One of the things I’ve learned over the years, about the lies we believe, is that the enemy isn’t very creative. From doing inner healing and deliverance work with friends, I’ve discovered that most of us believe different variations of the same lies. The enemy knows he only has a handful of lies to throw at us so what he does is repeat the lie to us, over and over again, until we believe it.
For example, if you struggle with insecurity, he will use situations and people in your life to convince you that your insecurity is valid, that you aren’t worthy of someone else’s time or affection. With the seed of the lie planted and the situations reiterating our insecurities, we become so convinced by the lie that it becomes our new “truth”.
I think this quote from The Artisan Soul by Erwin McManus sums it up perfectly –
Why would we allow negative, destructive voices to have so much power in our lives unless we had embraced the truth of their words? In the end, all the voices that seek to make us small, irrelevant and worthless, find power only when we allow them to become our voice. What others think of us, what others have said about us matters, has power, only when it becomes what we think of ourselves and what we say to ourselves about who we are.”
Most of us are believing lies about who we really are, and because they are all the same lies, it’s easy for the enemy to use us to hurt one another.
The thing that makes me mad is that the enemy is SO persistent! He will continue to repeat a lie to you, over and over again, until you pick it up and take ownership of it. He is, as they say, a “pesky little bugger”. The only way to combat this is to be so deeply rooted in the Lord that the lies almost seem silly to you.
I have this picture in my mind that plays out like this –
The Lord is standing next to me and the enemy approaches. The enemy tells me a lie, let’s use the example of “you’re ugly” because that’s one so many of us struggle with. The Lord scoffs and says, “there’s no way she’ll believe that, she’s absolutely beautiful!” but as I hear the lie, I think, “Well it feels true because of what so and so said the other day, and I have put on a little weight, which definitely makes me feel ugly…” and I go on and on until I have actually convinced myself that the lie, “I’m ugly” is true.
The Lord is stunned and His heart is breaking because His beautiful daughter, made perfect in His image, believes she’s ugly.
But when we are deeply rooted in the Lord, and truly know who we are, we can watch that same scene play out, only with different results. When the enemy approaches me and tells me “I’m ugly” I look at him and scoff, along with the Lord. Then I tell him, “I know that’s a lie, I am NOT ugly because I was beautifully crafted by my Father.” And then instead of justifying all the reasons why the lie could be “true”, I fight him back with truth and tell him all the things that make me beautiful in God’s image.
The more you know who you are in the Lord the more obvious the lies become.
God is bigger than the lies we believe, He can work in us despite them, but it doesn’t make them right, and it doesn’t stop the damage they do to us, and those around us.
The enemy will always try to force the lies on you but God isn’t going to force truth on you because that’s not His character. If He forced us to believe something then it wouldn’t really be belief on our part. We have to choose to believe the truths about who we are, and as we choose truth over and over again it becomes part of our identity and our roots grow deeper in the Lord.
We get to choose to believe the truth…right on!