“Your word is truth.” John 17:17
What we believe colors everything we do. Everything. As we began our study of Lies Young Women Believe this truth has resonated. This week we looked at the lies “God is not enough”, “God is not really involved in my life”, “God should fix my problems” and “God is just like my father.”
Alone each of those statements sound plausible. They even line up with a lot of “church” doctrines. You may even agree at first glance, but when held up to the TRUTH of the Bible – God’s True Word – we find out quickly that they are lies. Lies meant to separate, multiply and destroy.
A question asked in our Study Guide this week asked us to finish the following sentence:
“In order to be happy, I need God plus________________________________________.
Take a moment, be completely honest and answer.
Before I could think, I wrote …my children to be saved. It’s is a good thing. That is what we all want isn’t it? But as I looked at what I wrote I was convicted – I was not trusting that God was enough for me. I needed more. The Bible tells me that anything more is an idol. My children had become an idol. Hard truth and reality check! The word tells me in Jeremiah 29:11 “that the Lord has a plan for my life, a plan to prosper and not harm me, a plan for my hope and my future. “ His word tells me that “Blessed are those who desire the things of righteousness for they will be filled.” It tells me “My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.” The belief I was holding onto that I had to have my children saved was coloring my life. It was a filter through which I was viewing my world and my reality. It was skewed and it was a LIE. As I confessed this, the Lord began to align my reality with His -the reality of God’s word. His TRUTH. I was able to see that He has a plan for my children. I could see He created them just as He created me and that He will have His perfect will over them. I embraced the truth that regardless of their salvation and even if they never come to faith - He is enough for ME.
This statement is truth - WHAT we believe will determine HOW we respond in every circumstance.
Recently – our family went to see a remake of an old classic movie. It had been (what I thought) a favorite of my daughter’s since she was small. After the movie, we were talking about her memories of it and she shared that she loved the movie because she always watched it in a room with toys while I was tanning….. mike drop… dead silence. What? You see, for her to have watched that movie in the tanning salon at age 4-6, while I was tanning, meant I had left her ALONE in a room full of strangers for 30 minutes. Never happened. I was floored. In her mind, she had felt alone and the movie made her feel safe. She was POSITIVE that this was her reality. It happened just as she remembered. BUT the truth was a different story.
TRUTH was she did watch it in a room with toys. BUT that room was her doctor’s office waiting room and I was 2 feet from her at all times. She had asthma so we were at that office A LOT. It was a scary place to her that she dreaded going to. That movie played on a loop. When I explained to her the truth of when and where she actually watched it so often – she was a hard sell. I had to put my witnesses and evidence in front of her for her to see and hear and accept the truth. Her dad remembered those visits and gave testimony to the truth and to the reality - I had never tanned when she was young. We simply could not afford it. Her reality was a lie – The truth cleared my daughter’s eyes and aligned her reality with what was true. Today she no longer believes I abandoned her to a roomful of strangers so many years ago. A rift I never knew was there has been healed.
This has really weighed on my mind this past few weeks. I wondered why it was bothering me so much – and as I prayed through it and as I studied the TRUTH. God’s word – I began to understand that I was bothered so badly by this because my daughter believed this lie for 28 years. And it affected how she viewed me as her mom.
God wants the same – He wants each of us to view Him through the lens of TRUTH. It is only when we see the reality of who God is that we can experience true freedom as He reveals where you are being deceived and frees us from their hold on our lives. I don’t know what lies that you may have hidden even from yourself. But God does. “Then you will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free.” John 8:32
What lies are you believing? Do you know how to recognize them as lies? I encourage each lady reading this to prayerfully consider the lies I shared above in the coming days. Open your Bible, read it daily, the Lord will meet you wherever you are in its pages.
Finally, we would love to have you join us in study - we will be in class on Wednesday evenings at 6pm and Sunday mornings at 10 am. Hope to see you there!
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