I
can try telling myself I’m thin, with both conviction and assurance, up until
the instant I pass by a mirror. Then the lies I tell myself become painfully
obvious. Men love to lie to themselves. Not only do men love to lie to
themselves, they go out of their way to avoid looking in the mirror, to avoid
seeing the truth, because the truth will always shatter the illusion we fashion
for ourselves with brutal efficiency.
Whatever
lie we tell ourselves, nothing will ruin our day faster than having the truth
annihilate it completely and mercilessly. Truth is heavy footed. Truth is not
politically correct, tender, or concerned with sparing feelings, but like the
old bull in a china shop line, the truth will make a mess of the table of
deceit we’ve set for ourselves.
Some
of the lies we tell ourselves are intricate, well structured, and hard to
identify. Other lies are obvious, and it’s the obvious lies we have the most
difficult time letting go of. The obvious lies are the bread and butter of the duplicitous
soul, and though everyone else around us is seeing them for what they are and
attempting to warn us as to their falsehood, we still cling to them with the
death grip of the desperate.
Although
I could readily point out the obvious lies we tell ourselves as a nation, I
wanted to bring it in and focus on the individual lies we tell ourselves, lies
that keep us from pursuing Christ with abandon, or growing in Him as we ought.
The
first and most destructive lie we tell ourselves as individuals is that God
will have to make due with us just as we are. We kept hearing ‘come as you are’
for so long, that we’ve sort of tuned out the part about not leaving as we came
because what Jesus does in the heart and mind of an individual is utterly
transform it and renew it.
God
doesn’t settle. He never has, and He never will, and any man who claims that
God will settle for anything less than sanctification and total denial of the
flesh is lying to you. Granted, the lie feels good. It give the flesh a little
wiggle room, it allows us to pursue the selfsame things the world pursues, but
though men continue to spout the foolishness of acceptable double mindedness,
God is very clear on the matter, and has been since the days of old.
James 4:7-10, “Therefore
submit to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. Draw near to God and
He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your
hearts, you double-minded. Lament and mourn and weep! Let your laughter be
turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Humble yourselves in the sight of the
Lord, and He will lift you up.”
It
is because we teach a fraudulent, counterfeit gospel that so many are shackled
and imprisoned by sin, and the devil does with them as he wishes. It is because
we do not teach submission to God that we cannot resist the devil in any capacity,
and we keep stumbling over and over again.
When
we submit to God, He gives us the strength to resist the devil, and in
resisting the devil, he will flee from us.
One
of the ways in which the word ‘submit’ can be defined, is to subject, yield, or
surrender oneself to a condition or a process. I don’t get to do what I want to
do once I submit to God; I must do what He commands me to do upon the moment I’ve
submitted to Him.
Psalm 25:4-5, “Show
me Your ways, O Lord; teach me Your paths. Lead me in Your truth and teach me,
for You are the God of my salvation; on You I wait all day.”
When
we submit to God, we become dependent upon Him, we wait upon Him, we obey Him,
and we follow Him. I cannot blaze my own trail, find my own path, or do what I
believe to be right in my own eyes. My entire life becomes about obedience and
surrender.
Everything
I do and everything I say must be gauged by whether or not it brings glory to
God, and if it doesn’t, then I ought not to be doing it. When we view our life
through this prism, when our single minded pursuit is to bring glory to God,
then we will have the strength to resist the devil, the energy to draw near to
God, the honesty to cleanse our hands and purify our hearts, and the humility
to weep and lament.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea Jr.
5 comments:
Very good Michael, thank you.
People hate the truth. The more you speak the truth, the more you are called mean, a troublemaker, hateful, insane, evil, and stupid. You really can't win. You will be enslaved by lies or else you will be persecuted for truth. The only hope you have is in Christ rewarding you if you can stick with the truth side.
The truth is that the people who make these accusations are really describing themselves. You can't tell them that, because they just go more crazy hearing more truth.
Some people just can't even understand. They are poor pitiful fools. All we can do is thank God that we aren't. I can't think of anything more sad than someone convincing themselves that they are loved by someone when they aren't.
They might as well just say who cares and be evil. Thinking they are good when they aren't, when they are what God wants when they aren't, is just making themselves look like spiritual losers.
Being good is hard work. A lot of people would rather fake it than make it. They don't use God to help them mature, but as an excuse to cover their flaws. They think God just forgives anything and everything.
Amen!
Hi Michael,
Thank you for this post. I appreciate the scripture verses you included. They are two that I have memorized. Your last two paragraphs are very meaningful. Reading your post made me think of what Sir Winston Churchill once said, "Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing ever happened."
Keep preaching the truth!
Suzy
God bless and guide you brother Michael Boldea.
Linda
triumphantangel01@gmail.com
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