The Bible tells us that God is Spirit and those who worship Him must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

• If we want God’s amazing love to flow into and through our lives, we must learn to walk in truth.

God only works in an atmosphere of truth.

• Psalm 89:14 tells us that righteousness and justice are the foundation of His throne; mercy and truth go before His face.

Just as no human relationship can remain strong without truthfulness, our relationship with God cannot function well without truth.

Whereas we may struggle with some biblical commands, truthfulness is a virtue we all have the ability to exercise in our relationships with God.

What does truthfulness mean in this context?

It means that we are sincere in our responses to God: we confront the truth in our hearts and present the same in our responses to Him.

• For example, “Lord, this is the real reason why I am doing so and so,” or “Lord, this is why I do not want to do so and so.”

God loves us dearly, but we hinder the working of His love in our lives when we deal falsely.

• It is essential that we learn and practice being true in our hearts to Him.

Read John 4:1-24

Verses 10, 13-18: Jesus offers “living water” to the woman at the well. She is desirous of it though not fully understanding its meaning. But Jesus takes a detour in the conversation to reveal the truth about her life; her impending relationship with God must be built on a foundation of truth.

Verses 19-20: The woman quickly gets off the topic and pursues more religious talk, mirroring what many Christians do today:

• We zealously pursue our Christian faith, but refuse to face the truth about certain aspects of our lives. We rationalize or excuse those defective areas and seek to separate them from our walk with God.

Verses 21-24: The Lord brings her back to the importance of truth in her relationship with God.

• Notice that Jesus went out of His way to evangelize this woman. He took several risks by reaching out to her. Therefore, there was no question about God’s love for her and His desire to bring her into His kingdom.

• The knowledge of her history and moral weakness did not disqualify her, but it was an element of truth that needed to come to light if she was to benefit from God’s amazing love.

Read Genesis 20:1–17

In light of the good plans He had for Abraham, God did not permit the lie about Sarah to remain in his life.

Abraham faced a difficult situation; he had genuine reasons to be afraid. But rather than let him live a lie, God created a situation that allowed him to correct the falsehood and live in an atmosphere of truth.

Important points

There is nothing as liberating as being truthful in our interactions with the Lord:

• being true about how we feel
• being true about who we are
• being true about our families, and more.

Confronting the truth may hurt our pride, but this place of humility is the beginning of many deliverances and breakthroughs.

When we expose our true feelings and fears to God, He sends ministry and healing to those deep down places that we have opened up to Him.

Sometimes we hide deep-seated shame and fears beneath layers of excuses and rationalizations. But the Lord wants to pour His love deep down into us; He wants to wipe away all shame and fear. However, the layers of falsehood must come off first.