The Truth Will Set You Free

Pastor Kris Kile is a servant of the Lord. He works in a teaching ministry, and we have known him for many years. We have always talked about somehow creating a connection between our church and the ministry he leads, and in a conversation we had a few weeks ago, we agreed that he would come, bring us the Word of God, and also tell us something about his ministry, and that the anointing God has given him to speak about transformational processes might reach our church as well.

Hello. It is tremendous to be with you today. I have several close friends who are here in this congregation. One is sitting right here in front of me, Patricia, and I am tremendously excited about the vision you have upheld here over the years. From my perspective on what you are doing, not only is it having an impact here among this congregation, but I believe that God is working and will continue to use what you are doing here in this place to change and transform the world. Amen. Beyond, much farther beyond. Therefore, I am very excited to be able to see what you are doing, and it is a great privilege to be with you today and a great joy as well. So thank you.

Today I want to speak to you about love, transformation, and freedom—liberation. And today I would like to invite you to participate fully in this message. Now, think: what would it take for you to participate fully in this message? Let us talk about that for a moment. There will be times when I will ask questions and ask you to raise your hands so that you can answer those questions, and that will be one way you can participate today. And another way to participate fully is to regard what I am telling you as more than merely useful knowledge. Knowledge in itself does not produce results, so consider what I am saying in light of your personal life; consider it in light of who you are to the people you love and with whom you spend time. Another way you can participate is by listening with an honest and open heart and mind. In other words, honestly consider what I am going to tell you. Sometimes what I tell you may challenge your opinions about life and the world. And if I succeed, that is going to happen this morning: you are going to be challenged. My goal is to lead you to reconsider love, freedom, and transformation in different ways—to see these concepts in new ways.

My invitation is for you to be courageous, to have the moral courage to consider things in what may be a new and different way of seeing them. And the only thing I am telling you to do is to consider these things with the heart of a disciple, whether a man or a woman. A disciple is a person who is continually learning, someone who is very aware that he or she does not always have the right answers. Sometimes I think we have things somewhat backward. We believe the goal is always to have the answer. I would say that, as disciples, the goal is to remain in the question, not in the answer. Do you know that in Scripture Jesus asked more questions than the answers He gave? And many times, when He gave answers, He gave them in the form of parables, which in some ways was simply an invitation for people to consider new questions. So the goal of being Christians is not always to have the answers, or to believe that we have the answers. Rather, it is continually to reinvent the possibility of remaining in an ongoing relationship with the One who is indeed the answer, the Lord Jesus Christ.

So it is in that spirit of inquiry and searching that I ask you to consider my message today. How many of you would like to be able to love more powerfully and more boldly? So we are going to talk about that today. How do you know that you are loving more powerfully? Where do you look to determine how you are loving? Do you look within yourself? Or do you look to those whom you say you love? Many times I would like to convince myself that I am truly loving the people I care about and love, but if I actually choose to be honest, I have to look at and ask those whom I say I love, and allow their experience to instruct me about how to truly love them; otherwise, I would probably spend my whole life living in a fantasy world. How often have you failed to communicate your love to those whom you supposedly love? I notice that I fail frequently. My wife’s name is Katie, and although I always say that I love her, I notice that many times I do not produce in her the experience of love that I think I am creating. Now, is that good news or bad news? I say that it is good news; it is good to realize that. Now, it is not necessarily good news that I fail in this endeavor, but God has instructed us that many times we are going to miss the mark; we are not going to reach the goal. So the question is, if my desire is to have a consistent experience of love with those I love, then how can I live in such a way that I can transform what I think is possible in loving, be living love, and love others vibrantly?

Let us look at what God says about love. In Luke, chapter 10, verse 25, I invite you to turn there in your Bibles. It says here: “Behold, an interpreter of the law stood up and said to Him”—it is speaking about Jesus—“saying, in order to test Him: ‘Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’ And Jesus answered that lawyer of the law by asking him: ‘Well, what is written in the law? How do you read it?’ And he answered, saying: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself.’ And the Lord said to him: ‘You have answered correctly; do this and you will live.’”

Now, this is important because here we have the interpreter of the law asking Him, “What must I do to inherit eternal life, Lord?” How many would like the fullness of eternal life now and in the future? How many want that inheritance? He gives him the answer. He told him, “Love God and love your neighbor.” It sounds simple, doesn’t it? But I believe that these two acts—loving God and loving my neighbor—are inescapably connected to each other. I believe that many times we are quite certain of our love for God, but not so certain about our love for our neighbor. And our neighbor is the one who is close to us, those who accompany us through life. You know that Scripture also says that you shall love your enemy. I do not know about your experience, but sometimes I feel that the people I love most and to whom I feel closest sometimes even seem like my enemies... “But what is your problem? Why are you saying that? Why are you doing that kind of thing?” Have you ever felt that way about even the people you love? So God says: no matter how people approach you or how they act in your life, that does not matter; always be clear about your commitment to every one of them whom I command you to love. And God defines that a little further.

In 1 John, chapter 4, verse 20: “If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ and hates his brother, he is a liar, because whoever does not love his brother whom he has seen, how can he love God whom he has not seen?” And we have this commandment from Him: that whoever loves God must also love his brother. How many of you have heard people who are always talking about their love for God, and yet many times act with indifference and hostility toward their neighbor? God says that when we display that kind of inconsistency, we are, in effect, liars. So I can say that I love God all I want, but, in summary, what truly counts, according to Jesus, is that my love for God will be reflected in how I behave toward you and toward others. So if I truly want to know whether I really love the Lord, I must examine how I love those whom I supposedly love and care about, and how I am loving those I do not care about. There is a very powerful connection between those two things, between love and freedom. How many of you would like to have more freedom? Raise your hand. Now, I can say that God is not in the business of simply giving more freedom; He is not in the business of more love, nor is He in the business of a different kind of love or a different kind of freedom. He is not in the business of more love or freedom, or different love or freedom. I would say that He is not even in the business of better love or better freedom. Above all, God is interested in completely new love—new love. What interests Him is a completely different experience of what freedom is.

Let us look at this connection between love, loving, and being free. In 1 John, chapter 3, verse 18, it says: “My little children, let us not love in word only.” I am reading here from a different version, and this particular version says: “Let us not simply talk about love; let us practice true love. This is the only way we will truly love, showing that we are living authentically, living in God’s reality. It is also the way to shut down debilitating criticism, even when there is reason for us to be criticized, because God is much greater than the concerns and guilt of our hearts, and He knows far more about our hearts than we ourselves know about ourselves. Friends, once that has been settled, we stop accusing and condemning ourselves; we have boldness and confidence before God.” So if I find myself more concerned with loving those I am with instead of focusing more on my own needs and shortcomings, and therefore not so concerned with loving them but with what they should do for me and give to my life, and I find myself more concerned with loving those around me than with being right at all times, then I can begin to experience and produce the freedom that becomes possible when we live in divine reality.

Now, many times when I talk with couples while counseling them, I have lost count of how many times the conversation begins with: “Oh, if only he would do that, then our relationship would work.” God says: “Look, get out of that.” He says: “Instead, be convinced of what God expects of you regarding it, what you have to do regarding that person, and try to live responsibly in terms of how you can contribute to the relationship. Live in that reality, and that will then produce freedom.” Because think about it for a moment: if my life depends on how the other person is going to act toward me, then I actually find myself dependent upon, enslaved to, that person’s actions and circumstances in order to be able to carry out my commitment and experience my commitment. Do you believe there is power in that kind of power? That is actually debilitating; it does not empower you. Nor does it have much to do with Christ’s words, “Love God and love your neighbor.” So my question for you is this: What does it mean to live in God’s reality? God has essentially told us that we cannot see for ourselves; we cannot see life on the basis of His reality—at least, we cannot see His full divine reality.

In 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 12, it says: “For now we see through a glass, darkly, but then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know even as I am known.” And now I want to read it to you from a different translation of Scripture. In this translation it says: “We still do not see things clearly; we are merely looking like this, straining to see in the darkness, looking through the fog. But it will not be long before the weather clears and the sun shines brightly, and then we will see clearly. We will see Him with the same clarity with which God sees us, knowing Him directly as He knows us.” Now, when are we going to see clearly? When Jesus returns, when we see Him face to face. And then what does it say here? Is that the reality in which we live between now and that later time? In the meantime, we experience life as though through a fog. So God says, “Love Me and love others; live in My reality.” Nevertheless, He tells us, “Even so, you are going to experience My reality as though through a fog.” It almost sounds like a contradiction.

But in John 8:32, the Lord told them: “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Now, for many years, when I read this verse, I interpreted it to mean that if I came to understand Scripture, then I would be free. And certainly Scripture is an essential part of understanding God’s heart, but I would say that having freedom involves much more than this. How many people do you know who know a great deal about Scripture, yet do not experience freedom in their lives as they would like to? So knowing Scripture is indeed important, but it is not the whole of it.

God says, “The truth will produce freedom.” Now, the word truth is very interesting. The original meaning of that word we translate as truth is reality, in Greek. In the original Greek, the word used to refer to truth in this verse is translated much better as reality rather than truth, and it means something like uncovering, removing the veil, bringing to light what had previously been hidden. So reality is drawing back the veil, seeing things in a way you did not see them before. That is what produces freedom. So I would say that there is a direct connection between what Jesus tells them here about freedom and what He told the expert in the law about what was most important of all in life. He told him, “Love God and love your neighbor,” and what actually happens is that we look to those whom we say we love to determine whether the love we believe we are producing is truly taking place.

In Romans, Chapter 12, there is another piece of the puzzle. Verse 1 says, “Do not conform to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may discern what is good and acceptable, the perfect will of God.” So in Romans 12 the Lord offers us the possibility of being transformed. And what does transformation mean? Think about it for a moment. What does transformation mean? The word used here for transformation in Greek is the same word used when a caterpillar, a worm, turns into a butterfly. It is something dramatic. Completely new. So what God is involved in is giving completely new life, on a moment-by-moment basis. So how do we carry out that transformation? If we are walking, wandering around as though we were in a fog, and suddenly the fog lifts and disappears instantly, would that be a completely new experience?

Consider your heart for a moment. Scripture says that the issues of life flow from the heart; it says that the mouth speaks out of the abundance of the heart. Yet it also says in the Book of Jeremiah—you do not have to look it up; I am simply going to give it to you.

Jeremiah 17:9 says that the heart is more deceitful than all things and desperately wicked and sinful. Who can understand and know it? So God says that all the issues of our life—the longing to love, for example—flow from the heart, and at the same time He says that our heart is full of self-deception and malice, of evil. Do you think that the malice within it could produce a fog in our perceptions? It sounds like a paradox, a contradiction, but that is actually what happens. So if the issues of my life emanate from my heart and my heart has that inherent evil, then what can I do? Is there an answer, a way out?

I would say that it is not so much a matter of an answer as of a question in which we must remain and live. And the commitment that makes it possible to live there, in that tension, is what we have been talking about up to this point: maintaining the desire to love others, living in that commitment, remaining bound to that commitment, and continually examining whether we are actually carrying out that love.

In Second Corinthians, Chapter 10, verse 4, it says there that the weapons of our warfare are not carnal... (It says that you have heard that verse before) ...but mighty in God for the destruction of spiritual strongholds, demolishing arguments and everything that seeks to exalt itself against the lordship of God, taking every thought and bringing it captive into obedience to Christ Jesus, and being ready to punish every act of disobedience once your obedience has been fully realized. Again, from the version I am using, I want to give a more colloquial, simpler translation.

It says: the tools of our trade are not for marketing or human manipulation; therefore, they are capable of demolishing that massively corrupt culture. It says that we use these powerful tools to destroy worldly philosophies, to tear down barriers that have been raised against God’s truth, taking every loose and rebellious thought, every impulse of ours, and the structures of life, and fitting them into Christ Jesus. Our tools are ready and prepared to clear the ground of every obstruction that seeks to erect evil and falsehood and that opposes obedience and maturity. That is what the ministry in which I am involved seeks to do. It is designed to support people so that they can build the disciplines and practices spoken of here in Second Corinthians—taking every thought captive to Christ Jesus.

Many times, the fog of life that we have been talking about is produced by the personal filters through which I examine life in a distorted way. Each of us has a point of view completely different from everyone else’s, and that perspective is made up of the sum total of all our past experiences: everything we have heard and learned, and what we have decided we are going to do about those experiences. And although there are some things about which we believe we all share the same opinion, I would say that no two human beings have the same filter through which they interpret the experiences of life. And we are unconsciously unaware of many things we have decided about life; we do not know them or hold them consciously. We have simply decided that this is the way it is and that there is nothing I can do about it. That is simply how things are. Yet what I choose and what I decide to do about my reality often differs from the way those whom I supposedly love interpret and see life; there is a difference between their perceptions.

I know that many times, when I am talking with someone, I enter into a competition. There is what I am telling that person, and then there is what you are saying about what I am saying. That inner conversation we all have—how many of you know what I mean? People normally speak about 150 words per minute; Caribbean people speak more, but the mind is capable of thinking in terms of 600 to 700 words per minute, so we are always filling in those gaps there, always filling them with our own inner conversation. And what fuels that inner conversation? Well, Second Corinthians, Chapter 10, speaks about this.

It says: loose, rebellious thoughts, emotions, impulses, evaluations, judgments—the whole package; it is all there. And most of the time, we are not aware of what we are truly thinking. It is automatic. No wonder Scripture says that we experience life as though through a fog; there is interference. So what is the solution? Well, what does Jesus say? He says, love God and love your neighbor, and then, if you say that you love Me, Jesus says, but you do not love your neighbor, then you are a liar. So the solution is to begin determining whether my inner conversation—the rebellious thoughts, emotions, and different feelings—actually supports or actually prevents what I say I am committed to doing, namely, loving people, from truly being what God says it should be: that I lay down my life for those whom I actually say I supposedly love. That is, whether there is consistency between what I am truly thinking, what the Word says, and what I am actually doing in my act of loving others. Scripture says that we must lay down our life for our neighbor. That is much more than simply dying physically for someone.

The greater reality for those of us who are living is being willing to interrupt the way I think things are—which Scripture says is distorted and full of fog anyway—and to live in community with others, in relationship, and be open to their way of seeing reality. For example, when I say that I love my wife, Katie, I can be open to how she perceives my love and how she feels I am truly loving her, instead of telling her, “No, you are wrong,” when what she is telling me about how she perceives my love does not match what I supposedly think is true. There is tremendous freedom in this. Think about it.

If every time you love a person—at least here in your mind, according to how you think about it—you then give that person the freedom to express themselves and suddenly discover that you are not loving them as you think you are, or that their experience of your love is not what you think it is, then this constitutes a direct invitation for you to enter reality as it is instead of remaining in the fantasy, the personal distortion you have constructed for yourself. And Jesus says that this fact, this honesty, produces freedom, because then you are free to live with what is real, with what is, and then to act within your commitment to living in reality, in what is honest and true. There are tremendous resources, tremendous power, in that posture. So the key, then, is to live responsibly, to inquire and examine responsibly. Be clear about the vision that will animate your relationship with others. Be open. Live honestly and authentically toward others so that they can then believe that you are receptive, that you are open to having them also inform you and instruct you about what your relationship with them truly is. This requires moral courage, and it is a continual invitation to live on the cutting edge of faith, because authentic relationships cannot be continually controlled so that we are always in control and they turn out to be what we want those relationships to be.

How many of you have noticed that life generally never ends up being what we want it to be? I would say that this is part of God’s plan, because then we have the opportunity to discover what He truly has for us, and Jesus says that this reality will then be experienced in terms of my commitment to genuinely loving others. In fact, I would say the following: I would say that if I am genuinely committed to living authentically in reality, I have to remain in relationship with others.

Love God; love your neighbor. That reality, and living in it, will produce freedom. As those whom you love and who love you instruct you and feel free to let you know their personal perception of reality, this will enable you not to be controlled or enslaved by the fog and mental distortions of life. Clarity in life is produced by an unalterable commitment to love others and a commitment always to act in faith, to launch yourself into the unknown of what that new, interactive reality will produce. And that produces great hope in life, so that you no longer have to live in despair and resignation to your circumstances.

So that is what we do in the training programs in which we are involved, because we support others and help them process their relationships with others. And we are always engaged in an ongoing conversation with the leadership here at your church about how we can work together so that this transformation, this freedom, may take place in new and creative ways here in your congregation. So if you are interested in learning more about how you can live that authentic life, we are going to have a three-day seminar in January. And this Thursday—write this down, those of you who are interested—December 15 at 7:30 in the evening, here at the church, we are going to have an informational meeting if you are interested in learning more about this and talking a little more about it. This will allow you to learn a little more about the different resources we have available for you. This meeting will be in English, but we will also have translation if needed.

And now I would like to close in prayer. Thank You, Lord, for Your love, Your faith, Your faithfulness, Your grace, and Your mercy. And Father, I ask You to pour out a special blessing upon this church, upon its leaders, and upon the congregation as a whole. And Lord, guide us; show us Your way. Thank You, Lord, in Your name. Amen. Give the Lord a round of applause. Thank you.

It is that freedom that God wants for us, that we might live in that authenticity. Let us not live deceiving ourselves. Brothers and sisters, what our brother here says is so important: there is so much..... I agree with Chris that the greatest source of Christians’ problems is often not so much horrendous sin or great excesses, but rather this tendency we have to deceive ourselves, to impose our perception of things on others. Those small moral and ethical flaws in our marital relationships, with our children, among friends and fellow church members—it is there that God’s blessing so often leaks away. It is as if we were to open 3 windows here in this sanctuary right now: no matter how much heat there was inside and how well everything had been prepared to keep us warm, if there are air leaks, if cold air comes in, no matter how much we may want otherwise, it will always be cold. We are often like that: we give money, we serve, we do this, we do that, but there are these subtle leaks in our relationships; we oppress, deceive, criticize, gossip, impose ourselves, and exploit others in subtle ways. Then everything we do is worth nothing because there is a leak in the pressure, in the seal that ought to exist in the Christian life. Those little foxes that spoil the vineyard, of which the writer speaks.

God calls us: Examine yourself, examine yourself. And where are you allowing the divine pressure to leak out of your life? In what area of human relationships are you allowing the blessing to escape, allowing God’s blessing to drain away? I believe that this is the great frontier for the people of God. It is not so much whether we speak in tongues or jump or pray—glory to God for those things; we love them—but if, amid all of that, there are leaks of justice in our relationships and of the true love with which we ought to love others, then that neutralizes the benefit of all the other things. We are left open to the enemy’s incursions and to suffering, so God calls us to be authentic; be truthful. Live in the truth, even when it is uncomfortable. Thanks to Him for His word. Amen. Glory to God for His word; it gives us freedom. Amen. It sets us free, as the Lord says: “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.”

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Sermon by Kris Kile (translated by Dr. Roberto Miranda), recorded December 11, 2005, at Congregación León de Judá (52 min.)

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