You don’t understand what I say, because you cannot accept my teaching. You belong to your father the devil, and you want to do what he wants. He was a murderer from the beginning and was against the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he shows what he is really like, because he is a liar and the father of lies. But because I speak the truth, you don’t believe me. (John 8:43-45)

What lie are you currently living?

How do you typically respond to deception?

How can deception be mixed with a dash of truth for a potentially lethal concoction?

We believe lies for several reasons. Sometimes the lies make sense to us. They fit with other things we know, so we assume them to be true. Sometimes we’ve been told the lies so many times and people or situations confirm them repeatedly, so we assume them to be true. Sometimes we don’t feel we have any other options. We don’t know the counteracting truth, so we believe the lies of familiarity. We will continue to believe lies if we’re not actively seeking truth.

Lies devour us. Whether we are speaking or listening to them, we live them out as they become a part of who we are. They begin to eat away at the truth of who God created us to be. They steal truth from us. Lies cannot tell us the truth. They cannot encourage us to live by the truth. Lies will never build us up, help us grow in maturity, challenge us to do the right thing or develop a healthy relationship. Lies are the weeds of our lives, and weeds can appear to be beautiful. The more lies overpower the truth, the beauty and reality of the truth is hidden. We can become so accustomed to lies that we don’t recognize truth. Lies become our reality. It’s time to invite God to help us reseed the fields of our lives and cultivate truth.

Find a weed and pull it – even if it’s a beautiful one. Get the roots. Set it aside and watch it die without the nourishment it needs. Let it remind you of uprooting the lies in your life.