Real! True! Truth?

What follows is a transcript of Pastor Gina’s message from our Sunday morning gathering. We share these messages on our blog for those who appreciate the opportunity to read the sermon again—whether for deeper reflection, personal study, or a quieter moment of prayer and introspection. As you read, we invite you to linger with the words, notice what resonates, and remain open to how God may be speaking to you through them.

by Gina Johnson

So, how often have you ever noticed how quickly a moment can convince you that it's the whole story? Okay, one conversation, one situation, one unexpected turn, and yeah, sometimes not the fun kind. All of a sudden, it feels like everything is changed, and here's the thing. The event is real, and the emotional reaction in it, it can be true, but the experience that's happening in the moment, that moment is not here to be the final definition of your life or even that day.

It's just that moment. One of the greatest spiritual skills is learning to differentiate between what's real, what feels true, and what is truth. You know, things happen in life that are undeniably real.

Circumstances will continue to unfold around us, and sometimes it's that domino effect. One thing happens, and the next thing happens, and then you find yourself searching, right? Waiting for that other shoe to drop of what's going to happen next, and as these situations arise, these moments, they exist in time and space, but what is time and space? That's a whole new one that we're going to tackle a different day, but the thing is, just in that moment, the events are real, and they matter, but the thing about being a follower of Jesus, the thing about Christianity, is it never asks us to pretend that life is not happening. However, we are encouraged in 2 Corinthians 4 18, it says, Fix your eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen.

For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. So, in other words, what is seen is real, but it's still temporary. Reality is not always the same thing as truth.

So, when something happens, we have an emotional response, but I think many of us have an emotional reaction, and when you hear that, it doesn't always mean it is a negative emotional reaction. Sometimes it could be just something abundantly exciting, and carefree, and filled with joy, and emotions are not meant to be the enemy. They're meant to be gifts, and so one of the things that I've had to work on, and I feel like I've worked on it way more over this past four years, is how I control my emotions, and no matter how much I try to understand what is it, why do I get so reactive? Well, it's that thing that your emotions are actually an expression of the inner essence, okay? Within you, there is the I am.

There is this essence of truth. I'm using that word truth. There is who you are when you strip away all the noise, and all the distractions.

You come back into that complete alignment where you are one with God. That is truth. Nothing can change that.

No disease, no financial strain, no relationship breakup. Nothing can change that. The truth is you are one with the I am.

You are a child of God, and if you could even get so bold to be one with God is to be God-like, but the thing is we're in this experience, and it's a beautiful experience where there's so many things to be grateful for each and every day, but the thing is when we're in this experience, and we're in the noise, we have to react and respond a lot to what's going on outside of us, and so something happens externally, and we try to take it in, and when we can't take it in, our nervous system is saying, hey, hey, what's going on here? Next thing you know, there's a reaction, and that reaction, depending on how it's being received, can cause another reaction, or even just the reactions within ourselves back and forth, and now our emotions are unchecked. They're unstable. They're all over the place.

Have you seen her? Gosh, she gets all over the place. Did you see the way he handled that? Man, he needs to check those emotions. That's right, because these individuals or groups, however you want to say it, they are reacting to what's going on externally, and when you try to take in a death, an illness, a financial challenge, a relationship struggle, a health concern, you try to take these things in and make them a part of who you are, so you're not just feeling them, and you're not just experiencing them.

You want to use them to label you. Well, that's when your emotions are going to be shaped by the external world, primarily getting shaped by the noise. You haven't done this, so you are this.

You don't have that, so this is all you're going to have. Look at your age. Look at your body.

What is that pain you're feeling? How come you didn't do it that way? There are so many things that the world will throw at you, but then on top of that, you know where is the noisiest place? In here, because as we are going through the experience, we are then, if we are not careful, if we are not functioning from truth, we are then magnifying the story. Man, my shoulder, you know, it's really been bugging me. Hey guys, new shoulder.

Now, gosh, what could this mean? Maybe I, you know, is there a tumor in there? Wait, what is this? Oh no, what's happening? Am I aging? What's going to happen next? Oh no, here comes menopause. I could go on this rabbit trail of things and start defining myself by all of those things instead of remembering I'm whole. I've been doing a lot of movement lately.

I haven't been doing physical activity at the gym like I usually do. I haven't been stretching. I've been on the go.

I haven't been nourishing my body properly, but if I look at myself as a being, I'm whole and I'm divine, and I'm standing in the realization of coming more and more into the perfection that God sees in me. So yes, I have a little ache in my shoulder or a pain in my side or in my back or in my knee, but that is not who I am, and thanks to the God Jehovah that I serve, he will remind me, he will help me, and we will transcend that pain and we will move on. It's a hard thing to do.

I know as many of you are sitting out here, whether it's with emotional pain, physical pain, whatever it may be, it's like, gosh, Gina, if it was that easy, right? If we could just remind ourselves in the moment of who we are and get past it, but it's challenging. There's always shifting conditions. There's always expectations and fears, and they feel very true because they are in that moment, but again, that true is not the truth that defines us.

Truth is deeper than the circumstance. You see, truth is what God declares about who we are, whose we are, and truth, as I said earlier, can never be taken away. In John 8, 32, it says, you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.

What are you being set free from? You know, people say, are you saved? What are you being saved from? Because the truth, it's actually not setting you free in the sense of you're in prison. It's setting you free from the lies, the distortion, the noise that you have told yourself about who you are according to the world outside of you. The more we let the world outside of us come in and define who we are, then we don't have freedom.

Freedom comes when we stop letting every moment define our identity, and we allow the truth to interpret that moment and guide us in our response. Remind us how to show up. If you really knew how divine you were, if you realize that there's no separation between humanity and divinity and you are always walking in the highest form, if you lived in that every second, how would truth interpret the moment? That new diagnosis, that loss of a friend or loved one, that unprepared financial situation that jumped up at you.

How would truth cause you to react if you really stood in the wholeness of who you are? When the inward work is done, the outer life gets more and more clear of noise and distraction and labels, illusions, and your emotions will flow differently because they're flowing from the essence of who you are, not who someone has conditioned you to be or even worse, which is true the way we've conditioned ourselves to be. For some reason, I never really was big into him in high school or anything like that, but somewhere in my 20s, I enjoyed looking at Ralph Waldo Emerson, and what a great thinker. You know, one of the things that he said was that humans struggle in their tendency to let the external world define the internal life.

He says, society and circumstances, successes, failures, praise, and criticism constantly attempt to tell us who we are. Emerson believed that when we allow these outer conditions to determine our identity, we lose contact with a deeper voice that is truth within us. I recently listened to and then I read his essay, Self-Reliance, and he says, nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles. Where do these principles come from? They come from that truth that resides deeper within us. Emerson was not saying, isolate yourself.

You don't need anyone but you. That's not what he was saying. He was teaching that when we seek to find that stabilizing peace in the world, in the constantly changing circumstances around us, in the outer experiences we're having, that is not going to stabilize our inner life.

Our inner life is stabilized when it's governed by the deeper principles that we might call truth, that are within the Word of God, that are within some of these sacred texts, that are within one another when we're functioning in our highest selves. Emerson also says, trust thyself. Every heart vibrates to that iron string and that iron will sharpen you.

In spiritual language, this is a call to live from that place of that God-given center. This is whenever that inner life is anchored to truth, then it doesn't matter how circumstances outside us move. We want to do everything we can to not encounter those challenging situations.

But I mean, how many of us can really say, every time I had a challenge, I knew it was coming, so I reacted perfect. I would be surprised if I saw any hands go up. Because a lot of times, the challenges we face, even though in our hindsight, we're like, oh, I should have saw that coming.

In the moment, it's usually a surprise. And sometimes it's a, yay, surprise. And sometimes it's a, oh, surprise that you can't react in church that way.

And so I'm telling you, hear what the Apostle Paul says again. Fix your eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary.

What is experienced outside of yourself, what is in the external, is temporary. But what is unseen, what is that internal presence, that essence of the I am, that is eternal. And the way we bring that unseen to being seen is by living in it and expressing it.

Now, I want you all to think for a moment in this past week, if there was a moment that stirred a strong reaction. It may have been frustration, worry, excitement, fear, even pride. You don't have to say it out loud, but I want you to take that situation in your mind and ask yourself these three questions.

What happened that was real? In that experience this past week, what happened that was real? And where did you feel a sense of truth in that moment? What did you feel that seemed true when that experience was happening? But now ask yourself, what is the deeper truth that God declares beyond that moment? You experienced something, it was real, it seemed true, but what did God declare beyond that moment? Spiritual maturity is never pretending that things don't happen, it's learning to interpret what happens through the lens of truth instead of the moment around us. So we're going to play a little game here, and I'm going to read a phrase to you, and I want you all to respond. Is it real and true, or is it truth? The first one, my worth is already established because I am created and known by God.

Truth. Very good. If I feel unworthy, it must mean I am unworthy.

False. Real and true. Yeah, absolutely.

What I see happening around me right now defines what is possible for my life, and that is the first, real and true. God sees possibilities in me that I may not yet be able to see. Yeah, I think some of you guys aren't experiencing this because I'm not really hearing you, you know.

God sees possibilities in me that I may not yet be able to see that is truth. Because I have failed before, I may never fully become what I hoped. Real and true.

Even when I doubt myself, God's truth about me remains unchanged. That is truth. My value rises and falls based on how well I perform, and that would be real and true in the moment, perhaps.

And lastly, in God's sight, I am always capable of renewal and new beginnings. It's interesting because sometimes I think we hear those things, especially in a moment like Sunday morning church, and it's like, well, I know that. I know whatever's going on in the moment doesn't define me.

I know that there are possibilities and opportunities beyond my comprehension. I know who I am in God, and I just want to stay for a minute like, but do you really? Because how many of us were just in a situation this week, and not only did we stir on it in the moment, not only did we react to it seconds after the moment, but we revisited it throughout our week. We kept sprinkling a little bit of fertilizer on the moment that was just an experience to teach us, an experience to remind us, but instead we turned it into something so much more.

It may sound funny to remind you how divine and how infinite and how majestic and almighty and faithful and sovereign is your God, but it's not silly. As a matter of fact, just recently I received a mantra affirmation statement, and I'm like, man, I have three copies of this. I'm going to put one in my bedroom, one by my bathroom mirror, and probably one in my car, because I'm a minister, big whoop, and I still need that reminder, not just day in and day out, but moment in and moment out.

The truth, I am defined by the presence of the Jehovah residing within me and nothing else, nothing else. This week, I just want to encourage you as a person who is in the world pursuing truth, don't just ask, what happened? Ask, what was this here to teach me? And as you live this week, be teachable students. Walk observant.

Move through life in ways where you're not just there in the moment of the situation, but where you're taking the gift from it. Take time to explore something new, to seek wisdom, to seek growth, and to accept growth that's happening within you. And most of all, take time to rest in gratitude and reflection.

When you move through life with no center, with no anchoring to truth, you just drift through life, and eventually everything you're navigating will decide exactly where you land, where that destination is, as opposed to if you move through life knowing truth, standing in truth, letting truth come from you, then you'll see how steady and how real the world is around us when we are functioning in the truth of who we are.

Please pray with me.

Our Father God, Creator, our love divine, we are so grateful for the opportunity to have your word as another tool, as another resource, as another anchor in the truth of who we are.

As we go from this place today, may we remember the light that we carry within each and every one of us that is that of Christ Jesus, and may we remember the gift that that light is to us, and that we will share that gift of truth and love and peace to all those we encounter. I pray that we all receive what was meant to be bestowed upon us from the Spirit, and whatever is not, may it be forgotten. Let this time glorify and honor you, our Lord Jesus.

Amen. As we come to the close of our service, I just want to