Answering the Lies

Have you believed any demoralizing lies lately? Check out Three Lies We Might Easily Believe by Ray Ortlund:

It is very much in the Devil’s interests that we despair. If he can get us to believe any of these three demoralizing lies that he loves to whisper into our thoughts, our powers for Jesus are greatly diminished. And each one seems to us quite plausible.

Lie #1: “You’re a hypocrite. Sure, you’re serving Jesus. But you don’t really mean it. It’s really all about you. You might as well give up.”

Answer: “Whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:19-20). “I do not even judge myself. . . . It is the Lord who judges me” (1 Cor. 4:3-4).

Lie #2: “You’re a loser. You’ve ruined your life. You’re too damaged by now. You’ll never amount to anything for the Lord. You might as well give up.”

Answer: “. . . the poor, . . . the brokenhearted, . . . the captives, . . . that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the Lord, that he may be glorified. They shall build up the ancient ruins, they shall raise up the former devastations” (Isaiah 61:1-4).

Lie #3: “You’re too small. You’re so buried under the debris of our complex and crowded world today, you’ll never make an impact. You’re making no difference at all. You might as well give up.”

Answer: “God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God” (1 Cor. 1:28-29).

Each lie is believable, in its way. So we don’t defeat the lies by pushing back with our own beliefs, which are little more than stabs at truth. We push back by declaring God’s Word, which has a decisive finality our own little thoughts cannot generate.

Biggest Obstacle

From Tim Challies

Worst Enemy

From Sermon Quotes

Deceptive DNA

"You'll never understand sin's sleight of hand until you acknowledge that a significant part of the DNA of sin is deception. As sinners we are all very committed and gifted self-swindlers. No one is more influential in your life than you, because you talk to yourself more than anyone else does. What you say to yourself is profoundly important. Your words either aid God's work of conviction and confession or they assist sin's system of deception. So it's important to humbly admit that we're all too skilled at looking at our own wrong and seeing good. We're all much better at seeing the sin, weakness, and failure of others than we are our own. We're all very good at being intolerant in others the very things that we willingly tolerate in ourselves. The bottom line is that sin causes us not to hear or see ourselves with accuracy. And we not only tend to be blind, but, to compound matters, we also tend to be blind to our blindness."

From Paul Tripp at As You Are – The Gospel Coalition Blog. Much more at the link

Repenting for the Way We Repent

Interesting post at the blog Forward Progress about Repenting for the Way We Repent

Martin Luther’s first of 95 thesis reads like this: “When our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ said repent, He meant that the entire lives of believers should be of repentance.”

That’s a big call, but one you find to be true as you grow in Christ. Repentance isn’t a one time thing; it’s a lifestyle. When you’re a child, repenting often meant saying you’re sorry and really meaning it. But as you grow in Christ (and in age), you become more self-aware. And as you do, you start to find some disturbing things in play within you.

You find just how duplicitous your motives can be.

You discover how great is your capacity to deceive yourself.

And, in the case of repentance, you find that often when you repent, you don’t really mean it. You’re sorry for the consequences of the sin, but maybe not the sin itself. Or you make internal excuses for your actions, saying you’re sorry, but all the time justifying what you’ve done.

As our capacity for repentance increases, we find that we might need to repent of the very manner in which we are repenting.

More at the link. He goes on to say that we should not allow this concept to paralyze us with guilt, but rather to preach the gospel to ourselves even while repenting. The blood of Christ covers our sin and our inability ot properly repent of those sins. What a wonderful Savior!