“Honesty is the best policy.”
“A man’s only as good as his word,” goes the saying. If you don’t live up to your ‘word’ (a.k.a. promises), who will trust you? If you make a promise or a vow and do not fulfill it, people will be disappointed and lose faith in you — and call you out. As in all relationships, the saying is, “Trust is the first to leave and the last to return.” If you have broken trust with someone, you will have to rebuild it all over again … and sometimes it never returns.
If your ‘word’ turns out to be a lie, people lose faith in you. We, Christians, must live up to our claims about who we are or people will call us hypocrites and we will have lost our testimony. We cannot both serve Jesus Christ who is the way, the TRUTH, and the life and be a liar.
“20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. 21 I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth. 22 Who is the liar? It is whoever denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a person is the Antichrist—denying the Father and the Son.”
The devil is a liar and so are his offspring. Who are the devil’s offspring? The human beings who do his will — willingly or unwittingly. Such people are anti-Christ in nature. From birth, all mankind (regardless of where you come from) is subject to the Meal Covenant with Satan until they escape it by entering into the Blood Covenant with Jesus*.
“But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sexually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters, and all liars—they will be consigned to the fiery lake of burning sulfur. This is the second death.”
There may have been times where you’ve injured someone with your words and/or actions and then tried to save face in the moment by lying. Lying always compounds our problems instead of solving them — like an addiction, lying does not eliminate problems, it creates a new, more painful one. Lying is sin and, like all sin, it gives the devil a legal right to attack us. As in all true repentance, we have to not merely repent of lying, we must commit to telling the truth.
Believe me, I know the problems that can come with coming clean. I was performing a major cover-up in my life for many years and God woke me up one morning at 5:30 and told me to “Tell her.” He meant for me to tell my wife what I had been covering up. I was certain she would divorce me for having done what I did and much difficulty ensued, but God guided us through a very difficult time and we have a stronger marriage as a result. God can perform many miracles when you are faithful to do what He asks you to do.
Photo by Brian Wertheim on Unsplash
Anxiety and depression are byproducts of wrongful thoughts. A person lies because of thinking the wrong way about something. “Out of the well of the heart, the mouth speaks,” is a favorite quote of mine. It’s based on Matthew 12:34 and Luke 6:45. What comes out of our mouths can praise God with songs of joy or set the world on fire. There is the power of life and death in the tongue. When we think wrong thoughts, we say and do wrong things; and, in turn, we have often recapitulated these wrong thoughts and actions by speaking poorly of ourselves.
You may have been believing lies about God, the devil (Satan), others, and yourself. These lies may have compounded around what, in psychological terms is called, the “Guardian Lie.” The “Guardian Lie” is the root problem in anybody’s soul, the central, unresolved conflict that causes a person to see Father God, Jesus, him/herself, and others in a distorted way as opposed to the Godly image of humanity God made him or her to be. We were created in the image of God, right?
This distortion of reality is typically imprinted on a child’s psyche by a traumatic episode. Have you been through psychological or physical trauma? Unless it has been already healed by Jesus’ blood, you have what is called a “soul wound” and if so, most likely, you have a Guardian Lie in your heart that is meant to protect that wound from ever being hurt again. The problem with that notion is that it is a lie and it also must be revealed and eliminated from your soul in Jesus’ name.
“In these two things the greatness of man consists, to have God so dwelling in us as to impart his character to us, and to have him so dwelling in us that we recognize his presence, and know that we are his, and he is ours. The one is salvation: the other the assurance of it.”
Fun Fact: It’s always easier to tell the truth because then we don’t have to keep track of what we told everyone in order to maintain our stories/deceptions. :)Prayer
Father God, I come before You today in need of deep revelations. You are always so kind and always available to me and I can’t thank You enough for the faithfulness You show me. I confess I have lied (call out all lies {white lies, etc.} that come to mind) and I am willing to make things right by apologizing and making amends to those I have hurt. I ask that You would reveal the Guardian Lie I have been believing that has kept me in bondage to the soul wounds that caused me to accept that lie in the first place.
I thank You, Lord for Your grace and love that daily sustains me. I don’t know where I would be without You. Please reveal any extraneous lies I have been believing so I can confess them and repent of, renounce, and reject all the works of the devil in my life that are rooted in lies and ‘half-truths.’ Please free me, Lord, from all the lies of the evil one.
Thank You so very much, my Lord and my God for Your compassion and power that frees me, heals me, and makes me a new creation in Jesus, Your Son. In His holy name I pray, amen.
Banner picture by GDJ on Pixabay
* A blood covenant is a covenant with a more binding and greater level of commitment than a meal covenant.
For additional research into covenants, please visit this page and read the PDF entitled, “The Blood Covenant” by E.W. Kenyon.