Did you see the scene in “A Few Good Men” when Tom Cruise yells out to Jack Nicholson, “I want the truth!”?  Well, I want the truth too.  And I want it for you. Far too many people aren’t facing the truth and it’s killing them. 

First, let’s get some quick definitions in your head:

Truth – What corresponds to reality.

Face it or ignore it.

Receive it or run from it.

Admit it or deny it.

Believe it or reject it.

Be real or just pretend. 

Whatever you do, the truth is.  It is not changing.  And it’s not going away. 

Here’s an example for you.  One night when I was introduced to speak, something very weird happened.  I was ready to go, already had checked my zipper and everything. As the audience cheered and clapped – I stood and moved toward the stage.  Just as I turned to the crowd, a booger jumped right out of my nose onto my lip.  I knew it was there.  I could feel it.  But what do you do?  In front of all those people?

I took my own advice.

“I have a booger on my lip.  Does anybody have a Kleenex?”

I didn’t want to ignore the truth, or run from it.  Like there’s a place to hide on stage??  So I faced the truth, dealt with it (with a kleenex), and moved on.

The same thing has happened to some of you.  Not a booger, maybe.  For you it was a heart-ripping divorce that you got blamed for, or a friend who was killed, or some failure.  Your reality scared you and you hid behind lies.  They told you the divorce was your fault and you used it for an excuse to do dumb things that made everything worse.  Or you lied to yourself and blamed God for what went wrong.  Rather than ask God to help, you pushed Him away.  Whatever.  The truth is still true.  With God or without God, you still have the problem.  You can go through hard times alone or you can face them together with God.

Randy told Erin that he loved her (lie).  She should give away her body to him to prove her love (lie).  Erin knew the truth, but it felt good to be together like that.  Today she is one of a thousand girls every day in America who become mothers who don’t have a father to help raise the baby. 

Believing a lie is easy.  In a moment I’ll show you that you (yes, YOU) have probably even believed lies about Jesus.  Most people do.

It’s easy to believe lies because of the crowd.  The huge majority believes lies and if you believe the truth you will be a minority.  Some people are too scared for that minority stuff.  They would rather live in a lie than be outside the crowd.

It’s easy to tolerate lies because of feelings.  So, your friend’s boyfriend is a total clod and phony.  But you don’t warn her because you don’t want to hurt her feelings.  So she gets burned real bad because you love her feelings more than the truth.  How’s she going to feel then?

Choosing to live with lies is easy because reality is sometimes scary.  The truth does hurt, sometimes.  But lies hurt more.  They can kill you.

I’ll give you a word, and you (quick) say the opposite of the word.  Ready?

Tall……

Skinny…..

Darkness…..

Jesus…..

Let me guess your answers.  Did you go with:  short, fat, light, and Satan?  If so you have believed a lie.  The first three answers are cool.  The last is dead wrong.  Satan is not the opposite of Jesus.  Jesus created him.  Jesus is the maker of all things.  Satan made nothing.  Jesus is God.  Satan is an angel. 

You should check the stuff you believe.  Especially the stuff about God. 

Let me help you get square with THE most important issue any human faces.  Where will you spend eternity? 

The truth about you and I is that we’re sinners.  God is holy and has a perfect Heaven.  We don’t fit in there.  We messed up.  We missed the mark of perfection required for Heaven.  God can’t let us in because we would defile it.

We have to have the barrier of our sin taken away.  Most people think you get to Heaven by going to church.  That’s a lie.  Many think water baptism will get rid of some of their sins.  That’s a lie too.  Won’t good works pay for sin??  Not on your life.  The Bible says we are saved “by grace through faith, and that not of yourselves.  It is the gift of God, not of works…” (Ephesians 2:8,9).

Here’s how you can be saved.  Jesus was God in the flesh.  He took our sin on Himself.  Then He died for it.  His payment satisfied the penalty that we owed God.  We don’t have to pay now.  You can have eternal life by believing in Him.  This is the truth of the Bible. 

 If you’ll believe in Christ right now, God will give you the free gift of eternal life.  It will be your’s.  You could never lose it.  You will belong to God forever.