Have you ever played the game two truths and a lie before? Often times we will play it as a ‘ get to know you’, icebreaker game at our young adults group to help people connect with one another. It also makes for some great laughs! Here’s how the game works: when it’s your turn, you are to tell two truths and one lie about yourself. Yes, it is self explanatory! Those in the group, based on what they know about you, have to make a guess as to what are the truths and what is the lie. I know for me, when I play this game with a new group of people I try and think about the craziest fact about me – something that almost no one would believe is true. Something that they would guess to be my lie. Because, if the group can’t guess which is the lie, you win. My go to truth that often tricks people is this: “I am distantly related to Walt Disney.” For real, you guys. My mom’s parents are grandma and grandpa Disney. When we were kids and we were going to visit our grandparents we used to tell kids at school we were going to Disneyland. I know, so cool. You see, to people who don’t know me well they often pick that as the lie. However, when we play this game and my friends are in the room they roll their eyes and pick out the truths right away. When they are able to pick out the things that are true, they can pretty easily expose the lie.
This past summer God and I had a moment like this. He exposed a lie that I had, subconsciously, been believing about Him. It’s crazy because I would never, ever tell anyone else that this lie was true. Heck, I wouldn’t even tell myself it’s true. But, somehow over the course of the last few years I had started to believe something ultimately so damaging to my relationship with God and my life as a Christian. That something was this: “I have to work hard to earn God’s love for me.” Woah. Wait. Hold the phone. That’s not true, Justine. I know! You’re telling me! I know that we are saved solely by the gift of grace and the blood shed by Jesus on the cross! Preach! I know this. But, for some reason I had started to believe, deep down in my heart, something other than that. Why was this? I’m not quite sure. I do not know where the root of that stemmed from. But, I do know that I am so thankful that God exposed it. Let me tell you the story.
You see, this past summer things didn’t go my way. My husband and I were having our first house built and we were waiting for a move in date. The idea of starting to pay a mortgage honestly kind of freaked me out. My husband was in the midst of studying for his Journeyman Electrician exam and finishing off school for that. We had my sister and her friend living with us, which was awesome, but also made our small two bedroom apartment feel even smaller than it was. I was also in the midst of leading and training someone at my job to run one of the most important yearly evangelism and discipleship events for our kid’s ministry at our church – day camp. Needless to say, there was lots going on. My husband had been studying and working so hard to finish up – I knew that he was definitely feeling the pressure to succeed as we had many payments coming up in the next few months that were dependant on him having a job. After a lot of work, he went in to write his first exam. He walked in, grabbed the test they gave him and sat down, ready to power through. As he opened it up, he realized that they gave him the wrong test. They gave him the second exam, which he had not yet studied for. They told him that because he opened it, he had to write it. So, he spent four hours writing a test that, in the end, he missed the passing mark on by two percent. TWO PERCENT. I mean, awesome for him that he did so well without studying for that test, but because the office messed up with the exam, we were delayed a whole month in him getting a job because they had to keep rescheduling things. That process was a rollercoaster of emotions for the both of us. The job finding process that came after that was almost just as crazy. The waiting, the rejections, the job interview and applications sent with the our possession date of our house getting closer and closer.
During this time, when our world was turned a bit upside and things weren’t going as I had planned, the lie about God and my relationship with Him was exposed. One day, in the midst of the crazy, I felt like I was in such despair with all of the unknown in front of us that I had to go for a walk. As I was walking through a park in our neighbourhood I sat down under the shade of a tree to cry (as I’m writing this, the semblance to Jonah is making me laugh!). Under the tree I caught myself saying to God: “But I do SO MUCH for you. Couldn’t you just come through for me?” Woah – I caught my breath. Where did that entitled attitude come from? Since when is it about what I do for God? I caught myself in the midst of my words, but I honestly was still so mad at Him, that I tucked that caution in the back of my mind for a later rebuke and decided that I wanted to be mad at Him . . . And so, mad I was going to be. I honestly felt like a little kid stomping around and crossing my arms with a big, protruding, pouting lip. Later that week I was supposed to be heading out to something that I hadn’t wanted to go to. I really felt like, when I received the invitation, that God had wanted me to go. So, against my own wish I decided to accept the invitation and be willing and open to what God had for me there. I was going to trust Him in that. Well, because I was having a temper tantrum and wasn’t willing to snap out of it yet, I decided to yell the most well used word of a three year old . . . “NO!” And so, that’s exactly what I said. I told God that I knew that (although it had been contrary to how I was living and what I have been believing deep in my heart – unbeknownst to me) that His word says that nothing can separate me from His love (Romans 8:38). And so, saying no and being disobedient to something that I believed that He wanted me to do shouldn’t change the way He felt about me. I decided to test that theory.
So, I did it. I said no to doing something God had asked me to do and then I waited. For what, you might ask? Well, His love to be taken away. His presence to leave me. A divine sign from on high saying He moved on to pay more attention to someone who actually listened and obeyed – not wasting time on some reckless, selfish, entitled brat. Spoiler alert: that never happened. And honestly, what a relief! To be reminded that God takes me as I am and that there is NOTHING I can do to make Him love me more – or less. This lie, working to earn God’s love, is something I am continuing to try and expose in my heart. Knowing it’s there was the first step. But knowing on the surface the truth of God’s word – that He is a God of love – is what really exposed the lie. That He is not just a God “of” love, but He is love. 1 John 4:7-12 talks about that. He is not just loving, He is the very definition of love. His character is fully love – and when He looks at me He sees someone He loves completely. I don’t need to try to earn anything. So, I am trying to learn how to sit in that love and do nothing; exposing the lie for what it is. And step by step He is walking with me and hacking at the root of that lie to demolish it for good. I can do nothing to earn God’s love – it is freely given.
Is there a lie that you are believing about God? Maybe not on the surface, but deep in your heart. Maybe, like me, it’s not something you would ever preach or teach, but for some reason you’ve started to believe that about God for yourself? Maybe you can see it in the way you talk to God or in the things that you do? I challenge you to ask God to expose it for you. Bringing it into the light is painful but it is the first step to breaking the power and hold that it has on your life. We live out of what we believe – whether a truth or a lie – whether about yourself or about God. So, what are you believing? And how are you acting on that belief?
Let me leave you with this story that Jesus tells in Matthew 7:24-27: “Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against the house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock. Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell – and great was its fall.”
You see, just like the two truths and a lie game, if you can pin point the things you know that are true about God in any given situation (no matter how crappy it might be) then the lies that you are believing about Him – the things that are not true about His character – can be easily exposed. In order to know the truth, we have to know, read and spend time cherishing the Truths of scripture and then, as this passage in Matthew 7 says, we have to act on them. Know the Truth and you will know the lies.
So, let God, the One who saved you and loves you, speak Truth into your life and break the power of the lies so that you can stand firm in this crazy life and live out who you were made to be in Him in freedom. Amen!
Written by: Justine Joy
Refined Joy 