Deception or Truth?
by David Silvester
A few days ago my wife prepared a lunch-time snack of poached egg on toast. When she passed me mine the egg appeared to have three yolks. Then I observed that hers had two. I made a comment to the effect that I had occasionally seen eggs with double yolks but had never seen an egg with a triple yolk.
It was then that I was informed that both eggs actually only had a single yolk, and the extra yolks were what remained from eggs that were required for making a Pavlova. If the truth had not been explained to me I would have been completely deceived.
This simple incident from everyday life reminded me that it’s all too easy for any one of us to present an appearance of being a godly person while at the same time living a lie and deceiving people. In our Christian lives we should regularly be challenged to be the same on the inside as we appear on the outside.
When God sent Samuel to anoint one of the sons of Jesse the Bethlehemite to be the king of Israel and Judah he looked on Eliab and thought, ‘Surely the LORD'S anointed is before me’. But this was where God said, ‘Do not look at his appearance or at his physical stature, because I have refused him. For the LORD does not see as man sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart’.
This older brother was not the man God had chosen from the sons of Jesse. It was to be the youngest son, David, because God knew David’s heart.
I wonder how many times I’ve presented an appearance of being one thing while in reality I was something quite different. It’s time to pray the prayer from the words of Psalm 139:23-24, ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me and know my thoughts; and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting’.
David Silvester is married and has a son, two daughters and eight grandchildren. He trained as a production engineer. He then moved on to become a lecturer of engineering craft skills before being called of God in his early fifties to become a pastor of a Baptist church. He says that,"having previously experienced an amazing healing on a day others expected me to die, it came as no surprise that God directed me and my wife, Margaret, to become involved with Ellel Ministries."
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