Over the weekend I went to a women’s breakfast in a nearby Church. They had a guest speaker in talking about how we live in freedom, what it looks like to walk in the freedom He has promised us.
Its so easy to get caught up in the struggles of life isn’t it; financial issues, daily practicalities of getting children here and there, heavy workloads, family relationship difficulties, marital problems, poor mental health, food difficulties and so on, we can forget that the Bible tells us in Galatians 5:1 “It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by the yoke of slavery“.

Christ came to bring us freedom, imagine what our lives would look like if we could truly take hold of that truth.
One of the things that prevents us from walking in the freedom Christ offers us is that we believe the lies whispered to us. We need to call those lies out into the light and see them for what they are. But we can’t call them out if we don’t even recognise and acknowledge them!
One of the things which struck me at the women’s breakfast was the sentence “the crisis is not the problem, the problem is the lie you believe as a result of the crisis”
SAY WHAT…??
“the crisis is not the problem, the problem is the lie you believe as a result of the crisis”
I know how quickly I blame what’s going on in my life for the impact it has on my mood, how I become short-fused, snappy and angry with my husband and children, how I become critical, judgemental, sarcastic and bitter. What if its not the event or situation which causes those behaviour changes but the lies I believe about myself as a result of those circumstances?
Recently we have had a difficult time with one of our children and I have believed a whole lot of lies as a result of that (and I only just recognised this yesterday!!) I have believed that I have failed her as a parent, that I am a rubbish mother and for that matter human being, that she doesn’t think I like or love her, that she resents me and thinks I resent her, that she feels excluded by me, and the lies just keep coming. But you know what I realised yesterday? THEY ARE ALL LIES! And do you know how I know that? Because they don’t match up with what God says about me. Satan was running rings around me and getting me to doubt both who God says he is and who God says I am. If we agree with the lie we empower the demonic, we need to reject the lie and break the agreement with the liar. The speaker yesterday said that “the only power satan has is the power we give to him – don’t give it to him!”
That was such a lightbulb moment for me, I have been giving satan all the power he could need to derail me, to send me off course and really I was doing all the work for him, he just sent in the little seeds of doubt and I watered them for him.

That’s a lot of effort on my part for nothing but weeds to grow!
But you know what I’ve noticed, there doesn’t need to be a crisis for lies to creep in. Lies can come from just a little self doubt. I have been employed as the family outreach worker for our Church, there haven’t been any big crisis since I started the role but I have doubted my ability and believed my feelings “I’m not doing a good enough job, I should be doing this or that, things aren’t perfect, I feel like I’m failing, I’m rubbish at this, other people would do a much better job, I feel out of my depth”, lies spread out like wildfire from a little bit of doubt and there I am believing that I am not good enough, that I am not enough!
John 10:10 “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy” that’s his main goal, and a whisper in my ear was all it took.
Yet these things are not what God says about me, It doesn’t say in the Bible that God sent his son into the world to die for a bunch of people who weren’t good enough, or who weren’t achieving enough, or who he didn’t particularly care about

It says that God sent his ONLY son because he loved the world SO much! And yes, we are all sinners and have fallen short of the glory of God but God sent his son because he wanted a relationship with us, he wanted us to know who we truly are as sons and daughters and not to believe the lies which rob us of that relationship.
So what do we choose to believe? Because it is our choice, we have free will. Do we chose to trust our doubts, fears, insecurities and anxieties? Or do we chose to trust the word of God? Do we chose to believe what we feel about ourselves or do we take those feelings and give them to God?
I know what I am doing, I am taking a step closer to freedom!!
Like this:
Like Loading...