Chapter 44 - Truth

I have given out plenty of Truth, and yet some say, “Oh, give us more.” What have you done with what I have already given? You enjoy the Truth, but sometimes there is a fascination in its revelation that bewitches you, and you want to know more about that, but you don’t want to know about the power of its reaction in you.

That is where your trouble is. We must always remember that there is a reaction in this Truth business. We want it —that’s good—the desire is there; that is wholesome. One day I said, “I want the Truth, Lord.” But you see, if we really mean that, the entrance of Truth in our hearts and lives is the most disastrous thing we could ask for; that is, if we let it accomplish its features and purposes. It isn’t something that liberates us, and makes us happy. That is one aspect of its reaction, but Truth, in its power, in its essence, is the most terrifying thing I have found, but I didn’t know it in the beginning.

Truth has a two-fold action in us. It will begin pleasing us, of course; that is good psychology; quite agreeable; it has a great charm. We say, “Truth, how wonderful!” Now, if we embrace it; if we actually open our hearts to that, and we say, “Lord, I want the Truth,” we better be very careful what we pray about. He might come in with the power of Truth. What does it do? It becomes devastating since we have to have it in this negative aspect first. Truth will slay us, because the Lord is not interested in this carnal, natural setup. It has to go by a way of death before it can be released in life. That is a law in the realm of Spirit, and the realm of Spirit is filled with laws as real as the law of gravitation.

People, however, would rather have a manifestation they can look at: grow a leg on Susie . . . see how He did that! We get caught on some item, an experience, and we cannot move. Use them as most fleeting, most fleeting; value them; appreciate them; give them their full value, but move on.

He says, “If I come in that negative power, it will slay you, but there is a reaction; I only slay that I may bring resurrection and life.” So Truth will slay us, but Truth is the only medium He has for its resurrection.

I like Peter because he is aggressive, and I like John because he is a mystic. I work with all people, because Truth is too big for one church. No one has a corner on it. If I found a bunch of people who thought they had all the Truth, I’d leave them. Nobody has all the Truth; we have the Bible, but I mean the revelation of its contents.

Truth is not only objective, but when people yield their hearts and lives to the Holy Spirit, the Spirit can take this Truth, and incorporate it into their lives until the things which are purely judicial may be brought down to actual living. The Holy Spirit takes that which is purely objective and judicial, and makes it a reality in your life until it is incorporated into your being; it will then be a subjective realization.

SUBJECTIVE—It is not produced by external stimuli, resulting from condition within brain and sense organs. The subjective side of Truth means how much of the Truth, so refreshing in comtemplation, is actually, by experience, ours. The subjective side of Truth is the realization of it; it has been personalized; it is experimental Truth vs. judicial or objective Truth.

OBJECTIVE—It is external; apart from self-consciousness; an end of action to be reached (not subjective). While contemplating, and meditating on Truth, we may be blest and refreshed. This is the objective aspect of Truth, sometimes called judicial Truth. For example: Someone gives us a lovely statement of Truth which is purely objective; a little later God brings a little crisis, and says, “Now I am going to take that Truth, and make it a demonstration, (subjective realization) in your life.

Truth is never ours until it is personalized. It is never ours until we have laid ourselves open to God in our inner being, and the Spirit has been able to bring that Truth in, and we have, by faith, taken hold of it, and allowed that Truth to do the thing in us that it should. It may be creative, or perhaps corrective, but whichever it is, it is the material we will be using.

Truth is purely progressive in all forms. The heart has to be conditioned continually for its reception. It is an invisible miracle in the heart. Ten years from now it will have a fuller meaning.

There are fields of Truth not yet possessed. It takes a lifetime to have Truth converted in us.

All revelation, I don’t care what field we may move in, is purely a progressive matter. It is eternally evolving; it is eternally moving. Why? Because it is inexhaustible. That is the center of all which is in God. God is infinite; Truth is infinite. Nobody can exhaust it. Nobody has a corner on Truth. It is just too big.

What you get out of a revelation is what you have brought to it. What we bring to Truth governs very much what we get out of it. Our testimony is what we have gotten out of the revelation. It will be governed by our own personal experience.

No conversations in the Word of God are accidental—not the words; nor the arrangement of the choice of words; nor their combination. That is what makes it so powerful.

Truth is very exacting and precise; it is settled forever. But the doctrines which we build on Truth may be very loose, and still be based on Truth. Truth comes by revelation; not by mental processes. I have tried that field of mental processes; I could define a lot of things, and analyze a lot of things; I know doctrine, and have taught it in college—that is fine intellectually, but that doesn’t get us through. Truth comes by revelation. The mental processes are beautiful; wonderful; scholastic; intellectual; but we don’t know God; we don’t know Spirit; we don’t know reality through that technique at all. It moves on a level here, and is good here;— don’t depreciate it; value it, but keep it in its place: on the level where God has placed it.

I can’t make Truth. No one is original in that. God alone is its Author. But one may discover it, and it may become an obsession, or something of that nature. It is LIFE, and gives meaning to life. His will becomes the pattern, or design for living. The blessed Holy Spirit is Guide, and instructs, and furnishes the power, or dynamics for the out-working of His holy and precious purpose in the life of the one given to Him. In many ways it is like a dramatic adventure, full of heavenly interest, and material for the development of the new life in Him. So let us all move along patiently with Him. The agitated spirit only hinders. Faith is rest. But it is so difficult to reduce the natural man, and teach him to walk patiently with God.

After three years, Jesus could say, “Now are ye clean through the Word.” The blood of Jesus will cleanse us from sin, but the power of the Word will cleanse us from all these strange, traditional things. There is a double cleansing continually. I have about nine places in the Word where Jesus washed his disciples from tradition by the Word.

Unless we learn to make a balance in the Truth, we will never have equipoise to stand in the Spirit. The disciples were continually feeding themselves on one side of Truth, i.e. Christ in exaltation, but the other side of that Truth is Christ in humiliation.

Examples of the balance in Truth:

The brazen altar, and mercy seat were the same height.

Jesus fed four to five thousand, but could pick up the fragments.

There is a balance, an equipoise, in Truth. Properly, Truth has two legs:

1. Right foot = Light and life—the positive teaching is of the Word of God, as victory, joy—it is creative.

2. Left foot = Discipline, suffering, death—all the negative sides of the Truth—it is corrective.

Jacob’s ladder was set on earth;— angels ascending and descending. Why use a ladder? There are two sides of Truth. The ladder is not suspended from heaven. Its feet are attached to the earth.

There is no one original in Truth. Truth is quite original in itself. We don’t make Truth; we discover it.

Truth only confirms; it never disturbs Truth. When an impact of Truth comes to you, it will never disturb, or dislodge anything that is Truth, but if there is something traditional, that becomes uneasy. If you have some things in there that are getting kind of jittery, something traditional, then that is disturbed. If it will upset anything, it won’t be Truth that will be upset.

The Word of God is yet dead until the Spirit of God breathes Life through it. The letter of the Word is dead. The Word is Spirit and Life.

Discern the Truth, and live under the power of it. I think that is terrible not to be inwardly aroused to, what I call, the inner consciousness of Truth.

We can take a bit of Truth God gives us, and apply it over our initial, elementary experience in God, but, by and by, as we grow older, we can take that same Truth, and apply it over our lives, and we will find it will minister to us all over again. We have had this experience at one period in our lives, when he gave us a Scripture for our encouragement, strength, or vision, and maybe five years later when we read it, it ministers entirely differently to us. That is a sign we have been growing. Truth has that power; the application of the Word is repeated over and over—here a little, and there a little; precept upon precept. It involves a process.

In our journey back to His loving heart, where we belong, He will have to use Truth over and over for our edification. Truth is corrective, but it is also illuminating; it has strange powers within us. Sometime it will bring a terrifying disappointment, but with it, a marvelous moving of the grace of God, so that in the end we would prefer the loss, the disappointment that we might have the grace which only comes through that method.

I can give you Truth in one lesson that will take a lifetime to work out.

I want you to find that He is adequate for your need, and I want you to have a fresh revelation of Him so that He might strengthen your capacity, and enlarge your powers of receptivity. This Truth has revolutionized my thinking, and, absolutely, my living. It has made an impact on me. The first reaction to Truth is devastating; the second is creative, and begins an illumination and a freedom and generosity in God which we are too cramped to receive at first. It takes great pressure to make capacity. This Truth will project itself to ages and ages. Why not pay a little bit now for a correct adjustment to God; correct adjustment to the things of God, so that when the time comes for our transition, we will not be too horribly surprised. We just can’t go to glory—we have to be prepared.

I move in three realms continually: spiritual; soulish; physical—that’s the way it should be; the way it was designed.

Our character is the sum total of our choices and decisions through life. When we hear Truth, it has made its impact; we cannot erase it.

Life will have some heartaches and headaches, but in God we have such wonderful victory. He is the Answer.

A mystery is a Truth that comes not by reasoning, but by revelation. It is not disclosed to us by a process of reasoning.

In the garden, Adam and Eve made girdles (aprons). What is your girdle as a Christian? It is the girdle of Truth. The earth is cursed today, and it cannot bring forth a thing that will make a girdle.

Anything new that denies the Truth which is given in the Bible, I have nothing to do with.