16.2 The Truth That Finds Us
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(Based on John 16:7–15)
The Walk, the Words, and the Inherited Story I Never Questioned
The night pressed in as we walked—vines brushing our shoulders, the path narrowing beneath our feet, the city fading behind us. I could hear our sandals whispering on stone, each step carrying the weight of whatever Jesus still had to say.
Then he stopped the air with a single line:
“It is better for you that I go away…
When he comes…” (16:7)
Those words hit me like a line drawn in the dust.
“When he comes” wasn’t wishful thinking.
It was a marker.
A hinge.
A dividing line between the story we had inherited and the story that was about to begin.
And here’s the part I couldn’t have named that night, but I can now:
We were all living inside someone else’s narrative.
Back then, I didn’t have language for “narrative.” I only had habits, assumptions, and the quiet internal pressure of believing what everyone around me believed. We were born into the temple’s narrative and shaped by its purity narrative. We were handed the “this is how God works” script long before we understood the words.
I didn’t even know I could question it.
Every truth I received had passed through someone else’s hands first.
But Jesus was telling us that a moment was coming when borrowed truth would no longer be enough.
“When he comes” meant the story would no longer be written over us;
it would begin to unfold within us.
That night, without realizing it, I was walking out of an inherited story and toward one that would change my life from the inside out.
The System They Inherited and the Shock of “All the Truth”
The disciples gathered closer and sank deeper into their stunned silence. They glanced at each other, unsure whether he was undoing their whole world or inviting them into a new one.
They weren’t unique in this—they were simply human.
Everyone is born into a story that existed before them:
a religious story, a cultural story, a family story, a set of beliefs labeled “truth” long before we understand what truth really is.
In their world, truth was controlled by professionals:
priests, scholars, interpreters, purity experts.
Ordinary people didn’t discover truth;
they were given it.
The entire spiritual structure relied on that arrangement.
Truth flowed down from the elite to the masses.
Access was restricted.
Interpretation was centralized.
Understanding was limited.
They had never imagined truth without gatekeepers; the idea felt both terrifying and strangely hopeful.
Jesus wasn’t offering comfort;
He was announcing the end of the entire system.
“When he comes… he will guide you into all the truth.” (16:13)
Not “the pieces we deem appropriate.”
Not “the parts you’ve been taught.”
All the truth—the full, unfiltered encounter with what is real.
This wasn’t relativism.
It wasn’t individualism.
It was liberation.
Truth would no longer be dispensed from the outside.
It would rise from within, guided by a Presence who:
stands beside,
steadies the heart,
reframes what we inherited,
and reveals what has always been true.
The disciples didn’t understand it yet, but Jesus was giving them permission to step beyond the story they were born into—and let God lead them into a truer one.
How “When He Comes” Happened in Me
When I reflect on my life, I notice the same pattern.
I also inherited a narrative about God—a script of assumptions and an atmosphere that shaped how I understood tragedy, suffering, and unanswered prayer. I didn’t question it. I didn’t think I was allowed to.
When tragedy struck, I instinctively reached for the narrative I’d been given—the one that promised God was scripting everything with purpose.
But that story couldn’t hold what happened next.
Millie got sick.
And suddenly the inherited narrative crumbled under the weight of reality. I prayed with everything I had, and for months, heaven felt sealed—silent.
Yet in that silence, something began to open—slowly, quietly, almost imperceptibly.
When the old story finally breaks, the Spirit doesn’t speak louder—He speaks truer.
Not a voice, a miracle, or an explanation, but a gentle leading toward the truth I didn’t want but desperately needed:
Millie’s cancer was not God’s plan.
He did not “need another angel in heaven.”
The rhabdomyosarcoma was a biological failure—random, brutal, unchosen.
Not divine intention.
Not orchestrated suffering.
Not a cosmic lesson.
Just a cruel twist in the invisible machinery of her cells.
It took time.
It took grief.
It took courage to step beyond the story I had inherited.
But this is exactly what Jesus was promising that night in the vineyard:
“When he comes… he will guide you into all the truth.” (16:13)
Not borrowed truth.
Not inherited truth.
But actual truth—the kind that stands when the old narrative breaks.
And that truth rises from the inside, not because we invent it, but because it rises quietly, insistently, like sap pushing through a wounded tree.
“When he comes” wasn’t just their moment in the vineyard.
It became mine in my silent moments long after her funeral.
It becomes yours whenever the narrative you inherited no longer holds.
Truth isn’t ancient and static—it is alive and active, revealing itself in the real lives of ordinary people who dare to question the stories they were born into.
This isn’t truth we manufacture, but truth that reveals itself—available to all, recognized by some, and transformative to those who receive it.
The kind that frees you.
The kind that walks beside you long after the night in the vineyard.
This is the glimpse I’ve been given, through John’s words and my own walk through loss and light.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Borrowed truth eventually collapses under real life—Spirit-led truth emerges from within.
We’re all born into inherited narratives that shape our picture of God.
Jesus dismantled religious gatekeeping and opened “all the truth” to ordinary people.
Divine silence is often the threshold where deeper truth begins to rise.
The Spirit guides—not with noise but with clarity—toward reality that heals and frees.
