This week I feel that the Lord wants me to write about my thoughts on honesty, and how as followers of Christ we are meant to live our lives.

I’ve always lived by the old motto ‘honesty is the best policy’, and from experience it hasn’t done me any harm. As readers of this blog will know, when you own up to a mistake people will generally appreciate your honesty; it doesn’t mean you won’t have to face the consequences though.

Jesus says in John 8:31-32 “³¹ Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, “If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; ³² and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.” [NRSV]. This is one of the many instances where we see Jesus telling the people (and us), that by knowing Him and Scripture we will know the truth and be free. If you take time to think back on the times when you’ve been truthful about a mistake, comment you’ve made and you were tempted not to be truthful; afterwards you will have no doubt felt relieved and at peace. Where if you had have lied you would ‘hopefully’ have felt guilty and would have been wondering will you be found out and what will happen.

In 1 Peter 3:10-12 Peter instructs his readers in how they should live their lives by keeping “their tongues from evil and their lips from speaking deceit” [NRSV] as Gods eyes and ears are on the righteous.

With many people having to work from home due to Covid-19, it can be tempting to have longer lunch breaks, start late or finish early. This though is being dishonest which is sinful, in your mind you may think the consequences, sinful acts are minor but sin is sin.

Another area in our lives where we need to be honest and faithful is when we’re proclaiming God’s word, unfortunately at this moment in time their are numerous online ‘preachers’ either purposely or by misunderstanding scripture are taking Bible verses out of context, twisting their meaning. For instance God is judging the world for it’s sins through Covid-19, I am not aware of any Bible passages where it states that God will judge the world on this scale and if so why now and not earlier in history? My understanding is that we will be judged individually on judgement day, and the current pandemic has been caused through mankind’s greed by delaying international lockdowns, the cultural differences in how Western and Eastern societies live and have lived for hundreds of years. And because globalisation hasn’t had the necessary safeguards in place the virus has been able to spread quickly.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones said that we need to deal with the meaning of the text and be honest, this may mean we have to have read a number of Bibles and commentaries but when we do speak up we can do so knowing that we are being honest and faithful.

All Bible verse quotes and links were taken from http://www.biblegateway.com