"All truth is God's truth"

With My Own Two Hands -Ben Harper

Soak Up the Sun -Sheryl Crow

One Love -Bob Marley

These are the tunes that pour out of my computer's speakers as I whirl around the living room dancing and singing like a "crazy person" (this is relative).  These songs fill my heart with such joy!  I know they would probably not frequent K-LOVE, or be sung in any Sunday morning service.  But the worship I had this morning was fantastic!  My experience could really relate to this excerpt from Rob Bell's Velvet Elvis.  

Paul affirms the truth wherever he finds it. 

But he takes it further in the book of Acts. He is speaking at a place called Mars Hill (which would be a great name for a church) and trying to explain to a group of people who believe in hundreds of thousands of gods that there is really only one God who made everything and everybody. At one point he's talking about how God made us all, and he says to them, "As some of your own poets have said, `We are his offspring.'" He quotes their own poets. And their poets don't even believe in the God he's talking about. They were talking about some other god and how we are all the offspring of that god, and Paul takes their statement and makes it about his God. Amazing. 

Paul doesn't just affirm the truth here; he claims it for himself. He doesn't care who said it or who they were even saying it about. What they said was true, and so he claims it as his own. 

This affirming and claiming of truth wherever you find it is all through the writings of Paul. In 1 Corinthians, he tells his readers, "All things are yours,... and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God." He essentially says to them, "It all belongs to God, and Christ is of God, and you are of Christ, so...it's all yours." 

Claim it. 

If it is true, if it is beautiful, if it is honorable, if it is right, then claim it. Because it is from God. And you belong to God. 

The philosopher Arthur Holmes is known for saying, "All truth is God's truth." It is such a great statement, because what other kind of truth could there be?

This is the scripture that Rob is referring to from Acts 17:

 24"The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by hands. 25And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything, because he himself gives all men life and breath and everything else.26From one man he made every nation of men, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he determined the times set for them and the exact places where they should live. 27God did this so that men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. 28'For in him we live and move and have our being.' As some of your own poets have said, 'We are his offspring.'

Good stuff.  My worship this morning is true.