100% sure

Revelation: It is possible to be 100% sure of something and also 100% wrong.

We don't like to admit this, especially about ourselves. All well and good for the other chap, but could I be wrong about the things I've said and thought and believed and taught my whole life? It's humbling and it's scary. This revelation can be used to wash away every bedrock of life and to advance all sorts of agendas that are just, well, wrong.

If you can be wrong when you're sure, maybe you are wrong! How do you know you're not mistaken in your most important analyses, like who God is and what He's saying to you? How do you know anything, for sure, really? And if you can't know anything for sure, how can there be any kind of universal right and wrong, or even general standards about what's beneficial and what's not, that might apply to us all?

John came home from Bible study this morning with good answers from Romans 14. "For God is able to make him stand........let evey man be fully persuaded in his own mind........why dost thou judge thy brother? .......... for we shall all stand before the judgment seat of Christ."

Be fully persuaded; fully enough to take a stand and make a difference for righteousness in your world. Extend grace to your brother, who may or may not see things as you do. Ultimately, we will all stand, or fall, before the Lord. Be humble enough, even after proclaiming the ship unsinkable, to climb into the lifeboat when you feel your shoes getting wet.

So if I stand let me stand on the promise that you will pull me through. And if I can't, let me fall on the grace that first brought me to you. So if I sing let me sing for the joy that has born in me these songs. And if I weep let it be as a man who is longing for his home.

I remember a time of unspeakable grief in our lives, when John and I groped for solid footing, lost in a pain-racked world that didn't make any sense at all. "I only know two things," I told him then. "I know God is good. And I know He loves me." I'm not afraid to be 100% sure.