“What is holding you back from believing that Jesus is truth?”

By: Heather Shoffstall

Thomas said to him, “Lord, we don’t know where you are going, so how can we know the way?” Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him.” John 14:5-7 NIV

At DSM on Wednesday night, we were talking about Jesus’ I AM statements. One of the questions during our small group time was “When did you start believing that Jesus is the truth that leads to God? And what holds you back from believing that?” This question created quite a bit of conversation, not only with our students, but also with our volunteers. Full disclosure… I don’t think I started believing that Jesus is the truth until I was deeper into my relationship with Him.

When I accepted Christ as my Lord and Savior as a young teen at Jumonville, I did not know that Jesus was the truth. All I knew was that my friends answered the altar call, and while I answered also, I did not know what to do with this new faith. Looking back on it, I am thankful to the volunteers and mentors that walked with me in the early days of my faith journey. They encouraged me to find my own faith and to dig deeper into knowing who Jesus is.

When we answered the question on Wednesday, I realized that it wasn’t until I truly surrendered to Jesus that I started to believe that He was the truth. There were many things that held me back from believing; peer pressure, pride, the busy pace of life, relationships, so many things that pulled me away from Jesus that there was no way that I could believe that He is the truth.

Do you know that our students gave some of the same answers that I struggled with? So, I ask you “What is holding you back from believing that Jesus is truth?”  I think that it is a choice that we make every day. Every day we need to do something to follow Jesus closer; read our Bible, study a devotional, pray more, treat others with love and respect, choose to live as Jesus lived.

This is also what we refer to in the United Methodist Church as Sanctifying Grace. Sanctifying Grace happens after we accept God’s Justifying/Saving Grace. It happens after we turn and accept Jesus as our Savior (Justifying Grace). In church terms, “Sanctification denotes the process by which a believer is made holy and whole in response to justification.” (https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/a-wesleyan-understanding-of-grace) It is our daily choice to follow Jesus and His teachings. Sanctification, then, is the continuing process of being made perfect in love and of removing the desire to sin.

Sanctify them by the truth; your work is truth. As you sent me into the world, I have sent them into the world. For them I sanctify myself so that they too may be truly sanctified. John 17:17-19 NIV

So, I leave you with the last questions from our Wednesday night discussion:

What would it look like for you to live like Jesus is the truth? What is one thing you will do to live like that this week?