Proverbs 23:23 “Buy the truth and sell it not”.    God has a counter in each of our lives where truth has to be bought. The coin of the realm of the kingdom of God is not silver and gold, but humility.  The counter  is different for each one of us.  It is the place the Lord chooses and requires of us to humble where His hand is hovering, nowhere else.  1 Peter 5:6  “Humble yourselves therefore under the mighty hand of God, that he may exalt you in due time”.

The place, i.e. the counter,  is important to God.  Confession to the Pastor by a man involved in adultery is no substitute for confessing to his wife in the bedroom.  The consequence of truth  bought with humility, is freedom in Christ.  Jesus declared  “…..If you continue in my word, then are you my disciples indeed; and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free”,  John 8:31-32.  Truth makes free!  It is creative – living and active!

To refuse to buy truth at the counter God chooses, is more costly than buying it.  A refusal to humble and buy it sets me on a treadmill of the bondage of no change and all the pain that entails.    The children of Israel wandered round in circles in the wilderness for 40 years.  The Lord said of them, “Forty years long was I grieved  with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways”,  Psalm 95:10.

After refusing the truth, God will eventually, in His timing, not mine, bring me back to the counter.  In desperation I can agree to grab it now.   I come to a place where I am so sick of myself and the bondage I am in through refusing truth at God’s counter, I want deliverance.  However, prices rise!  When I refuse the truth and choose my independence of God,  when opportunity comes again to buy truth I discover that my pride has grown bigger in my wilderness wanderings.  I only have to come down where I have risen in pride, but pride puffs up and takes me away from the Lord on a wrong path.  1 Peter 5:5  “….for God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble”.    The slice of  humble pie I must now eat  to be made free from the bondage,  is much larger than when I first had the opportunity to embrace truth, walk in the light and humble myself.   We can assume our lives are our own to pick and choose our relationships, reactions and responses – but this is not so in the kingdom of God.  My life has been bought with a price – it cost the precious blood of Christ on the Cross.  When I entered into salvation, I surrendered my life to Christ in order for Him to live His life through me.  How many times have I failed to realise the truth of the following scripture and walked independently of that transaction, doing what I please in my flesh?  “Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?  For ye are bought with a price…..”  1 Corinthians 6:19-20.

In obedience to His Father’s will, Jesus left the glories of heaven to come to earth to sacrifice His life for sinful men.  He sacrificed His reputation to fulfil that:  Philippians 2:7  “He made himself of no reputation, took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men”.   Jesus was daily at His Father’s side in daily communion in glory, and He sacrificed that to do the will of His Father.  Jesus made Himself of  no reputation.  How often do I try to prop up my reputation, wanting to be thought well of by others?……endeavouring to please men instead of pleasing God first?   When I justify/uphold my reputation I am standing against God and He will resist me on the principle:  He gives grace to the humble and resists the proud.

My standing is in Christ alone, I have no standing of my own.  When I have nothing to prop up, (my reputation), there is nothing to knock down!  Nothing to prove anymore.  Lord, keep me true!