Why Do We Lie To Ourselves?

Hey All! My friend, Abby, is guest posting right here on my blog today! I'm so excited for you all to "meet" her and be encouraged by her. She is a gifted writer and loves the Lord with everything in her. She has been such a blessing in my life. I pray that you take the words she's written and allow them to change your life today.
_____________________________________________________

LYING IS EASY, BUT GOD…

Abby Kelly - writer, Army wife, God-lover, truth-teller

Face it. Lying is harder than telling the truth. The truth simply is. You don’t have to make it up, cover it up, or worry about slipping up. So why do we lie? So we don’t have to listen to the truth. Because we can make up our own independent truth. Because the truth exposes us. Because we are sinners.

Listen. My husband motioned to the right. “We have to take exit 63,” he said confidently. “You’ve never been there before,” I argued. “Just let me drive.” After a U-turn, a dozen unnecessary lights, and stony silence, we arrived at the movie theater. Wouldn’t it be easier just to listen in the first place?

Independent. This morning I presented my husband with three options I am facing. “I need your help, what do you think I should do?” Without looking up from his book he replied, “I don’t know.” Then facetiously, “Follow your heart.”

A few hours later, I presented my problem to God.

“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it? I the LORD search the heart and test the mind, to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his deeds.” Jer. 17:9-10

Post-modern culture screams that every man may determine what is true for himself – regarding life, eternity, sexuality and more. Since the garden of Eden, man has been chafing for the right to create his own truth. But, anything, independent of the word of God is a lie.

Exposed. The truth condemns sin. No matter how good we are, it exposes us as frauds. When Adam and Eve ate the fruit in the garden of Eden, their immediate solution was to hide. They hoped that their lies and leaves would protect them from God’s wrath. “Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness, but instead expose them.” Eph. 5:11

Sin. There’s no escaping it.

“…among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.” Eph. 2:3

The world is sin-sick and lost. We wallow in our lies and hope that if we believe them deeply enough and long enough, they might evolve into truth. Or, perhaps, we can at least impress our friends by persuading them that our philosophy is the truth.

“But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.” Eph. 3:4-7