Acting on Truth by Jill Hart

I spent today living a lie. Little thoughts kept popping into my head filling it with negatives like, “No one cares what you think. Why bother with your ministry? You should just quit now.” and “That person’s just using you, no need to be kind to them.” On and on this went until I felt tired, burdened and discouraged.

That evening as I stood at the stove fixing a “horrible mom’s” meal of Hamburger Helper it hit me – I was buying into lies. The lies that I believe about myself. The lies that society feeds us. The lies of the enemy. I stopped right then and prayed – asking God to fill me with His truth. I immediately felt a release in my spirit as I stepped away from the lies filling my mind.

I was reminded in that moment that we are to act on truth, not rely on our feelings to guide our thoughts or our actions. We’re told in 1 John 3:18-20:

Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth. This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

If God’s knows everything about us (Everything! The good, the bad, the ugly!) and still loves us, why do we allow the lies to creep in? Why do we live our days in defeat?

I believe there are two main reasons: 1) We don’t realize that we’re believing lies until the enemy has us so sunk
in the mire that we feel stuck; and 2) We are afraid to counter the lies with God’s truth, because we’re afraid the lies might just be true.

The question that remains, then, is “How do we learn to act out of God’s truth instead of how we feel or whatever lie we’re believing at the moment?” I went in search of the answer and here’s what I found:

2 Corinthians 10:5 (NIV)
We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.

We are to consider each thought that we have and filter it through the truth of God’s Word. If we find ourselves thinking that we are awful, unlovable, or unusable we must learn what God says about us. Search through Scripture and find the passages that talk about how God sees people or print out this list and hang it on your wall: http://www.christian-books-for-women.com/i-am-what-god-says-i-am.html . Learn these verses and counter the lies in your head with God’s truth.

Hebrews 11:1 (NIV)
Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

If you’ve printed out the list and are still having trouble believing that God can see you as anything worthwhile, take heart. This is where faith comes in. We are to believe what God says about us simply because He said it, and He is God.

I challenge you to take that step of faith, speak one of the verses above out loud when those lies zip through your mind, believing that while you don’t have the power to act in truth, God does. He will meet you right where you are and walk this journey with you.

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Jill Hart is the founder of Christian Work at Home Moms, CWAHM.com. She is co-author of the book So You Want To Be a Work-at-Home Mom.