Tag Archives: lies

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False and Fragile Chains

A inspirational speaker a few months back reminded me of something about elephants in captivity used for entertainment (years ago, not sure if the practice is still used.) When the elephant calves are small they tie a chain around a hind leg and attach it to something solid that can’t be moved. Over the years the elephant learns that it can only go so far, before the chain stops them in their tracks. Eventually a small rope and a tent stake will hold this enormous animal in place, actually it’s the ingrained belief, not the fragile rope at all.

Why did this speaker, Jonathon Thomas, use this elephant story? To point out that what we think, how we train our minds, is very important.

For years, I suffered from anxiety. At one point it almost had me paralyzed. Like those elephants, I believed I could only go so far, with certain “safe people”, and lived a horrible life of fear and bondage. All of this happened while I was a born again Christian! Why did it last so long?

I think mostly because I had to change the way I thought and my expectations. Instead of believing made up lies of the enemy, I should have believed what God said. When I expected God’s best and quit expecting the worst, life got better. Once I sat through a dentist appointment with no pills and no anxiety, the next time wasn’t problem. When I could wait in line, sit in a crowded room, and manage a new situation without the sky falling or the ground swallowing me up, and without fainting or seemingly heart failure, I knew that God had my back.

Whenever feelings of anxiety try to come back, I rebuke them and quote His truth.

What fragile and false chains are holding you back?

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Hell is Not a Penthouse Party

Let’s get something straight, shall we? There seems to be this whole group of people out there who have this belief that hell is the place to go. They talk about how it’s going to be one big party with all their wild friends, since all of us “small minded bigots who just try to control them” won’t be around to stop them. It will be the bar that never gives the last call, the high that doesn’t fade, and the party that never ends. Everyone can do what they want, when they want, and the master of the party, Satan himself, will be right there with the bong, or the keg, or the pill, or the needle, a couple of hot babes on his arms (that he is more than willing to share and they are more than willing). No rules, no laws, no condemnation, guilt, or consequences. They see hell as the devil’s playground and they just want to play.

Here is the truth. Satan was an angel in heaven. Beautiful and stunning and it is believed he led worship to the God most high. He had it all, except that wasn’t good enough for him. He wanted God’s throne, His power, and the worship of His creations. He loved heaven so much, and saw all the greatness of God…and wanted it all for himself.

Lucifer, the devil, Satan, didn’t leave the confines and laws and rules of heaven and go build a penthouse playground where he could be in charge of one big endless party.
He was thrown out of heaven, he tried to take over, he lost, and was cast out! After they tossed him out on his ear with one third of his crazy followers, he didn’t create some evil paradise to go live and party in. He was cast out to earth. He lives here. And he is pissed off about it. He hates people, all people, tattoos, bible thumpers, sadists, and even Satan worshipers. People are God’s special creation. We were created to be just like God and are loved so much. Hell wasn’t made or created by Satan, it was created by God, AS A PRISON! It was never made for mankind. We were supposed to live forever with Him.

Satan knows that his end is prison forever. All spiritual beings (God, Angels, Devils, Demons, People) live forever. God’s will and perfect way is for us to live with Him in the real paradise. Satan, the slanderer, the deceiver, lied to Adam, the first man and said God was withholding the best from him. When he believed the lie and did exactly what Satan said, and what God warned him not to, all people were put under Satan’s rule. Now we live according to his way. There is evil, suffering, war, murder, rape, abuse, addictions, death, sickness, poverty, disease, perversion, and every other horrible thing you can think of because that’s what the devil mandates here in his territory. This is Satan’s handy work, not God’s. From the day that Adam and Eve listened to the Liar instead of God, (the Truth), hell has been enlarged, to accommodate those who refuse to follow God. And when Jesus died and went to hell, He took the keys from Satan. The devil doesn’t even have the keys to his own penthouse! We choose where we spent eternity. Heaven or hell.
We have two beings fighting for us, they both want us with them. One wants to lavish us in His love, provide for our every need, and provides a place where there is NO MORE SUFFERING. The other wants us to suffer forever WITH HIM. Satan’s end isn’t a party. It is eternal hellfire and damnation. It is eternal separation from God. That’s his punishment for trying to harm God’s special creation, mankind. Every other person, human, who spends eternity suffering there, will be doing it by choice. God doesn’t send a single person to Hell. He never will. They choose the lies over the truth. They choose suffering over peace and rest.

Why!? Because they believe the lie. The one that says, “All my friends are going to be there and we are going to party forever.”

A hypocrite says they love you and then abuse you. A hypocrite has two faces. One that is their true face and one they show the world. Our God is one! One love, one truth, one Spirit. He can’t lie. Ever.

Who’s the hypocrite? The people who find themselves in a mess in this evil world, who turn to God for help, and still have some struggles and issues, yet they keep going to church and they press in to God for strength and hope. Or the one who tries to convince the world that God is bad, Christians are all bigots and hate everyone else, and that hell is going to be one big party? Satan is the ultimate hypocrite. He wanted it all, and now tries to convince us all that it isn’t worth having.
We can’t be perfect. God knows that. It’s not God that whispers in your ear that you are worthless, screwed up, a failure, and unlovable. It’s our enemy that tells us God doesn’t care, that He expects you to be perfect, and that you can never measure up. God says, “I love you.” No strings attached.

Who are you going to believe? Who are you choosing to follow? How do you want to spend eternity?

Isaiah 14:11-17 (BSB), “Your pomp and the music of your harps have been brought down to Sheol; Maggots are spread out as your bed beneath you and worms are your covering. How you have fallen from heaven,O star of the morning, son of the dawn! You have been cut down to the earth, You who have weakened the nations! But you said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; I will raise my throne above the stars of God, and I will sit on the mount of assembly in the recesses of the north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.’ Nevertheless you will be thrust down to Sheol, To the recesses of the pit. Those who see you will gaze at you, they will ponder over you, saying, ‘Is this the man who made the earth tremble, who shook kingdoms, who made the world like a wilderness and overthrew its cities, who did not allow his prisoners to go home?”

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Changin the Way We Think

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There are two kinds of thoughts. Godly and ungodly. We, as Christians need to make sure that our thought patterns are Godly. Proverbs 23:7a says, “For as a man thinks in his heart, so is he.”

We can’t trust our senses. They lie, and mislead. They may at times give us “facts” but they don’t always give us “TRUTH.”

We can’t trust what we see. For example, Elijah’s servant saw a great army surrounding them. God and Elijah saw the army of the Lord there to defend them. The disciples saw 5 loaves and 2 little fish. Jesus saw a feast, enough to feed 5,000 men plus women and children.

We can’t trust what we can hear. The woman with the issue of blood had heard nothing but bad news from the doctors and had spent every penny she had to hear it. But the TRUTH was that Jesus came to bring healing to her. The Israelites believed the bad report of the 10 spies. Only Joshua and Caleb believed the Lord’s report and were able to pass into the promised land.

Facts-versus-TRUTH. There is a huge difference between facts and TRUTH. Don’t ever get the two confused. The fact was that Elijah was surrounded by an army. But he TRUTH was that there were more warrior for them than were against them.

Satan used ‘facts’ against Jesus. He could have given everything over to Jesus, as he promised on the temple mount, legally Satan owned it all. But the TRUTH was that by doing it God’s way, Jesus not only got it all for Himself, but for us as well. God’s plan is always better than Satan’s schemes.

We can’t let what others say, good or bad, carry more weight than what God says. There are millions of people who have bought into the lies that we all go to heaven, that there is no hell, that there are many roads to heaven, and even that we evolved out of some primordial slime and when we die we become fertilizer for the next evolutionary change. That this life is all there is.

In John 8:44, Jesus tells the religious leaders that Satan is “The father of lies.” In Verse 47 He goes on to say to those stiff-necked, hard-hearted people, “Whoever is of God, listens to God-those who belong to God hear the words of God. This is the reason you do not listen [to them, to me] because you do not belong to and are not of God or in harmony with God.” (AMP)

Jesus spent countless hours trying to dispel the lies that had come into the minds of God’s people. They believed that sickness, accidents and death at the hands of Rome were all due to sin. That they were all some type of divine punishment. They believed that they were the only one’s God loved, that they were better than any other nation because they “have Abraham as our Father.” Their mindset was to love their brother but hate their enemy. That their works earned them God’s favor and kept them righteous. All lies.

We need to line up our thinking with God’s word. Not out of context, not adding to or taking away from. Simple truth. God isn’t trying to trick us. He isn’t hiding from us, or trying to mislead us. Ask Him to show you His TRUTH and the Holy Spirit will lead and guide you there.

John 10:1-5 The Message Bible
“Let me set this before you as plainly as I can. If a person climbs over the fence of a sheep pen instead of going through he gate, you know he’s up to no good-a sheep rustler! The shepherd walked right up to the gate. The gatekeeper opens the gate to him and the sheep recognize his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he gets them all out, he leads them and they follow because they are familiar with his voice. They won’t follow a stranger’s voice but will scatter because they aren’t used to the sound of it.”

Know His voice!

Philippians 2:5-8 “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.”

Have the mind of Christ.