Believing Lies

From a sermon I gave in an old age home in 2006.

This is a riddle by Greg Mc Kinnon.

You are on the road of life and you come to a fork in the road. One road leads to heaven and the other to hell. There are two guides standing at the fork in the road and you can ask only one question of either of them. One of them is an absolute liar and will not tell you the truth. The other is one hundred percent honest and can only tell you the truth.

Which one, and only one, question can you ask that will let you know without a doubt that you are on the right road? Even after asking this question you will not know if the guide told you the truth or not, but you will know that you have chosen the right road.

The answer: Since you can only ask one question and you don’t know which guide will tell you the truth, you can ask either guide this question. “If I were to ask the other guide which is the right road, what would he tell me?” You then take the opposite road.

Here is why: If it was the liar you questioned, he will lie about the true answer the other guide would give, so you would want to take the opposite road from the one he told you. If, on the other hand it was the honest guide you questioned, he will truthfully tell you the lie that the other guide would have told you. So you know the opposite road is the answer. So this one question will produce a wrong answer no matter which guide you ask and you can take the opposite road.

Today I want to talk about believing lies.

Twice I have received counselling for depression, once from a Psychologist, and once from a Christian Counsellor. Both of them told me the same thing in different words.

I am made in the image of God. The devil has used the world and circumstances to make me believe lies about myself and obscure that image. It occurred to me that it is very likely that there are many others who have also believed lies of the devil and as a result are living in depression. I just want to add that there are more than one kind of depression. Sometimes when we have experienced a trauma or loss we are in a state of depression, like a bottle of oil and water all shaken up. This is a perfectly natural state of affairs and I think we would be most concerned if we did not react like this. It is wise under these circumstances to go for trauma counselling or bereavement counselling. Sometimes there is a chemical imbalance in our bodies and medication is called for – this is just as natural as insulin for a diabetic – there is some malfunction in our endocrine system, and medical science is advanced enough to be able to supplement the deficit.

So today I am just going to talk about the image of God.

The bible says that we are made in the image of God.

Isaiah 44:2 says :”I am your creator. You were in my care even before you were born.” Albert Einstein said, “ God doesn’t play dice.”

In his book, “The Purpose driven life,” Rick Warren says,

“You are not an accident. Your birth was no mistake or mishap, and your life is no fluke of Nature. Your parents may not have planned you, but God did. He was not at all surprised by your birth. In fact, he expected it.

Long before you were conceived by your parents, you were conceived in the mind of God. He thought of you first. It is not fate, nor chance, nor luck, nor co incidence that you are breathing at this very moment. You are alive because God wanted to create you. The bible says, “ The Lord will fulfil his purpose for me.”

This is exactly what psalm 139 vs 13-18 says. From “The Message”

“O yes, you shaped me, first inside then out; you formed me in my mother’s womb. I thank you, High god – you’re breathtaking!

Body and soul I am marvellously made! I worship in adoration – what a creation!

You know me inside and out. You know every bone in my body. You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit; how I was sculpted from nothing into something. Like an open book, you watched me grow from conception to birth; all the stages of my life were spread out before you, the days of my life all prepared before I’d even lived one day.”

This tells us, before we were even conceived, God planned us. Think about it. I think we all know the biology of fertilization. Only one egg cell is produced by the mother. Millions of sperm are produced by the male, but only one, the fastest, the strongest, in fact, the winner, became each of us. So in that sense, we were winners even before we were born. And God watched, from conception to birth as His plan unfolded. Think of a new born baby. Think of yourself as a new born baby. As it is born, God takes it onto his lap and loves it. He doesn’t love it for anything it has done. It has not yet done anything. He loves it because it is His. Made in his image. And nothing we can subsequently do can make God love us more. Or less.

We are made in our Father’s image. We glorify God. Those of you who have children might remember that love that came over you the first time you saw your baby. That is only a faint shadow compared to the love God feels for each one of his children. So be assured. God loves us, very, very much. I am my Daddy’s little girl and the apple of his eye. And so are you.

But the devil will do anything to discredit God and distort his image.

Let’s look at his modus operandi.

First he casts doubt on God’s character and our relationship with him. In the garden of Eden he says to Eve, “Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?” What is his implication? Wow God is so mean. He makes this beautiful garden and won’t even let you eat anything in it. He doesn’t really love you, my dear,does he?

In fact, that was not what God said. God gave them permission to eat from any tree except the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

When he talks to Jesus in the wilderness, the first thing he says to him is “If you are the son of God…” He is trying to cast doubt on Jesus’ very identity, his love relationship with God. He is saying, in fact, prove you are the son of God. Jesus does not need to prove anything to the devil, nor do we.

The aim of the devil is to cause a rift between us and God. He does this by putting doubt in our minds about God’s love for us and our relationship with him, but also about the word of God. In the Garden of Eden he misquotes God’s word, but keeps close enough to the truth to make it sound plausible. In the wilderness he actually quotes scripture but uses it out of context. He uses verses from Psalm 91: “ He will command his angels concerning you, and they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.”

Jesus wisely counter quotes and says “It is also written, do not put the Lord your God to the test.”

The devil hasn’t changed his tactics. His main aim is to cause a rift between us and God and to make us believe lies. Quite often he uses people and circumstances to make us believe lies.

The fact is: We are made in God’s image and God loves us.

The devil gets the world to tell us things like,

“You are not good enough. You have never been good enough”

There are variation on this theme: You are not a good wife, or you are too old to be any use to anybody, or you are not interesting , You have to earn your value.

Another line of attack is to attack our relationship with God. It starts similar to the opening attack on Jesus, “ If you are the son of God,” In our case it usually starts, “If you were a real Christian….”

Have you ever heard any of these lies.

“If you were a real Christian, you wouldn’t be worried about going in for this operation or you wouldn’t be worried when your husband goes in for a heart by pass.”

“If you were a real Christian, you wouldn’t be suffering from depression.”

“If you were a real Christian, you wouldn’t have lost your temper.”

“If you were a real Christian, you wouldn’t have evil thoughts like that.”

All of these are lies. Being a Christian is a relationship. Once we have invited Christ into our lives, we become children of God. Our actions do not change that. Certainly we can put up a barrier by sinning against God, by turning our back on Him, but in the same way that a child is still your child even if he gets into trouble and makes wrong choices, or sulks and won’t talk to you, we are still children of God. Our humanity, that God created, does not affect that relationship. Of course we will be afraid if we face danger and possible death. Of course we will feel sad if something has happened to upset us.

Besides using people and the world to tell us lies, like the teacher who says “You will never be any good” and the friend who says, “I don’t want to be your friend, you have no personality,” the devil also uses circumstances and trauma. If you had an unhappy childhood, he will whisper, “it’s all your own fault, you deserved it.”

After a major setback or trauma like a hijacking, he will say, “See, I told you God doesn’t love you. He would never have let this happen to you if he really loved you.”

He might even quote scripture like he did to Jesus for instance, God made a number of promises to the Israelite about their 40 years in the wilderness. Their shoes and clothes would not wear out, none of them would miscarry, the diseases of Egypt would not affect them. The devil might use some of these texts and say, “see God does not keep his promises. Your daughter had a miscarriage. God does not love you. He can’t be trusted.”

God never promised a trouble fee life. He never promised to protect us from problems and disasters. In fact Jesus said, “In this world you will have trouble, but behold, I have overcome the world.

So how can we defend ourselves.? Like Jesus we need to know the word of God to be able to see God’s word as a whole and not just isolated texts here and there.

We need to focus on the facts revealed by God.

Fact 1. We are made in the image of God.

Fact 2. God loves us very very much, more than any human love that we have ever known or ever heard of.

Fact 3. God has a plan for our lives and it was planned before we were born. God has a plan for our whole lives and not just two thirds of our lives.

Fact 4. God has made it possible for us to be forgiven, no matter what.

Fact 5. God has prepared a mansion in heaven for us where we can live with him forever.

These are the facts. Are you going to believe the facts of God, or the lies of the devil?

When negative thoughts come into your head, Ask yourself, is this of God or is this a lie of the devil?

I want to tell you a story about believing a lie also by Greg mc Kinnon.

There in the middle of the chickens was an eagle. It was a full grown, king of all birds eagle! But he was scratching in the dirt looking for worms, insects and seeds. He was clucking and cackling and flapping his wings as he flew just a few feet at a time.

This eagle had a six foot wing span that would allow him to fly above the clouds, but instead he was just fluttering around on the ground. His keen eyesight and sharp talons were supposed to make him a threat to every small bird and mammal anywhere near him. Yet the only thing he was a threat to was some unsuspecting worm he might happen to unearth.

Why in the world was this eagle acting like a chicken? Here is the story: An Indian brave found the eagle egg and he didn’t know what to do with it, so he put it in the nest of a prairie chicken. The eaglet hatched and grew up with the other chicks. He never saw another eagle – only chickens. All his life he thought he was a prairie chicken. He mimicked their every move.

One day when the eagle was growing old, he looked up into the sky and saw an eagle soaring on the wind far above him. “What a beautiful bird!” the eagle said to the chicken next to him. “What is it?”

“That’s an eagle – the king of all birds,” the chicken clucked, “but don’t give it a second thought. You could never be like him.”

Don't believe lies - they might stop you from achieving your full potential.