{"id":34190,"date":"2014-02-01T03:00:21","date_gmt":"2014-02-01T11:00:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.olivetree.com\/?p=34190"},"modified":"2019-04-18T12:38:26","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T19:38:26","slug":"the-truest-thing-about-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.olivetree.com\/blog\/the-truest-thing-about-you\/","title":{"rendered":"The Truest Thing About You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Truest<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

There are many true things about you. You may be a student. You may be a mom. Perhaps you love someone of the opposite sex or the same sex. Or maybe you make music or lattes. Life may be incredibly difficult, or you may feel like you\u2019re living the dream. These things may be true\u2014but are they the truest thing about you<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

JESUS, THE TRUEST… FOOD?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Fried chicken is food… and so is a kale salad. But Jesus declared that He is the truest food<\/strong>. See, other things may have the appearance of being able to satisfy the deep needs of our bodies and even our souls, but Jesus declares that He is even truer food and drink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So even among truths, there are true things and there are truer things.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jesus wants to get to the truer things, the things so deeply true about you that they have the power to change everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

THE TRUEST THING ABOUT YOU<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What if the truest thing about you can cause you to reimagine your entire life? Or what if it can drown out all the noise and speak the words that you\u2019ve waited for your whole life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or what the Gospel demands we ask is this: what does God<\/i> say is the truest thing about us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We aren\u2019t always comfortable asking that question, and sometimes we only pretend to ask it. We give an answer we think we ought to give, an answer that identifies us as one of the good kids or a good Christian or a good citizen. Those answers are too easy.<\/strong> They\u2019re cheap. All our lives we\u2019ve been trained to answer that question in particular ways for particular people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

HALF-TRUTHS<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

We define ourselves differently to different people. I\u2019m a good worker, a good parent, I\u2019m a failure, I\u2019m beautiful, I\u2019m hideous, I\u2019m loved, I\u2019m not.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And maybe you answer it differently when you\u2019re by yourself, when you ask it of yourself. Dancing alone, driving alone, sitting at a cafe alone, tapping snooze on your alarm for the seventh time, the tenth time, because there isn\u2019t one single reason you can come up with for getting out of bed on a sunny Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

You answer it differently every time because you feel different every time you\u2019re asked. A different person with every shifting truth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the problem: You\u2019re elevating things that are merely half-true, or true some days but not others\u2014to the level of \u201ctruest.\u201d I know you\u2019re doing this\u2014because I do it too. We all do. It\u2019s the human condition. But what is the truest thing about you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FINDING THE TRUTH<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Be clear: many destructive things we believe are very much true! We do fail, we did lose the money, we aren\u2019t as beautiful, we were abused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is that we have pushed many of these merely true things down to the most fundamental layer of who we are and in so doing have built our whole lives and identities on them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These things can be true, but we need to discover that they are not, and never will be, the truest<\/i> thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

David Lomas is the Lead Pastor at Reality\/SF and the author of the book The Truest Thing About You <\/strong><\/a>(David C. Cook). You can follow him on Twitter @davidlomas
\n<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There are many true things about you. You may be a student. You may be a mom. Perhaps you love someone of the opposite sex or the same sex. Or maybe you make music or lattes. Life may be incredibly difficult, or you may feel like you\u2019re living the dream. These things may be true\u2014but<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":43347,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5341],"tags":[6148],"class_list":{"0":"post-34190","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-topical","8":"tag-the-truest-thing-about-you"},"yoast_head":"\nThe Truest Thing About You - Olive Tree Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Life may be incredibly difficult, or you may feel like you\u2019re living the dream. 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