I lie all the time. Some small. Some big. One lie after another, after another, after another. Daily. No, wait, that’s a lie. More like hourly or minutely. (I just made that word up. Another lie.)
And the most frequent victim is:
me.
Because I so often tell myself lies like: I’ll compromise my principles, but only just this once, or What I do doesn’t matter, or God can’t use me. The lie I tell myself daily that I have to fight constantly: I’m worthless.
But we all have our pet lies, right? The one thing — ok, for me, the 42 things — that we just keep coming back to, over and over again. The lie that we always keep falling for, just like Charlie Brown always believes that Lucy won’t pull the football away at the last second?
I’ve been working harder than ever to fight the lies in my life, because I feel like their power more than ever. I feel like an idiot, because I just keep believing them, keep letting these lies run, and more often than not, ruin, my life.
So I’ve been hanging extra hard on to something Paul wrote around 2,000 years ago. You might not think anything some guy wrote that long ago could have relevance today, but I think you could be surprised.
He starts out: We demolish arguments. We demolish them. We don’t rebut then, we don’t refute them, we don’t even debate and disprove them. We demolish them. We destroy them. We decimate them. They are no more!
Paul continues… And every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God. Every whisper that says you’re not good enough? Every lie that says you aren’t loved? Every thought that says maybe you’re worthless? Every pretentious thing that goes against what God has said? It’s demolished! Destroyed! Out of here! Everything that has set itself up against God is no more. It has no life. It has no truth. It has no final say over you. It’s been demolished!
And then Paul goes in for the kill: “We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.“
Picture this: every thought, every whisper, every idea, every argument you’ve ever had in your head, every nightmare, all of it, everywhere … being caged up and made slaves of Christ.
The lie that we’re worthless? We make it obedient to Christ that Jesus came for you.
The lie that we don’t matter? We make it obedient to Christ that you matter more than you would know.
The lie that you can’t make a difference? We make it obedient to Christ who used a couple of teenage fishermen to change the entire world for 2,000 years and counting.
The lie that you are a slave to your sin? We make it obedient to Christ that it does not rule you, but Christ does.
For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 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. –2 Corinthians 10:3-5, Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth