Your Truth | Cornerstone Church | Pastor Linn Winters · Rewind

Your Truth | Cornerstone Church | Pastor Linn Winters · Rewind

Linn Winters · Nov 25, 2025

Big Idea

Trading what is actually true for "my truth" — what I feel or have decided is true — always leaves life smaller than God intended, so we must trade our truth for God's.

God's truth, not our own feelings or experiences, is the only safe foundation for life. When we exchange what is actually true for what we've decided is true, we deceive ourselves, create our own pain, and diminish the life God intended — but when we trade our truth for His, like Moses did, we find freedom and purpose instead.

Key points

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1"My truth" means exchanging what is actually true for what I've decided is true
Pastor Linn defines the popular phrase 'my truth' as people leaning on their own feelings and experiences over what God has said. He gives examples: someone judging a race based on one bad encounter, someone justifying addiction because of the euphoria it first gave them, and a couple justifying premarital sex because 'it's fun' and feels like it deepens their relationship.
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2Living your truth is living in self-deception
Working through Proverbs 14:12, Pastor Linn shows that a way can appear right and still lead to death — spiritual, relational, or unmet potential. He illustrates this with his own experience getting an instrument flight rating and the true story of JFK Jr., who ignored his plane's instruments, trusted what he felt, and crashed into the ocean because he trusted feeling over fact.
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3We have an enemy who wants us to doubt God's truth and replace it with our own
From 1 Peter 5:8, Pastor Linn warns that Satan doesn't need people to become Satanists — he just needs them to doubt God and become their own god. He retells the Genesis account of Eve at the tree, showing how the serpent distorted God's love and provision until Eve traded truth for her own conclusion.
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4Following our own truth creates our own struggle and pain
Citing Jeremiah 17:9 that the heart is deceitful above all things, Pastor Linn retells the story of David and Bathsheba, showing how David's heart told him 'I need her,' overriding God's truth, leading to adultery, murder, a dead child, and eventually his own son's rebellion.
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5Your opinion has never made anything true
Pastor Linn shares a personal story from age 16 telling his mother that Billy Graham was not a good Christian, only to be humbled by her response and later, as an adult, seeing the vast scope of Graham's ministry at a museum. He uses this to show that strongly holding an opinion doesn't make it correct.
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6Truth, not feeling, must come first and then guide everything else
Pastor Linn points to Jesus's own words that heaven and earth will pass away before Scripture fails, then reads John 8:31-32 that knowing and holding to Jesus's truth sets people free, while living by one's own truth leads to chains.
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7Moses had to trade his own truth for God's truth to fulfill his calling
Pastor Linn walks through Moses's story: his frustration that God seemed absent from Israel's suffering, his own truth that led him to murder an Egyptian, forty years tending sheep, and then the burning bush where God commissioned him. Moses initially answers with his own truth ('I can't, I'm a criminal'), but when he instead trades it for God's truth, he goes on to lead Israel out of Egypt and becomes one of history's most revered leaders.

Application

Pastor Linn frames the charge as a trade: find where you've chosen your truth over God's, and trade it.

Ask God to reveal your own truth
During the five minutes of daily prayer challenged the week before, ask God to show any place you've chosen to live your own truth instead of His.
Trade your truth for God's when He shows you
When God reveals a place of self-deception, set aside your belief, feelings, and perception, and simply live in what God has actually said.
Start with truth, then let it guide you
Rather than starting with feelings or opinions and bending truth to fit them, begin with what God's word actually says and let it shape your conclusions and perceptions.

Take it into your week

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Day 1

Pastor Linn opened with a simple picture: two builders, two houses, one storm. The difference wasn't the storm — the rain fell on both. The difference was the foundation. Jesus says the wise builder is the one who hears His words "and follows it" (NLT), while the foolish builder hears and ignores. It's easy to imagine the foolish builder was lazy or careless, but sand feels solid enough on a clear day. That's the quiet danger. Our own feelings and experiences can feel like a perfectly good place to build a life — until weather comes and shows us what we were standing on. This week isn't about scolding ourselves for wanting solid ground; wanting security is deeply human. It's about honestly asking what we've been building on. God's truth isn't offered as a burden but as bedrock — something that holds when the rain and floods arrive, and they do arrive for everyone. Before we examine any specific corner of our lives, it helps to simply admit that a foundation matters, and to want the one that lasts. That's where the week begins: not with a verdict, but with a question about where our house sits.

For reflection

When has a "storm" in my life revealed something about what I'd actually been building on?

Pray

Ask God for an honest look at the foundation your life is built on.

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Topics

God's Word Self-Deception Surrender Truth

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