I will hear what God the LORD will say; for He will speak peace (shalom) to His people, to His godly ones; but let them not turn back to folly. Psalm 85:8.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
Facts are temporal and are of the flesh, they are of the physical realm, truth is of the spiritual realm and does not change. When people say they are telling the truth in court, they are repeating facts that they have seen, heard, and experienced as they recall or perceive them. And this is good and what is needed for the proper judgment on the facts to be made. The same is true when you come to Me to confess your sins, that is telling the truth of what you did in the flesh, for sin is of the flesh, and that is why Jesus was punished and died in the flesh realm, but when you confess your sins I speak back the truth that once you confess them they are gone for I have accounted them all to Jesus and you are free from the sins and are not under condemnation. I am speaking back the truth to you. When I speak the truth, I am not just looking at the facts as they are, I am speaking what My Will is in the situation and I am giving you the solution to the facts that are taking you down so you can be revived and rise up to new heights as an overcomer. I speak of shalom to My people no matter what is going on in their lives, but My Word of shalom is the answer to whatever is not shalom in their lives.
“I am the LORD your God, who teaches you to profit, who leads you in the way you should go. If only you had paid attention to My commandments! Then your well-being (shalom) would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea.” Isaiah 48:17-18.
Today I will teach you how you get from the facts to the truth so that your life is filled with facts each day that line up with the truth so that facts and truth meet in the kiss of shalom peace.
The first step in any situation you are in to get from living in the facts to living in the truth is to listen to what I have to say.
I will hear what God the LORD will say; for He will speak peace (shalom) to His people, to His godly ones; but let them not turn back to folly. Surely His salvation is near to those who fear Him, that glory may dwell in our land. Lovingkindness and truth have met together; righteousness and shalom peace have kissed each other. Truth springs from the earth, and righteousness looks down from heaven. Psalm 85:8-11.
The fact is you may have failed but the truth is that in Christ Jesus I always cause you to triumph. How do you get from the failure to the triumph? To learn this, for you can learn from the old to bring the lessons into the new, let us look back to the facts of Ziklag.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. 2 Timothy 3:16-17.
In Ziklag, David faced what by the facts was defeat through failure on his part to guard their city and families, but what began as the worst day of his life, turned out to be the best day of his life by his willingness to look to Me to change the facts (the world, the flesh, and the devil’s will) to the truth (My Will).
When David fled into the territory of the Philistines to escape Saul, who out of jealousy was seeking to kill David with the army of Israel, a band of what grew to be six hundred outcasts from Israel joined him, and I gave David favor with a Philistine ruler named Achish who let him, his men, their wives, and sons and daughters inhabit the town of Ziklag as their own. After three years, the Philistines were going to fight Saul and the army of Israel in battle and Achish wanted David and his men to join in the battle at his side. The other leaders did not trust David and told Achish to send him and his men home and not let them fight as they would most likely desert to the side of Israel, which really was the truth and would have made them lose the battle.
When David and his men came to Ziklag on the third day, the Amalekites had made a raid on the Negev and on Ziklag while all the men were gone with David to join with Achish in battle and left it unguarded. They had overthrown Ziklag and burned it with fire. They took captive the women and all who were in it, both small and great, without killing anyone, and carried them off and went their way. When David and his men came to the city, behold, it was burned with fire, and their wives and their sons and their daughters had been taken captive.
Then David and the men who were with him lifted their voices and wept until there was no strength in them to weep. Not only had he lost family, David became even more greatly distressed when he realized the men were blaming him for the tragedy and were thinking of stoning him for leaving no guard and allowing this to happen. All his men, who had so loved him, now turned on him because they were embittered against him, each one because of his sons and his daughters.
But David refused to run and hide and just give up. He was not going to let the facts overcome him, he knew Me too well. He knew I delivered him always. So he got off the ground, stopped weeping, and began encouraging himself and rejoicing in Me, his good Shepherd, remembering all the miracles I had done to protect and deliver him since his childhood as a shepherd, to Goliath, to the battles leading the army of Israel under Saul, to the chasing of him by Saul, and he had NEVER been hurt or captured. He reminded himself of My covenant with him and his people and began to rejoice in Me. He was ready to listen to Me to see what to do at that point. In the depths of despair and blame he had not heard anything I was trying to tell him.
So David said to Abiathar the priest, the son of Ahimelech, that had fled (with the Ephod of the High Priest) to join him when Saul killed the priests because they had helped David, “Please bring me the ephod.” 1 Samuel 30:7. So Abiathar brought the ephod to David. David inquired of Me, such as Joshua would for counsel for the nation when he came to conquer the promised land, saying, “Shall I pursue this band? Shall I overtake them?” And I told him the answer he sought, “Pursue, for you will surely overtake them, and you will surely rescue all.” 1 Samuel 30:8. And that put new life into David. He was revived by My Word.
Remember the word to Your servant, in which You have made me hope. This is my comfort in my affliction, that Your word has revived me. Psalm 119:49-50.
Remember that in any trial, affliction, desperate circumstance, you need to draw close and hear from Me. I sustain the weary with a Word that will rouse them and raise them out of the depths of the miry swamp to place their feet on a height as I put a new song in their mouths, a song of praise to My glory and might. Isaiah 50:4, Psalm 40:1-3.
When you call I answer you and tell you great and mighty things you could not know. Jeremiah 33:3.
Nothing is too hard, too wonderful, or impossible for Me. My Will is to do good and not evil, to undo the works of the devil. 1 John 3:8.
So at My direction, David went, he and the six hundred men who were with him, without knowing where to go to find the Amalekites, they just knew that I told them to go and recover all. But David pursued, he and four hundred men, for when they came to cross the brook of Besor, two hundred who were too exhausted to cross the brook Besor and remained behind.
As they stepped out in faith, they found a weak and abandoned Egyptian lad in the field and brought him to David, and gave him bread and he ate, and they provided him water to drink. They gave him a piece of fig cake and two clusters of raisins, and he ate; then his spirit revived. For he had not eaten bread or drunk water for three days and three nights. David was a man of compassion and had a generous heart and stopped to see if he could help him, so he asked him, “To whom do you belong? And where are you from?” And he said, “I am a young man of Egypt, a servant of an Amalekite; and my master left me behind when I fell sick three days ago. We made a raid on the Negev of the Cherethites, and on that which belongs to Judah, and on the Negev of Caleb, and we burned Ziklag with fire.”
David rejoiced in his heart with Me knowing I had given him the second answer now, I was showing him where to go to recover all. So David said to him, “Will you bring me down to this band?” And he said, “Swear to me by God that you will not kill me or deliver me into the hands of my master, and I will bring you down to this band.” And so David promised and the young man with his men thereafter.
Do you see? As you get yourself up and stop whining I can take your failure and make it into a triumph. Step out and as you walk it out I will direct your path for I have prepared it in advance. In fact, I walked it out already ahead of you to prepare the way before you.
But you will not go out in haste, nor will you go as fugitives; for the LORD will go before you, and the God of Israel will be your rear guard. Isaiah 52:12.
The Israelites coming out of Egypt could not see My footsteps under the sea, but I had already walked out the deliverance of My people from slavery before they could see the path under the Red Sea. It was all prepared.
Your way was in the sea and Your paths in the mighty waters, and Your footprints may not be known. You led Your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. Psalm 77:19-20.
They did not have to beg, plead, or cajole Me to save them. I already had the way mapped out, they just had to show up and take it by faith. I told Moses not to get excited and cry out, just to lift his staff and his hand and tell the sea to part. I had already prepared the solution so they could triumph and not know defeat.
Well, when the young Egyptian led David and his men he to the Amalekite hideaway, they were spread over all the land, eating and drinking and dancing because of all the great spoil that they had taken from the land of the Philistines and from the land of Judah. David and men did a surprise attack and not a man of them escaped, except four hundred young men who rode on camels and fled. So David recovered all that the Amalekites had taken from all the towns they had raided and rescued everyone that had been taken from Ziklag, nothing of theirs was missing, whether small or great, wives, sons or daughters, spoil or anything that they had taken. David brought it all back. David also captured all the sheep and the cattle taken from the towns other than Ziklag and the men said, “This is David’s spoil.” But David sent it as gifts to the towns in Judah it had been taken from and to all the places where David himself and his men were accustomed to go that had helped them.
And on that same day in the battle David and his men had not gone to, Saul and his sons were defeated and died. Saul could no longer chase David to kill him and the danger was gone. So at My direction, David and his men went to the beautiful garden city of Hebron and the men of Judah came and made him king. And after some time the men of Israel did the same. My Word to Samuel that David was to be king and shepherd My people Israel came true.
Yes, by following Me and not giving up, David’s day of defeat became his day of triumph.
So now, how do you get from the facts to the truth? Get your eyes off the problem and onto Me, encourage yourself in My promises and prior help, turn your attention to Me seeking My answer and seek until you know you have it (it will revive your soul and light your path), then answer the problem, “Oh no, I am not going down I will recover all and more!” and go forward as quickly as you can and let Me lead you as you go and be quick to pick up prompts, directions, and signs I send as you proceed.
Take the instructions of Jesus, come to Him you who are weary and burdened and he will refresh you with My Word, and learn from Him how to turn contrary facts into truth: And Jesus answered saying to them, “Have faith in God. Truly I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be taken up and cast into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart, but believes that what he says is going to happen, it will be granted him. Therefore I say to you, all things for which you pray and ask, believe that you have received them, and they will be granted you. Whenever you stand praying, forgive, if you have anything against anyone, so that your Father who is in heaven will also forgive you your transgressions. But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father who is in heaven forgive your transgressions.” Mark 11:22-26.
But we will talk about this more in our next Life Lesson.
I love you. Always seek My Will and once you know it get the facts to line up. They will, they have no choice once you have made the choice.