and Luara Lenz have a 110 acre ranch on the edge of the Rainforest. They care for 25-30 orphaned and abandoned Peruvian children, and they also use the ranch as a base of operations for a wide variety of other ministry activities in the region.

Sometimes international short-term mission trips are designed to have direct contact with unsaved locals and help to lead people to faith in Jesus. But other times mission teams go to work in support of missionaries like Bud and Laura, who already have a long-term presence in the country, and who regularly participate in evangelism and discipleship among the locals. In cases like this the goal of the mission is to engage in activities that help to strengthen the ministry of those who are already there. God will have us bring them needed supplies, assist in tasks that must be done in order for their long-term presence to continue effectively, and to be a source of encouragement to those missionaries.

I want to ask you to please keep this devotional message for the time our team is gone. Re-read it each morning and use it as a reminder to pray for us and for the Lenz family as we minister together in a difficult environment there in the Amazon Jungle. Our goal is to help them in their mission to tell the Peruvian people the most important truth that has ever been told – Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “For we are taking pains to do what is right, not only in the eyes of the Lord but also in the eyes of men.” 2 Corinthians 8:21 (NIV)

Our thought for today: “Be known for your honesty”

Abraham Lincoln, old “Honest Abe”, was known for his honesty and integrity. His wife, Mary Todd Lincoln, once wrote to a friend that Lincoln “is almost monomaniac on the subject of honesty.” Lincoln felt so convicted about the importance of making honesty and integrity the defining aspects of his character that he was compulsive about it.

Numerous biographers have written that Lincoln first became known as “Honest Abe” as a teenager and young man when he was working as a store clerk in New Salem, Ill. According to one story, if he realized that he had shortchanged a customer, even only a few pennies, he would close the shop and walk to the customer’s home, regardless of the distance, to deliver the correct change. Evidently this happened on enough occasions that it became widely known and thus the nickname “Honest Abe”.

Honesty and integrity were character traits that continued to define Lincoln as he grew older and moved into positions of greater responsibility. As a young community leader, and then as a member of the state legislature, Lincoln was often called upon to act as judge and mediator in various disputes, because he was widely accepted by everyone as an honest broker who would arrive at decisions that were unbiased and fair to all.

In 2 Corinthians 8:21 the Apostle Paul wrote about his own commitment to honesty and integrity – not just in truth-telling but in all areas of life and conduct. Paul was first and foremost concerned about his standing in the Lord’s eyes, but he wanted to be sure that people also knew him to be a man of good character as well.

This should be true for you and me too. We should care about how we are perceived by others. Over time people will discover if you are a man or woman of high character. It will become obvious whether or not you are someone who can be depended on to act honestly and with integrity, always keeping your word and dealing with others fairly. And, they will also discover if you aren’t.

I encourage you to consider the examples of the Apostle Paul and “Honest Abe” – live in such a way that people will know that you are a person of honesty and integrity.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “Lying lips are detestable to the Lord, but faithful people are his delight.” Proverbs 12:22 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “We must demand that the truth be told.”

Proverbs 12:22 is just one of many verses which remind us that God hates lying and deceitfulness, and therefore so should we. Not only must we not be lying and deceitful people, but we shouldn’t tolerate that behavior from others – especially not from elected officials and cultural institutions such as the news media.

Public faith in government and the news media is at an all time low. Overall trust in government runs at 15% for Democrats and 22% for Republicans. Of all government institutions Congress has the lowest approval rating, coming in at just 11%. The military has the highest rating at 87%.

The news media also fares badly. Only 20% of the American public has faith in this important institution. 66% are certain most news outlets are heavily biased in favor of one political party or the other. 47% believe that news reports are frequently inaccurate or incomplete. The BBC, Fox News, and PBS are the highest rated and most trusted news outlets (in that order), CBS, NBC, ABC, and CNN are the least trusted.

The primary problem with government and with the news media is that they lie to us – and we know it. We all know that elected officials frequently distort, exaggerate, shade the truth, tell partial truths, and that they often tell full-on lies. That being the case, we never know for sure if we can believe what they say or not. Likewise, we all know that news outlets are highly selective about which stories they report, and how they report them. Being biased as they are, we can never be sure if we’re being told the full truth or some distorted version of it. All of this shakes our confidence in these important institutions. Lying does that.

General Colin Powell was a four-star Army General, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Secretary of State under President George W. Bush. In my opinion he has been one of America’s great leaders in this generation. He had a set of guiding leadership principles that he called “Powell’s Principles” which he applied to his own life, and which he insisted upon for all those who worked for him. With respect to truth-telling his principle reads, “Messy truth is always better than smooth lies, which unravel in the end anyway.”

When you have the habit of telling lies or distorting the truth, people eventually learn that to be true about you and they will no longer trust you. Why should they? Conversely, if you have the habit of consistently telling the truth, that is what you will be known for.

We must tell the truth ourselves, and we must demand that others do as well.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you really are my disciples. You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” John 8:31-32 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “Lying creates a tangled web of deceit”

In the year 1513 Scotland lost one of the most disastrous battles in its long history. It was the battle of Marmion. Without going into the details, the battle was lost because of a complicated web of lying, deceit, intrigue, and treachery on the part of the key characters.

In 1808 Scottish writer and poet Sir Walter Scott memorialized that battle in his famous poem “Marmion”. Out of that poem came one of the most memorable lines ever about lying: “Oh! What a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!”

One lie inevitably leads to another, and then to another, and then to another. When you tell a lie not only do you have to remember what untrue thing you said, but invariably you will end up having to tell another lie to cover up for the first lie, and that will often lead to additional lies, and soon it becomes a tangled web of lies that you can’t work your way out of. Eventually you will be found out and identified as a liar, relationships will be damaged, people will get hurt, and your reputation will be tainted – all because you didn’t tell the truth to begin with.

In John 8:32, when Jesus said that the truth will set us free, He was speaking specifically about spiritual truth, Biblical truth. In other words learning, embracing, and living by the truth as taught by Jesus will set you free. A saved and obedient follower of Jesus will experience freedom from sin, but also from the confusion about how to live daily life. Knowing and living by the truth of God sets us free, it brings freedom from wrong living.

In a similar manner, telling the truth will set you free. Tell the truth to begin with and you won’t have to worry about getting caught up in a tangled web of lies and deceit. The truth isn’t always convenient but it is always the truth. If you simply tell the truth you will never have to worry about accurately remembering your lie, and you won’t have to cover anything up. Always telling the truth frees us from being trapped in the complicated and tangled web of lies and deceit.

I encourage you to avoid that tangled web of lies and deceits. Simply tell the truth – always.

God Bless,
Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is:

Our theme for this month: “Telling the truth”

Our Bible verse for today: “Every matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.” 2 Corinthians 13:1 (CSB)

Our thought for today: “You are innocent until proven guilty.”

Many times it’s hard to know if someone is telling the truth or not. A good contemporary case-in-point would be the sexual assault allegations made against current Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. He has been accused of a sexual assault thirty-five years ago. The accuser seems credible to many people, but Judge Kavanaugh insists he didn’t do it. There is no evidence and there are no witnesses. It’s entirely a matter of “He said, she said”. So who do we believe? How do we know what the truth is?

The Biblical standard is that the truth of any matter must be established by two or three witnesses. In other words, there has to be hard evidence or there must be multiple credible witnesses. That’s what the Apostle Paul meant in 2 Corinthians 13:1, and Paul was simply quoting Moses from Deuteronomy 19:15. This was an Old Testament standard for determining truth, and it was reaffirmed in the New Testament.

The presumption of innocence unless proven guilty isn’t just a Biblical standard either, it’s also a foundational precept in both English and American law. In 1765 Sir William Blackstone wrote in his classic work “Commentaries on the Laws of England”, “Better that ten guilty persons escape than one innocent suffer.”

That principle was critical in the thinking of our Founding Fathers as well, and it was absorbed into both American common law and into the American sense of justice and fair play. Benjamin Franklin paraphrased Blackstone when he said, “It is better 100 guilty persons should escape than one innocent person should suffer.” John Adams said it like this, “It is more important that innocence be protected than guilt be punished.” This is where we get our standard of “innocent until proven guilty”. And it is more than just a legal standard to be applied in a court of law – it’s part of the American sense of justice and fair play.

God apparently agrees that it’s better for the guilty to go free than for the innocent to be punished. In Genesis 18:23-32, as God was planning to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham pleaded with Him to relent, just in case there were some innocent people among all the guilty. The way the conversation developed was that if Abraham could show God any righteous people at all in those towns, God would relent and allow all the guilty to go free for the sake of the innocent among them (there weren’t any).

Back to our current contemporary example: Sexual assault is an awful crime that demands punishment. Victims of sexual assault should be taken seriously and dealt with in a kind and compassionate manner. However, it’s also the case that anyone can accuse anyone else of anything at any time – but that doesn’t make it true. Just because an accusation has been made, doesn’t mean it is true. The burden of proof lies with the accuser to demonstrate that an offense has in fact been committed, and also that the person being accused is in fact the person who did it.

We are entitled to the presumption of innocence – both in the courts of law and in the court of public opinion. The burden is on the accuser and on the government to prove guilt, not on the accused to prove him or herself innocent.

Not only do we as individuals have a responsibility to tell the truth, but all of us also have a responsibility to insist that the truth be told. Additionally, we also have a responsibility to withhold judgment until and unless there is either hard evidence, or multiple credible witnesses, to corroborate the alleged offense.

God Bless,

Pastor Jim

Our mailing address is: