Lies, Lies, Lies

Do you ever have those times when a little voice that seems to have weaseled its way into your head tells you a bunch of junk that makes you feel guilty, insufficient, insignificant, or worse? I have. Do you know where that's coming from? Do you know that it's absolutely not true?!

We have a friend, his name is Tim. Tim's been a wonderful friend to us for many years. We love Tim for many reasons. One of those reasons is the occasional beautiful nugget of truth that comes from his lips. He shares lots of truth, but some are just absolutely beautiful. Tim loves to listen to people and to share insight. He loves quotes, he loves the Word of God, and he loves to really get to the bottom of issues. A lot of people call Tim "Doctor" (with good reason, he is a doctor). For the first few months that I knew Tim, I assumed he was a psychologist or some sort of psycho-head doc, because of his quirky ways of listening, prying, and speaking to the issues he discerns. But he's not a head doc.

A couple nights ago we were together with some friends, living out our faith and sharing our lives. One friend shared about struggles with feelings of inadequacy and guilt, but acknowledged that those thoughts were clearly lies from Satan. Truly, 1 Peter 5:8 says, "the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour". In a fabulous moment of clarity and wit, Tim responded "well do you expect the devil to say, 'attaboy _____!'" Ha. I loved it. Of course Satan's not going to encourage and pat us on the back. Attaboy Michael! I'm so proud of you! No no no, his technique is lies, lies, lies.

When you feel down, beat-up, self-conscious, inadequate, delinquent... that is not from the all-knowing, loving God the Father. That is purely a set of lies from Satan himself.

Though I'm pretty sure it's not written about Satan, I love the song Lies performed here by The Swell Season. It speaks to his tactics well:

You're moving too fast for me
And I can't keep up with you
Maybe if you'd slowed down for me
I could see you're only telling
Lies, lies, lies
Breaking us down with your
Lies, lies, lies
When will you learn

So plant the thought and watch it grow
Wind it up and let it go

Isn't that exactly what he does? Plants the thought and lets it grow? He keeps it going so fast and so constant, we often don't even realize what he's doing.