I sat across the table from a girl recently who was me ten years ago. Stubborn, indignant, and oblivious to the main obstacle between her and God, herself. She had heard so many things about herself that she accepted as truth that couldn’t see what was at stake. In the quest to make herself feel good she had traded everything.
I remember being there. I remember believing that my lifestyle, my choices, and my disregard for others was not the problem. No, the problem was everyone else and I was willing to place blame on any one and every one’s shoulders but my own. I couldn’t possibly accept that perhaps the common thread weaving my story to its tragic close was me. I heard the lies so loudly and clearly and the best part about them was they shifted the responsibility so that I could continue to live the way I wanted to live and everyone else could be blamed for the consequences. Each day I breathed them in and continued on a path of making myself feel good. I had my life pretty much down to an art but the worst part was that I was so blinded to the truth. I have learned that the only thing that combats lies is truth and not a pep talk you give yourself in the mirror before a scary interview or a blind date. This is life or death people because the enemy doesn’t want you to have a bad day he wants you to lose your life, steal your purpose, and turn your heart far from God one slimy word at a time. The only thing that can come against that is the words from the giver of life.
I’ve seen the result, not only in my own life but in so many girls like me. It was just one choice, one word, one feeling they rode out to completion and three years later they are doing the same thing but worse. I get emails all the time that go like this… “I just thought if _______ then I would_________” you can fill in your blanks with whatever and I can promise you they aren’t letting me know it worked. Its desperation when you email a stranger with words like, help me get out, because we entangle ourselves in a web of lies we have ingested and before we know it we are too far in.
There is only one way I have found out. One solution, one hope, one healer. Tiny baby to grown man to wounded Savior. He’s the only answer I have and he’s the answer that is trying to be downplayed day after day. It isn’t a popular choice, it’s not the easy choice, and it’s not just your ticket to the pearly gates. It’s a life altering, soul shaking, heart mending road that will break you of everything your self-centered heart once worshiped but in the breaking there is healing.
I’ve lived both ways, a life of trying to make much of me and a life of making much of him (not always beautifully) and the lies are just that… lies.
Proverbs 12:19 Truth lasts; lies are here today, gone tomorrow.
