dun listen to lies..

Today's Truth

"Don't be deceived, my dear brothers (and sisters). Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows"

James 1:16, 17 (NIV).

Adam and Eve lived in a perfect world. All their needs were cared for. They had perfect communion with God and each other. They were "naked and unashamed."

The only restriction placed on them was that they were not to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil located in the middle of the Garden.

God warned them, "If you eat of it, you will surely die."

As they basked in the light of God's love, darkness slithered into the Garden with his plan to kill, steal and destroy the image bearers. And how did he do it?

He did it with the most powerful weapon of all...

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>>>lies.

"Now the serpent..." The great deceiver clothed himself as a serpent and slithered up to Eve with a game plan to destroy God's prized possession. He didn't come with a sword, or gun, or even a knife for his attack. He simply wielded lies.
The serpent knew Adam and Eve would not buy into a radical flamboyant denial of God, so he slithered into the garden with a twist and a turn of the truth. He began by causing Eve to doubt... "Did God really say you must not eat from any tree in the garden?" (Genesis 3:1).

Satan knew exactly what God had said. He was simply trying to confuse Eve. Perhaps he was evaluating just how well she knew the truth. He found out.
"We may eat fruit from the tress in the garden," Eve replied, "but God did say, 'You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden, and you must not touch it, or you will die'" (Genesis 3:3).

Bingo. She didn't know the truth that well after all. God never mentioned not touching the fruit. That seems like a pretty good idea, but it was not what God said.
Second he denied God and lied about the consequences of disobedience. Satan said, "You will not surely die" (3:4). He didn't even try to disguise the deception. He told a flat-out lie.
Finally, he told her she could be like God:

"For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Genesis 3:5).

In other words, "God doesn't know what He's talking about.

He's holding out on you.

You don't need Him.

You can be your own god."

Eve rejected the truth and believed the lie. She believed that she could be like God ... in control of her own life. "When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it. She also gave some to her husband, who was with her" (Genesis 3:6).

the temptation settled in her soul and fermented into shame and condemnation. Her husband, who chose the woman over God, also felt the sickening rot of sin settle in his very soul. Suddenly shame and fear entered the world,

and Adam and Eve hid from God like wayward children.

All temptation is an attempt to get us to live our lives independent of God.

Satan is not very creative, but he is very effective.

And he has been lying to us ever since.

Why?

Because it works.
Every one of his lies springs from the idea that happiness is just a decision away. Satan wants you to believe God is holding out on you

Think about it.

Eve had at her disposal every tree in the garden except one.

Every one!

she bought the lie that the one thing she couldn't have was the one thing that would make her happy. I would be happy if... Is any of this sounding familiar to you? It should. Satan uses the same tactics with us that he used with Eve.

Eve believed the enemy's lie over God's truth. His plan worked. But what the serpent did not know was that God's amazing plan of forgiveness and grace was about to unfold. Satan did not win the battle for man's soul in the garden.

Jesus Christ won the war on Calvary's Cross.

He made a way for all mankind to regain all that Adam and Eve had lost.

Broken Mirrors


How did this happen?
Where do the lies come from?
Why is it so easy to believe the lies about who we are rather than the truth?
What is the truth?
We will look at all these questions and many more
throughout our time together. But I will tell you this—it all began
in the Garden.


After the sixth day of creation, when God looked at all He made,
He said, “It is good.” But something went terribly wrong. The enemy
crept into God’s perfect world and deceived His image bearers with
lies.

And while God’s redemptive plan has restored what the serpent
destroyed, the enemy continues to tell us lies even today.

He(devil) tells us
that we are worthless, powerless failures who are not good enough,
smart enough, or competent enough to succeed.
And it is NOT the truth!

We can speak life to ourselves and we can speak death to ourselves.

Our minds think about 130 words per minute and our mouths

(women) speak about 25,000 words in a day.



Saying, I’m so stupid, I’m such an idiot, or

I’m never going to be good
enough, can create habitual destructive thought patterns that can paralyze
a person into inactivity.

"Negative self-perceptions repeated over
time will brand themselves into our minds and eventually become
our reality. "

>>If you repeat a misbelief or lie enough times, you begin
to believe it. Nobody loves me, I don’t have any friends, or I’m so ugly
becomes your reality…even though it’s a false reality!!!

Each time we speak a lie about ourselves, the more we become bound
to it.

“For as he thinks within himself, so he is”
(Proverbs 23:7 nasb).


God’s Mirror

When we look into God’s mirror, His incredible love letter to us we
call the Bible, we discover the truth. God does love you
(Colossians3:12).

You have an entire cloud of witnesses cheering for you (Hebrews12:1).

You are God’s masterpiece…a work of beautiful art (Ephesians2:10).
You are good enough because Christ lives in you (John 14:20).
You are a chosen, holy, dearly loved child of God.

That’s the truth.

Let’s get out of the house of mirrors and start seeing ourselves as God sees us.
In one of John’s letters, he wrote,

“I have no greater joy than to hear
that my children are walking in the truth”
(3 John 4).


God has no greater joy
When we are walking in the truth, the lies are exposed.
We can recognize the lie, reject the lie, and replace the lie with truth.

Then, and only then, can we be all that God has created us to be and
do all that God has created us to do.
We can experience the abundant
life He planned all along.


I believe that God has great plans for all of us—
His Word promises
that He does.


“No eye has seen,
no ear has heard,
no mind has conceived
what God has prepared for those who love him”
(1 Corinthians 2:9).


But many of us are

not experiencing the abundant life >>

because we don’t know who we are!!

We have believed the lies that we are unloved,
unworthy, and unforgivable.

We have been looking in distorted mirrors
far too long.

God wants us to look into the only true mirror that
will tell us exactly who we are, what we have, and where we are as a
child of God—His Word.

It is time to start believing the truth.
It is time to hear God say,


“You are My child, whom I love; with you I am well pleased.”

Are you ready to walk out of the house of mirrors once and for all?
Are you ready to begin seeing yourself as God sees you? Are you ready
to begin living the abundant life that God planned all along?