Parcticing Truth – Walking In Power with Nate Ortiz

Hey today I'd like to talk to you about truth.

Truth is something that is so needed in our lives and especially when it comes to the word

of God that we understand the truth, not half truth, not someone's interpretation of the

truth but really what God's word says.

And so I wanted the title that's just practicing truth.

And that seems like a very simple concept that people would say, well, who wouldn't be

true for or who wouldn't be honest.

But it's amazing the times that people cannot practice truth and able to preserve who they

want to be or who they want people to think they are.

They want people to really know the things that they have going on in their lives.

And as believers, it's hard, it could be difficult, it could be challenging.

But practicing truth is a way to really get some freedom in your life and not to have

these things hold you back from experiencing all who God is.

You know, maybe there's time when you were a kid growing up or maybe your own kids and

they're in a sport or they're learning an instrument or whatever it might be.

And sometimes we say it's phrase that practice makes perfect.

And we have a phrase in our house where we say practice makes progress.

And we believe that because we believe that if you are just doing the consistent things

daily that you may not be exactly where you want to be today or tomorrow or we for

an hour or month or now.

But when you do that consistently over time, you are making progress.

And the same could be said about truth.

When we practice truth in our lives with people close to us, with people who are working

with it creates a greater sense within us of how God wants to communicate with us, created

a greater ability for us to trust people to understand that we are not perfect always.

We're not always bad in the thousand.

But it allows us to really be honest about where we are in life in different situations.

So let me clarify this.

I'm not saying that every person you come in contact with, you're just going to be

truthful with and tell them everything is going on in your life or you're going to

just always just come at people with truth that it hinders the relationship.

That's not what I'm saying.

But your relationship is a piece of it.

But truth is truth.

And I want to talk about practicing truth.

So in 1 John 1, starting in verse 6, go into verse 9, I want to read it here.

It says, if we say that we have fellowship with him and you walk in darkness, we lie and

do not practice the truth.

So if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one

another.

And the blood of Jesus, his son cleanses us from all sin.

If we say that we have no sin, we are deceit ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive our sins and cleanses

us from all unrighteousness.

And so I just have a few thoughts I wanted to take from these passages of the scriptures.

As it talks about your walking darkness or walking in light or just the idea of truth

governing the decisions we make, how we form our lives, how we connect with our spouse,

teammates, our kids.

And the first thought is that if you're paying attention to the scriptures, says if you say

that fellowship, you know, a relationship with God and yet you continue walking darkness

as you are a liar and you do not practice truth, we don't like to think of ourselves as

lies.

No one likes to say, yeah, I'm a liar all the time.

Right?

But if we are saying that, yeah, I have a relationship with God.

I'm connected with him, but yet we aren't, we continue walking darkness and we continue

to let us sit in our lives.

We're not practicing truth.

We're just saying it and we're hoping people acknowledge that we're trying to be good

people or whatever that may look like, but how are you operating in truth?

How are you saying God in my day, I don't want to be found a liar saying one thing in public

than doing another thing in private.

And the times where you do fall short, right?

You have to acknowledge it in your lives and how you go about that.

So you can't perfect what you don't practice.

So remind yourselves that when you are practicing truth, you are saying God, I don't want

to be a liar or someone who's not being forthright or truthful.

I want to be someone who's honest.

I want to be someone who's transparent in light of your word because those people who

just be transparent for the sake of being transparent, but they're not really looking to change.

So we're talking about being transparent with the idea and with the intention of changing.

The second thing that it talks about in this passage scripture says, if you say you have

no sin, you are deceiving yourselves, it's very common that people can often deceive

themselves because they want, they don't want to acknowledge that something needs to change

within them and they create their own narratives.

And when you deceive yourself, it's a very slippery slope because you can make excuses for things

that God's word says that you shouldn't be doing God's word instructs exclusively.

So you have to have enough maturity within yourself to say, all right, if there is sin

of my life, what am I going to do about it?

But if you're really even listening to this message and myself as well where I say God,

like there's things I have false shorted, right?

There's things that you have false shorted.

But we have to, we understand that we have a God who loves us and cares for us and that

we are able to say God helped with, helped me with this issue of my life to struggle,

whatever it might be because if we don't, that we're diminishing the role of God in our

lives and we just begin to say, well, I'm a control, I have authority in what's taking

place, but that's how God calls us to live, that we understand that we fall short of the

glory of God.

But God sent His Son, Jesus, to bridge that gap for us.

So don't deceive yourself today.

If there's things you need, you know, you need to cut out, cut them out.

Don't just go on living life, just making your own excuses or making your own narratives

that make you feel better about yourselves, but the truth is laid out in the scriptures.

How are you walking that out?

And the last thing that would say is you practice truth, right?

How do you practice truth?

How do you do it?

You practice truth by confessing, recognizing God, confessing to a close group of people

because the enemy would love you in your life just to keep things to yourself, to keep

things private.

Don't tell anyone.

If someone knew this, they would judge you.

Or if you told someone this, they would think less of you or it would take away from your

persona of who you're trying to be.

That's where the enemy grabs a photo in our lives when you just put this secret sin deeper

into our lives.

And we feel like, well, I'm just going to get past it.

And we believe that light, right?

If I just get past this, then I'll be all right.

And if I just can do this and I only have to cut this corner one time or we say, this

is the last time.

And we don't confess our sin outside of our own mind or own thoughts.

So we have to get more vulnerable in that space, more comfortable of just being truthful

and practicing that.

Because it says when you confess in this past scripture where it says you confess, it

says he is faithful.

He is righteous.

He is forgiving to cleanse us from all sin.

So just by confessing, we had these things that come to our lives, a faith for this righteousness

and forgiving that come into our lives.

And in turn, we feel that for God and we give it to others.

I want to encourage you today.

Take a moment, take inventory of your life.

I think you hear the word of God.

It's one thing just, all right.

I heard it.

I'm moving on.

But just take a moment.

You know, shut everything off.

Turn, you know, put your phone face down, whatever it is.

You know, shut the ringer off.

And just say, God, like, what do you speak into me?

What are some areas I need to practice truth and maybe this we have been honest with?

Maybe some people need to just come clean with.

Maybe some things in your own life that you haven't really brought forth to people who

can really help you.

What are those things?

You need to identify them and be honest with people.

So be honest with yourself, be honest with God.

And that's where freedom really comes in our lives.

So hey, I hope you have an amazing rest of your day.

And I'll be blessed and continue to practice truth and know that God is faithful to forgive

all those areas that we bring to Him.