There used to be a game show called to Tell the Truth. ABC is bringing it back this summer. This show is about three people that are trying to convince you that they are who they say they are. Two are lying and one is telling the truth. The celebrities on the panel ask each contestant a series of questions trying to figure out who is lying and who is telling the truth. At the end you find out who the real person is. I used to love to play along and try to figure out who was lying. The contestants seemed to be pretty good at deceiving you. I think the same principle carries over into the world that we live in. It is really hard at times to tell who is lying and who is telling the truth.

When I first started on my journey, I wanted to find truth. I wanted God to show me what He had to say on every aspect of life. I read books, I read scripture and went through counseling to help me find truth. I wanted to know what God said about anger, hate, love, patience, endurance, love, compassion, kindness, abuse, etc. There are so many scriptures that show me how to live my life the way He intended for all of us to live it. He has the master plan on how to live life in the Bible. All we have to do is read it and study it and ask Him to help us live the way He intended us to live. But sadly, we don’t take the time or make the effort to do this. If you watch the news or listen to your friends talk, there is always a tragedy close by. I am not saying that if you follow the Lord there won’t be tragedy, because there will be. I am saying that if you live your life leaning on Him, He will enable you to survive the tragedies in your life.

That’s really how my journey started. My journey started after my brother committed suicide. I felt my insides start shaking and I knew I needed to change so I could handle my life. I was pretending to handle it, but I wasn’t. I thought I knew how to, but I didn’t. I knew deep down inside that I had to quit pretending and start learning from God how to handle my past and then learn how to live so I could handle my future. I went to the Old Testament because it speaks so much about the character of God. I wanted to know Him and I was desperate to find out how I was going to survive my life. You see, when my brother committed suicide, he opened up a can of worms in my family. He was letting the whole world know how horrible our lives were. The rest of us were pretending that everything was fine, but it wasn’t. His death gave us the freedom to look at ourselves and evaluate our lives spiritually. God used his death to help me change. This is a perfect example of how God can take anything and use it for good.

One of the reasons I use scripture in my blog so much is because it is truth. God created us and He knows the best way for us to live. If we will only take the time and look at scripture, there is an answer to every problem that we face. He gives us the tools to live our life if we will just take the time to ask Him for help. We need truth in order to live our lives. Opinions don’t matter; truth does.

Psalm 59:16-17 tells us that God is safe.

“You’ve been a safe place for me, a good place to hide. Strong God, I’m watching you do it, I can always count on you – God, my dependable love.”

I spent so much of my life not feeling safe. God is my safe place. There are many other scriptures that talk about Him being our safe place. Because of my view of God was so warped, this verse helped me look forward to each day.

Isaiah 50:4 “He awakens me each morning; He awakens my ear to listen like those
being instructed.” This one really helped me look at Him as my loving father waking me
up each day with His words.

This next one is one of my all-time favorites!

Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God is with you, He is mighty to save. He will take great
delight in you, He will quiet you with His love, He will rejoice over you with singing.”

I love picturing Him rejoicing over me with singing and quieting me down with His love. I
wonder what His voice sounds like? (I like to think of Him sounding like Michael Buble!)
What a beautiful mental picture I get in my mind of Him doing that for me because He is
an awesome father!

When I was going through so many trials in my life, I felt like I wasn’t going to make it. I was scared my mind was going to snap because my brother suffered from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. He had an extreme case of it. He even had brain surgery and spent many days in clinics, hospitals and took many different medications. In the back of my mind, I was scared to death I was going to end up like him. When the panic attacks hit, I was sure I was going to end up like him. It was one of my biggest fears.

2 Timothy 1:7 speaks on that subject.

“But God has not given you a spirit of fear, but of power, and of love, and of a sound
mind.”

I had to keep praying that verse over and over again. I was letting fear rule me. I was in
a daily battle with extreme fear for longer than I would have liked, but what it did was
drive me to the Lord. Because I wanted to know Him more, He met me where I was and
showed me how much He loved me and He gave me hope. This next verse pretty much
says it all.

“Because God in us is so much greater than any evil, sadness, failure, or fear in this world.” 1 John 4:4

I had to claim that verse over and over again. When I struggled with condemnation, these three verses helped me.

Isaiah 55:7 says “Yes, turn to our God, for He will abundantly pardon.”

1 John 1:9 says, “But if we confess our sins to Him, He is faithful and just to forgive us
and to cleanse us from every wrong.”

Jeremiah 31:34 says, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

You see I blamed myself for so many things and one of them was the fact that I felt like I should have been able to save my brother. I kept going back to things that happened in our past and wished I could have been a better sister. God wanted me to quit beating myself up and one of the only ways I could stop was to focus on scripture and listen to what the Lord was telling me. Again, I had to listen to truth!

There is so much more I could say. I just want you to know that when you need an answer or you are wondering what the truth is, please turn to what scripture says on the subject. Opinions and feelings can be quite confusing. People mean well, but you need to know what God says more than what someone else says or thinks. My counselor always pointed me to God’s word and what He had to say on the issues I was having. I learned that God’s word is active and relevant today and every day. I pray that you will find God’s word to show you the truth in your lives. Until next time dear friends and thanks for reading!