Lie: I’m unavoidably too busy.
Truth: I have the time to do all of God’s will.
What is busyness?
Busyness is a form of overcommitment. It’s like three things:
clutter – too much stuff for the space it must occupy.
debt – too many financial commitments for the amount of income.
gluttony – too much food for the gastro-intestinal system to process at one time.
We know the symptoms: hurry, lateness, frustration . . .
Lie: Rest must be earned.
Truth: Rest is given.
Do you ever: feel guilty when you relax? have trouble receiving unsolicited gifts? need to stay busy? If you do, you may have imbibed this subtle lie: Rest must be earned. The truth is that our rest was so important that God built it into his world from the very beginning.
Lie: More is better.
Truth: Less is better.
The maxim – less is more – is now a commonplace, but still seems counterintuitive. Most however, would agree that the accumulation of more and more stuff has a point of diminishing returns. Witness the hoarders or even the cluttered homes and closets of the average suburbanite.
From the Los Angeles Times:
Consider these statistics cited by professional organizer Regina Lark: The average U.S. household has 300,000 things, from paper clips to ironing boards.
The volume of artificial things has exploded in the last one hundred years: coasters, bookmarks, disposable cups, plates, sporks, watches, dental floss, plastic bags, dog treats, mechanical pencils, light switches, welcome mats, pillows, fans, magazines, lamps and on it goes. But that’s just the physical things. . .
Lie: I’m immune to deception.
Truth: We are complicit in our own deception.
Nothing is so easy as to deceive oneself; for what we wish, we readily believe. — Demosthenes
We like to be deceived. — Blaise Pascal
Not only are we susceptible to deception – we ourselves are complicit in it. That may seem impossible; after all, how could we deceive ourselves – deception presupposes that we be unaware of it. But we forget that our deception runs deeper than we think. Much deeper. To understand this we must first see what deception is and then how it works.
Lie: Prayer is useless, a waste of time.
Truth: Prayer will eventually fill all of our time.
I have been driven many times to my knees by the overwhelming conviction that I had absolutely no other place to go. — Abraham Lincoln
I hear this lie – prayer is useless – whispered in my ear as a convenient excuse to avoid God when I’m not willing to deal with the bigger lies like: God doesn’t exist; God doesn’t care, or I don’t need God. I’m also tempted to believe this lie when I’m not dealing with the sin in my life: hypocrisy if I do pray, condemnation if I don’t (more on the reasons we fall for this lie later). The real tragedy is that so many Christians never experience . . .
In the first part I outlined the defeatist mentalities that we can easily assume if we harbor this lie. Then I described two of the foundational truths we need to believe to overcome these deadly lifestyles. In this part 2, I’ll go into the meaning and practice of the third and final truth: that we must take up our own cross.
Lie: I am defeated.
Truth: We now share in the final triumph of Christ.
We’ve all felt defeated, either because of weaknesses or sins or failures or a general lack of achievement. The recording in our heads plays an endless loop: ‘you’re lame, worthless, useless, an all-around failure,’ and then the refrain follows – ‘and nothing will ever, ever change.’ Many Christians see no way to switch it off because, in most cases, the reasons for us to feel lame, worthless, useless and a failure, happen to be true. And simply trying to forgive ourselves or tell ourselves that we’re victims of the human condition or even ‘sinners saved by grace,’ doesn’t really help.
Inevitably, this defeated mentality produces some easily predictable lives . . .
Lie: God is irrelevant.
Truth: God is relevant.
The greatest source of atheism in the world today is Christians, who acknowledge Jesus with their lips but deny him by their lifestyles. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable. — Brennan Manning
This lie is often felt but seldom acknowledged.
The question burns: relevant or irrelevant to what? God is irrelevant to . . . me, my life, my finances, my job? or irrelevant to the world, that is, the one I live in: business, science, popular culture? In other words, how does God really matter, that is, as opposed to things we know that matter: health, family, age, technology, weather, government services, education, money, food? You get the idea.
Of all the lies, perhaps the most pitiful and damaging is: God doesn’t care. After a long agony, those who reach this point of despair end up hollowing themselves out, and may also end up walking about the rest of their days as the living dead. Often people arrive at this nadir only after enduring an inordinate amount of pain, neglect or abuse from those who should be caring for them. Tragically, many of those who absorb this lie become . . .
Lie: God is mean.
Truth: Our heavenly Father is full of mercy and grace.
Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it. — Helen Keller
In this life we suffer, some much more than others, and honestly, at times it really does seem senseless. The young boy with leukemia with his bald head, smiling, pulling his IV pole along; the burn victims, inhumanely scarred; the sadness and chronic addiction of the Native American tribes; the tornado victims, lost, searching for their keepsakes in the shambles of what was once their homes. I could go on; we all could. We’re saddened for the suffering, but we quickly turn away. It simply is too painful to linger long.
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