Speak What is True

The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be silent. Exodus 14:14

I cut my teeth on charisma, talk of tongues of fire and hands of healing. They said whatever I touched would be brought healing and it would be so natural I wouldn't feel the power coming out from me. I have never forgotten those words.

It has been months now since I felt the power out from under me. Not that it ever came from me, no, but I have felt it like a rug pulled out from under me. My pastor preached a sermon a year ago about getting under the faucet of what the Holy Spirit is doing and I am standing in its stream, drinking and sputtering from the wealth of water and I am dry as a bone.

Powerless.

I ask not for your sympathy, though I covet your prayers. I do not even say this because it has been a very long, long, long time since I have written here and been fully honest. Nor because it must be said—everything true need not be spoken.

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Someone tweeted or retweeted this morning: Everyone tells at least four lies a day; one of which is usually, "I'm fine."

I don't know the scientific truth of that statement but I know how many times I said something akin to "I'm fine" today and it was more than four.

It is so common these days to always say what is true about self, to be honest, to be healed through telling your story, to be fully here, fully you. But I know myself to be the grandest teller of lies I believe. And if I lie even half as often to you as I lie to myself, then what does my story accomplish at all?

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Driving for a conference kept me in my car much this week and I listened to sermons and songs and tried not to use coarse language at street signs, my GPS, and other drivers. David Crowder sung a small refrain repeatedly: Here's my life, Lord, speak what is true.

Tonight I'm overwhelmed with how much our culture, even our church culture, encourages us to speak what feels true. But—at the end of the day—He is the only one with the words of eternal life (John 6:68). He is the only one telling a story worth living. His story is the one that brings the power and healing and the hope. Tomorrow or next week or next month, I hope I will believe it more deeply. Until then,

Here's my heart, Lord. You speak what is true.