If you’re experiencing something in your life that is causing pain or discomfort–fear, anxiety, depression, panic attacks, anger, emotional pain, or maybe some addiction–then somewhere in your life, there is a deep-rooted lie at work in your thoughts and choices.
That’s a pretty bold statement, but listen carefully to what Jesus said, “You shall know the truth, the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). If knowing the truth sets you free, then believing a lie will keep you from being free.
Before going deeper, let me lay some scriptural groundwork:
- All truth comes from Christ. He is the Truth (John 14:6), and he speaks truth in our lives to set us free (John 8:32) so that we can live life more abundantly (John 10:10).
- All lies come from the devil. He is the father of lies (John 8:44), and he uses them to “steal, kill and destroy” (John 10:10).
My theology is pretty simple. God is good, and the devil is bad. Anything in your life that is keeping you from living life more abundantly is based on a lie that you believed, and the enemy is the one who spoke it to you.
Getting to the root of a lie can be difficult, because we’ve probably spent years believing it to be true. We’ve convinced ourselves of something that is not true. Lies often work their way into our thoughts and decisions because of a wound or traumatic experience. First, something bad happens to us (typically through others who have been lied to as well), the enemy then whispers a subtle lie into our mind (disguising it as our own voice), and then we agree in our heart with the lie. As soon as we agree, the deception takes root in our soul, and we start living our life like it’s true.
Last week, my son and I went to see Inception, the new blockbuster movie that’s out right now. (Spoiler ahead, so don’t read the rest of this paragraph if you want to see the movie.) The premise of the movie is about a small band of “dream thieves” that travel into a people’s dreams to steal ideas while the person is sleeping. The main character is challenged to go into this man’s dream not to steal information, but to plant an idea at deep, sub-conscious level, because if the man believes that thought to be true, he’ll change the way he lives and start making choices based on that idea.
This is exactly how the enemy works. If he can subtly get us to agree that something is true when it’s not, then we’ll make choices and form thought patterns based on that lie. The result is pain, both emotional and physical. But, thankfully, pain is God’s way of telling you that something’s amiss, something needs fixing. Pain is often God’s way of letting you know there’s a lie at work in your life.
Romans 10:17 says, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” To start getting to the root of the lie, we must start “hearing” the truth. We must replace that lie with God’s truth, but we can only know that the lie is a lie when we understand more of God’s truth. Through prayer, Bible reading, Godly counsel, learning and just “listening” to God, you can start tearing down the lies. Sometimes, it can happen quickly. Other times, it takes time to retrain your mind.
This week, I encourage each of you to pray a very simple prayer and then “listen” carefully for the Holy Spirit to speak to you:
“Holy Spirit, please reveal to me any lie at work in my life that is keeping me from knowing the Truth that will set me free.”
