DON’T BUY THE LIE

Since I was on a major budget, I would often go to Nordies and visit the jeans—trying them on and at the same time, trying to justify the insane amount of cash needed to buy them. Over lunch one day, I told a friend about my fashion and moral dilemma, and she recommended I look online. Back then I hadn’t shopped much online (this was before my UPS guy knew me on a first-name basis) and I was not familiar with the ins and outs of online shopping. So I asked my friend where to search, and she recommended EBAY.

A few hours of searching later, and I found them. THE SAME EXACT JEANS. Brand new! With tags! And get this, only a fraction of the price! One small victory dance around my room later and I paid for those bad boys before the sucker on the other end of the screen wised up and realized what a steal I was getting.

Fast forward, a few days later, to when the little brown package arrived at my doorstep. I ripped open that package like a kid on Christmas morning.

Holding them up like Simba from The Lion King, I welcomed them to my little closet tribe. But as my hands wrapped around the denim, an alarm bell went off in my head.

“Something’s not right here?!”

The fabric was stiff… not soft and luxurious like the jeans at Nordstrom’s.

The color was off…and rubbed off on my hands. That never happened at Nordies.

The fit was way off… instead of hugging in all the right places, these jeans made my body look a pancake breakfast at IHOP.

“What in the world?”

The too good to be true deal was just that—too good to be true. I’d bought a lie. I WAS THE SUCKER!

Don’t feel too badly for me, because this taught me a valuable lesson—not about online shopping, but about how we can recognize the difference between a lie and the truth. The way I recognized that the jeans were fake was because I knew the real thing. I’d held in my hands the real deal. I knew what the true cut, color, and fabric was and when confronted with a fake, I could easily recognize it.

Girls, this is a word that will bring freedom to so many of us. So often we are duped by the enemy and believe lies about ourselves but we don’t know that we’ve been deceived.  Jesus called our enemy the “Father of Lies.” And even though Satan can’t do one single thing about our salvation or rightful position we have as a Child of God, he will certainly try to deceive us and aims to “steal, kill and destroy” the abundant life that is ours in Christ. His mode of operation from the very beginning has been deception, and he is still at work today— aiming to deceive us about our identity, destinies, power and ability.

When we buy into these lies, it affects everything about us—our self-worth, our relationships, our callings and our experience of the Christian life. And since we behave how we believe, we end up in all kinds of messes, simply because at some point, we bought a lie.

I was once the girl who severely struggled with insecurity and feelings of rejection. I believed the lie that my value was based on people’s opinions or my own performance. If I was pretty enough, smart enough or successful enough, then I would earn love. This lie kept me in a prison of fear, people pleasing and self-hatred.  This pattern of thinking was so ingrained in me that I had no idea that I was believing it. This was just my normal—relationship drama, roller coaster emotions, and disappointment.  I had no idea that everything I was feeling and experiencing was based on the lies I was believing.

Then something powerful happened—I discovered the truth!

As many of you know, I became a Christian in my mid-twenties.  When I fell in love with Jesus, the next thing that happened was I fell in love with His word—the Bible. I would sit for hours and read the scripture. I discovered that these are not just words on a page—this is the living, breathing word of God. As I dove into God’s word, I found a surprising result—I began to change—from the inside out. After all, it was Jesus who said, “You shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

“The most important belief we possess is a true knowledge of who God is.The second most important belief is who we are as children of God, because we cannot consistently behave in a way that is inconsistent with how we perceive ourselves.” —Neil Anderson

As I immersed myself in God’s word, I began to experience real freedom. The reason? I finally knew the truth. And by knowing the truth, I could recognize the lies of the enemy when they landed on my doorstep.

The first step to freedom is to RECOGNIZE the lie.  Before, I would hear the whisper deep in my heart that said, “You are unloveable.” That voice bullied me and resulted in so many sinful choices as I tried to find love in all the wrong places. That lie wove itself into my relationships and I would often reject others before they could reject me. But as the truth of God’s word began to seep into my heart, I discovered a new identity— I am God’s beloved!

The second step to freedom is to REPLACE the lie with God’s truth.  Here are a few examples:

These are but a few examples. As we RENEW our minds with the TRUTH, we begin to see the world and ourselves differently.  Don’t buy the lie of the enemy about your worth, identity or purpose. Believe God when He speaks. You are loved. You are forgiven. You have a glorious future. You are redeemed!

Friends, it is my prayer that you will dive deep into God’s word. Allow the truth to expose any deeply held lies you may believe about yourself with God’s truth and experience the freedom and abundance that is yours in Jesus.

Much love,

Marian

Recommended Resources:

Breaking Free by Beth Moore (This book gives step by step instructions on how to recognize and replace the lies with truth.)

Me, Myself and Lies by Jennifer Rothschild (This workbook helps women renew their minds.)

Sex and the Single Christian Girl (This book exposes the lies women believe about sex and uses God’s Word to bring freedom.)