The Truth

Over the last couple of days, we’ve talked about the lies we believe and how Satan orchestrates and tailors them to hit us in the most vulnerable places for the highest impact.  We’ve also talked about baggage and how it accumulates when we hold onto it and carry it around with us.

But how do we rid ourselves of these things?  How do we determine what are lies and what is truth? How do we put all the baggage down?  After all, it hurts…and our pain is real!  We often want someone to pay for the wounds we have experienced.  We want to live in the truth and in freedom, but it’s so hard to let some of these things go…especially if we’re not convinced that God really loves us as deeply as everyone tells us.

“The truth will set you free!”  Have you all heard that before?  It sounds good, that’s for sure, but I’m not convinced that it’s really accurate.  See, the truth is the truth…it’s pretty much black and white in most cases, but if we don’t know the truth or we don’t believe the truth, it really isn’t going to free us from much of anything.  I think the more accurate statement is, “The KNOWLEDGE of the truth will set you free.”  I don’t think we have a lot of hope for change or freedom, let alone success, if we get rid of the lies and baggage, but don’t replace them with something else.

John 8:32 says, “Then you will KNOW the truth and the truth will set you free.”

We have to KNOW the truth in order to be set free by it.  I said one of the lies that I believed was that I could never measure up or be good enough to deserve God’s love and grace…that I had failed so many times and had been such a disappointment, that He had probably given up on me. That’s the lie.  But the truth is the exact opposite.  I love this quote from Beth Moore:

“You are God’s chief creation, and you are here for His pleasure and glory.  God did not create us so that He could have the front-row seat at an ongoing saga of our follies and failures.  He created us because He delights in us!  He didn’t need us…He WANTED us!  The act was based on the pleasure of His will.  We were created to be His abundance – estimations of HIS value!  Of all the grandeur heaven could boast, God measures His riches by His children.  We are His wealth, the apple of His eye, created to be His treasure.”   

~Beth Moore, "A Woman's Heart, God's Dwelling Place"

Matthew 6:21 says, “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

That means that not only are we the apple of God’s eye and His treasure, but we are at the forefront of God’s heart!!  You are at the core of the Almighty’s heart and He is watching over you daily.  Think about all the scripture that talks about God’s love for us, His desire to be in relationship with us, and what He wants for us that is always in our best interest…that we would have life and live it abundantly!  (John 10:10)  Throughout the entire Bible, we see all the vast evidence of God’s love for each of us – and it’s unending and unfailing. Every page pours out this undeniable truth…the love God has for us is matched by no other love that the world has ever seen or ever will see!

Sisters, He loves you SO much!  He has not given up on me…or you!  His word tells us that He will never leave us nor forsake us. (Hebrews 13:5)  He sent His one and only Son to die so that we would have a way to be with Him for eternity (John 3:16).  If you will put your trust in Him, you will see a transformation in your life. His arms are outstretched! He is waiting to embrace you, longing to once and for all wipe away your tears, wanting to heal your wounds, and His heart’s desire is to set you free. If you are feeling isolated or abandoned and that you are totally on your own…if you are living from a place of shame and guilt…that is NOT from God.  Those are all lies that Satan wants you to believe because they keep you paralyzed and stuck.  The truth is that Jesus did not come to condemn you…He did not come to point the finger and make you feel worse about yourself than you already do.  Jesus came to save you. (John 3:17) He came so that you would have a full life beyond what you can even imagine! (John 10:10) He has plans for you.  He came to see you SET FREE!!!!!  He loves you so much and wants the absolute best for you. (Jeremiah 29:11) He wants to give you hope…a future…and He wants to wrap His big daddy arms around you, his princess, and make you feel secure, accepted, and loved.

So, my question is this…will you let Him?  Will you take some time this week to be in His presence and allow Him to love on you and speak truth to your heart? You don’t have to have the right words or go through some elaborate process. Just find a quiet place where you can sit and be still. Start by just telling Him that you need Him. Tell Him that you want to grow closer to Him and that you need His reassurance and that you want to hear His voice. If you feel awkward and don't know what to do...tell Him that. Then, sit back and just let Him speak words of love and truth into your heart. It might come in the form of one word that keeps coming to mind or a song…maybe it will be a verse in scripture…He talks to each of us differently. The first time I tried this, I couldn’t shut my own thoughts off and I felt very frustrated and like I couldn’t hear anything that was from Him. But as I continued to do it again and again, it became easier to dismiss my thoughts, and I started having certain scriptures come to mind. Later, when I would look them up, they were verses speaking about God’s love for His children, which at the time, was exactly what I needed to hear. Tomorrow we are going to start drawing some conclusions and coming full circle as we discover how to apply all of this to sharing without pretending.

As we wrap up today, would you consider sharing a couple of things?  What are some ways that you have felt God’s love for you in a real way? Do any of you have some stories or suggestions about how you spend quiet time with God? If so, would you be willing to share them with us? Sometimes, it’s less about wanting to spend time with God, and more about knowing how to go about it. What you share might be a huge encouragement to others that are struggling or give them an idea that might work well for them.

~Kris Samovitz

Baggage

How are you doing so far ladies? I know this is a hard subject to talk about for some. For some of us (myself included) we've become masterful artists at walling ourselves off and putting on the happy face when inside, we're feeling like our hearts have been broken into a millions pieces over and over again.

So, my question for you today is fairly brief, but it's an important one. What do you do with your hurt? When someone has wounded you, when you've believed one of Satan's lies...what do you do with it? Do you take it to Jesus, or do you carry it around in your heart as baggage?

I hope that you'll take a few minutes to watch this short video. It helped me to understand visually what I was doing with my hurt by carrying it around wherever I went, rather than leaving it at the Cross for Jesus to deal with.

“Baggage”

By, The Skit Guys

http://skitguys.com/videos/item/baggage-skit

~Kris Samovitz

The Lies We Believe

Yesterday, we talked about what it means to share without pretending and we identified a lack of understanding who God is and fear as two of the reasons we where social masks.  But, what is it specifically that causes us to “pretend” in the first place?  What causes us to feel the need to put on those socially acceptable masks?  I believe the overwhelming cause is that we buy into a whole lot of lies that we then tell ourselves over and over that create fear in our lives and hearts…fear of rejection…fear of failure…fear of abandonment…there are a lot of fears we could list.

“Most of our emotional struggles, relationship difficulties, and spiritual setbacks are caused by the lies we tell ourselves.  Every day, whether you realize it or not, you are most likely believing lies.  These lies, learned from parents, friends, society, and even the church, play like a broken record over and over in your mind, damaging your emotional health, relationships, and spiritual life.  Unless we identify our lies and replace them with the truth, a truly abundant life is impossible.”~ Dr. Chris Thurman

I learned very early on in childhood that how I performed and what I accomplished was directly associated with attention and praise, and ultimately, my value and worth.  I believed that I had to earn love and acceptance through what I did.  That, in many ways, set me up for the next lie to take hold…that since my value came from my performance, the approval and responses of others determined whether or not I was acceptable or measured up.  That led to a whole list of behaviors that were driven by the need to please and impress others.  I became very insecure and I didn’t believe that I was ever good enough (another lie), so I would work harder, try to make myself appear better or more important, and I became a master pretender in my relationships with everyone.  One lie fed into another lie, feeding more dysfunctional behaviors and sin, and ultimately plunging me into a pit of darkness, shame, looking for love in all the wrong places, and ultimately isolating myself from others.  What often happens is that our experience or environment creates a weakness or vulnerability, often due to the environment we were raised in or a traumatic experience.  Once that vulnerability is exposed, Satan grabs onto that foothold and begins to exploit it and beat us over the head with it.  It doesn’t take long before he can somewhat step back, because we have come to believe it about ourselves and we just take over beating ourselves up and it continues on in many cases, for years
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Often, we also transfer our earthly experiences onto our relationship with God.  Since I had come to believe that I was not good enough and that my value/worth was a direct reflection of my actions (which for many years was destructive and sinful) I was convinced that I had to earn God’s love, I would certainly never measure up to God’s expectations of me, and by no means did I deserve grace on any level.  Deep down, I was convinced that God was pretty mad and disappointed with me and while it had been engrained in my head that He loved me and would never leave me, at a heart level, I was pretty sure that He had given up…that He’d shook His head and washed His hands of me and that He was nowhere to be found.

Even years later after getting my life back on track, I continued to remain very guarded.  I was serving in leadership roles at my church, was a part of an active small group, and knew all the right things to say and do, but I still had major trust issues and kept those steel barricades in place around my fragile heart.  After all, if I didn’t give people access, then they really couldn’t hurt me right?

The problem is that in doing so, not only was I missing out on deep, meaningful relationships with other women, but I was also depriving myself of the greatest relationship I could ever have…with my Savior.  I didn’t invite Him into the dark recesses of my heart…I made sure those were locked and chained up and shoved as far down as I could.  But, I didn’t  realize the depth of the trust issues that I had with God and it had never even struck me that I didn’t believe He loved me.  I was living in a lot of denial…not because I was intentionally trying to avoid the truth, but because I had been living that way for as long as I could remember and I didn’t even know what I really felt anymore.  I was living in survival mode.

But as God often does, He was already working in my heart, preparing me for a journey that would change my life.  Through a series of difficult events over a period of about 3 years, God began to allow some circumstances and situations to occur that began to strip away the layers, one at a time.  A good friend of mine described it as peeling layers from an onion.  As those layers are stripped away, tears may fall, but they don’t last forever and as I began to emerge from one layer, He would start working on another one.  There was a purposeful order to the process as some things had to be dealt with before others could be approached.  I love how God perfectly orchestrates things in His perfect timing.  Certainly there was pain in the process, but He never allowed more than I could handle and as I went through each layer, a few things happened.

1. He began to identify the lies I had believed.
2. He began replacing them with His truth.
3. My trust in Him began to deepen with the successful removal of each layer.
4. He began bringing people into my life that walked through the journey with me.
5. All the while, He continued to shower me with reassurance and love and tons of grace.

Ladies, I don’t know where each of you are at as you read this today.  Each one of us has a story and just like that onion, we’re all in the process of having layers peeled away.  We’re all in different stages of that process and our timelines all vary.  What I do know is that each one of us has the same amazing God who has been pursuing us relentlessly since the day we were born.  He sees everything, He knows everything, and yet He still loves us with an unfailing love no matter how much we have tested Him.  He doesn’t keep score, we cannot wear Him out, and He has not given up on you or me.  While Satan comes to steal, kill, and destroy us, our Savior comes ready to do battle on our behalf in order to give us an abundant life and hope that we can’t even fathom! (John 10:10)  He wants to abolish the lies we have bought into and He wants to write His truth on the slates of our hearts.  Whether or not I’m good enough or ever measure up really isn’t even the question, because regardless, we can’t earn His love and HE is enough…for me…and for you…and if we are willing to discover His truth and replace all the lies we’ve believed with it, we can truly experience freedom and a life without pretending!  Hallelujah for that!!!!

As we wind down for today, I have some questions I’d like for you to think about.

• What are some of the lies that you have believed…about yourself?  About God? 

• Looking back, how have you seen God pursuing you over the years?

~Kris Samovitz