What Lies Do You Believe?

I always thought it would be too hard to cut up a pineapple. I mean, look at those thorny things. Where do they even keep the fruit in there? So, when I actually treated myself to pineapple it was the approximately $94 for a small plastic tub of pineapple cubes in the produce department. Ridiculous. You guys, cutting up a pineapple is so easy! If you can extract fruit from a watermelon (and you did that all summer, right?) you can certainly dissect a pineapple. It’s practically the same thing. Yet I somehow bought into the grocery store lie that It’s way too hard for you. Let us do all the work and charge you a king’s ransom. It’s better this way. Trust us. Turns out, it’s not better that way. Pineapple is sweeter, fresher, and incredibly more delicious when it’s freshly released from its thorny protection. It’s also way cheaper.

​We’ve all bought into lies. My grandma died of emphysema—a disease that destroyed her lungs brought on by smoking. When I was little, I begged her to quit and even hid her cigarettes. Every time, Grandma would argue, “I’m addicted now. It’s too late. But when I started I didn’t know it was bad for me. When I started smoking no one had any idea.” No idea? That inhaling ignited carcinogens could be lethal? But that generation honestly didn’t know. They’d been fed the lie that smoking was relaxing and glamorous and harmless.
 
Sometimes the lies we believe are out of convenience or lack of information. But what about the lies we’ve been told about our self worth? About how talented or smart we are or are not? About how attractive or ugly or fat or thin we are? How about the lies that we’re not good enough, can’t do it, shouldn’t even try? Or the lies that say we have to please this person and that person and achieve that thing and know those facts and cook those types of meals and do those kind of exercises if we want to be accepted or loved?
 
All these lies are as ludicrous as the one that you can’t chop a piece of fruit or that smoking can’t harm you. 

It's really not any harder to cut a pineapple than it is a watermelon.

​You are loved.
You are accepted.
You are exactly as God intended you to be—brilliant, with your own set of special talents, and a unique calling that He has crafted specifically for you.
God has started a great work in you and won’t give up, or leave you alone, or fire you, or stop being proud of you, until that great work comes to completion.
You don’t have to have the fridge stocked with all the things, be on time to all of the events, wear the right pair of shoes while you’re there, and have your kids look or act a certain way to earn enough gold stars to keep going. God loves you today as you sit and read this blog, not wearing anything super spectacular, weighing exactly how much you weigh, with precisely the number of dollars you have in your bank account, the particular prospects you have in front of you, and exactly your specific social status. That’s how He loves you—how you are, not how you “have” to be, or how you think you “should” be.
 
What lies have you been listening to? Things someone or society or maybe even you, yourself, said about how you need to look or what you need to achieve and how and by when?
 
So, non-math me has been helping my daughter with Geometry proofs. Not my strong suit, but the thing about proofs, is even I can figure them out. They simply use facts to prove facts—very logical. Hard to argue or mess up. And if we want to sort out lies from truths, this seems to be a pretty good way to go. So when Jesus says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life,”  we hear that Jesus is truth. And since He’s God, and incapable of lying, let’s roll with that. Jesus is the truth. Fact.
Jesus also says, “I’ll be with you to the end of the world. I love you. I laid down my life for you. I forgive you. You are precious in my eyes, and honored, and I love you. You are mine.”
So, if Jesus is truthful AND He claims you are precious, honored, redeemed, and loved. Then you are all of those things. FACT.

John 14:6

​Stop believing silly lies. Stop accepting them as true without even picking up your knife and trying to pare them away. Slice off those prickly untruths today and savor the delicious truth that the One who created everything, created you. And He loves you so fully that He would do anything for you. He already has. Jesus died for you. This love. This truth. This is how we face our weeks, how we assess what truly matters and how we’re perceived. Truth. Not lies. You are precious. Honored. And loved. Believe it. Because it is true.