3 People You Have to Tell the Truth
Aug 28, 20223 people to whom we have to speak truth:
1. Tell the truth to yourself.
The greatest of all deception is self-deception.
Writer Mike Novak says: “Our capacity for self-deception has no known limits.” The prophet Obadiah in the Old Testament says it like this: “The pride of your heart has deceived you.”
For years, I deceived myself about my insecurities; about my pride; about my addictions and lust issues. I deceived myself to believe I was closer to God than I really was. When I believe the lies I tell myself, I am in a very dangerous place. We don’t have the capacity to speak to truth to anyone if we lie to ourselves.
2. Tell Your Spouse the Truth.
God has created us to know and to be known. I counsel with husband and wife all the time. I will say something like, “Have you told your wife that?” “Have you shared that with your husband?” Most of the time their response is “Are you crazy? I could never tell my husband that.” “My wife could never know that about me.” Withholding truth breaks intimacy. So my question to you today is…Is there something that you hope your spouse never knows about you? If the answer to that question is “yes” you have limited your capacity to experience intimacy in your marriage.
3. Tell God the Truth.
Neal Plantinga writes this: I go hours, days, weeks at a time never really thinking about Him; never really turning my heart and will over to Him; never seriously attend to Him; never bring Him sustained focus. The thought that I am entangled more and more in the sin that brought Jesus to the cross, that thought becomes bearable and then routine. Eventually, I find God doesn’t seem very real. I find myself not praying all that much. The less I pray, the less real God seems. I forget God. I forget sin.
How do we forget to tell God about the struggles we have? What we think is that by not being honest with God we are actually saving ourselves from pain and hurt. We are avoiding pain, in the short term. But what we forfeit by not being honest with God is the healing of our heart.
Maybe you feel distance in your marriage but it has nothing to do with your marriage…it has to do with this healing that God longs to bring, when you are willing be honest with him and allow him into all parts of your heart.
