Lies We Tell Ourselves About God

When life doesn’t work the way we think it should.  When our expectations about a loved one brings disappointment.  We blame God.  

Even those who don’t believe there’s a God blames him for their misfortunes.  We blame him when we suffer from making wrong decisions.  It’s his fault why the hurricane destroyed houses too close to the sea.

God gets full credit for every sickness, death, and destruction.  We place full responisbility on his shoulder when our husband cheats or beats us.  

We tell ourselves that God is to blame for the life we experience.

When our faulty decisions lead us to struggling with life difficulties, we blame God. Turn our backs on him.  Or outright deny his sovereign status.  

We convince ourselves that we are wiser than God.  We know about us than the being that created us.

These are some of the lies we tell ourselves about God

1. He’s not real

Every now and again I get asked the question: how do you know God is real?  It’s a legitimate question.  How do I know?  The answer is far from simple.  

I can point to the Bible as the inspired word of God but the comeback is instantaneous.  The response is especially harsh from some in the Black community who think that the bible was written by White men to mislead us.  I really don’t know anything about that.

I choose to believe that the Bible is the inspired word of God.  Much more than I believe a news report from the TV station. But that’s another story.

Just after my 16th birthday, I started to feel a pull towards God.  The sensation was especially strong when I was alone.  Washing the dishes left alone with my thoughts, I heard the whispers from Almighty telling me he wanted to be my Lord.  

I fought with all my might.  I actually told him no.  I wasn’t interested. The people I knew as “Christians” didn’t represent what I thought God should be.  I didn’t want to be told what to wear and who to talk to.  I couldn’t reconcile a loving God with judgmental and unforginging people who called themselves Christian.  

But God wanted me.  And he wanted me bad.  The Holy Spirit was unrelenting in his pursuit of my heart and soul.  Still I resisted.  

The thing though his calling was so loving and gentle, It was hard to resist.  My life was devoid of love and compassion.  I was facinated that he could love me.  Why would he?  My own parents didnt think I was worth their time.  So why would the God of all creation care enough to visit me in my mothers kitchen. 

Eventually maybe about 6-9 months later, I relented.  I gave my heart to Jesus.  It was the most amazing experience.  But life didn’t change on the outside.  I continued to fight with the mother I didn’t know.  I continued to look for someone who would love me in real life.  My life as a young Christian held so much contradiction.  On the one hand I was on fire for God.  Filled with the Holy Spirit and encouraged to open my mouth I began to witness to those around me.  I became active in youth leadership and at 17 gave my first sermon to a youth audience of 5000.  

But I did’t know God.  I still struggled with what I now know was affeect of abandonment and neglect.  

I cna’t explain how I know that God is real.  I just know.  My life experience ha

1. He doesn’t care

This one is a big one. The mistake we make is to put God in the same category as humans.  Second we try to manipulate God by twising the truth to suit us.  

By making the mistake of treating God like we treat humnas we miss the opportunity to get to know him.  There are two wasy we can get to know God.  1) read the scriptures.  Start from Genesis.  I was only after reading the Torah (the first 5 books of the bible) that I realized who God really is.  When we become new Christians we are instructed to read the Gospel.  But it’s a mistake to not “search the scriptures”.  It’s true we learn about Jesus and the Christian church in the New Testament.  But we leearn abou the nature of God by studying the Old Testament.  I truly understood the loving and patient nature of God when I understood his relationship with Adam and Abraham.  

When I read Psalms i understnad when David is the man after Gods own heart.  When I read Proverbs, I see where God uses his words to guide us not only in spiritual but in practical living as well.

God cares.  He cares enough to know how many strands of hair we have on our heads.

As a divorced mom, I’m intimately familiar with the feeing of low self worth.  When I read the story of Hagar and the Woman at the wall,  I understand that God that God does not see me as the world sees me.  

1. God did not create the earth, man, etc.

It’s hard to fathom that I came from slime.  

1. He’s harsh and judgemental

It can seem like God is harsh or judgmental. But don’t confuse God with life.  Don’t blame him for the consquences of your own actions.  

I married the wrong man for me.  I’m not blaming the man.  I’m taking responsibility for not waiting to be lead to the right person for me.  I now realize that I had a lot of work to do on myself before I got married.  It’s possible that I did marry the right person for me when I was 20 years old.  But it’s hard to know. 

I also know that if I knew how to trust God to work things out for my good then I probably would still be married eto my first husband.  But I couldn’t become one with someone when I wasn’t whole.  God couldn’t fix me becasue I didn’t even know I was broken. 

So when we feel condemned. It’s not God.  Either our own conscience is condemning us or the enemy is condeminging us. 

When i look back over my life and see the things that I had done or not done.  I can see how God has steered my life.  I can see how as a Good Shepherd her hooked his staff around my neck and pulled me back from destruction.  Even when I fought him.  I can see when I struggled and suffered.  But looking back I could see where he sent soeone in my life to give me hope, or a place to live or money.

For a long time I did not feel loved.  Not by God not by people.  But I discovered how much he loved me during a 13 week discovery group.  It was within this group that I realized that though my earthly father didn’t love me that God loved me.  That God wanted to be my father.  

I’m learning daily that becoming a Christian is only the beginning.  God through the Holy Spirit need to have full access to you so he can transform you from the old person to his new creation.  

It is only then that you can experience the lvoing God who despises sin but love the sinner.

1. There’s more than one way to his kingdom

I hear this one a lot lately.  It’s the subtle way that the enemy is using our education to create a wedge between us and God.  When we are new Christains we tend to accept the Jesus who loved us enought ot give his life for us.  But as we gain understanding of the world around us we begin to question our existence.  I think this is a good thing.  But as we search, travel and learn we become familiar with the beliefs of others.  We must however, be careful that we do not allow the enemy to use our knowledge against us.  

You don’t want to hear “who did hinder you so you did not obey the truth”.  Satan will use you against God.  He’ll tell you if God is so loving how could he send someone full of love and compassion to hell?  Satan has epowered you to question God’s sovereignty.  Just lidke he did Adam and Eve.  Remember?

“I am the truthe the life and the way, no man comes to the Father but by me”. 

 I choose to believe that Jesus is the only way to eternal life.

1. Salvation isn’t real

So this is a tough one.  I can only blame myself for this one.  I have not allowed my light to shine like God instructed.  As a result you cant see how salvation is real.  Afterall the person I was before I became a Christian hasn’t changed.

Your parents or your sibling or your spouse is the same judgmental and condescending person you knew before they got saved.  How then can salvation be real.  Where’s the change?

I understand.  The only thing I can say is that “we all shall give an account”.  We as Christians are instructed not to be stumbling blocks.  But it doesn’t give a non Christian any excuse not to search out the truth for themselves.

I’ve heard it said a lot.  Only hypocrites go to church.  Maybe so.  But only the sick need to go to a hospital.  So we contine to gather and have fellowship in obedience to the Lord.  

If you are perfect then I understand why you wouldn’t wnat to be part of a set of people who are imperfect.  But my point of view does ot excuse Christians’ who are poor witnesses. People who twist the bilbe to suti their own selfish desires.  

I leave them to God becasue he’s the one in charge.  I’m not.  

But “search the scriptures”...

1. There’s no hell or heaven

This is a good one from the enemy.  just live your life.  

1. If God is love why is there so much wickedness in the world

Good question.  Why is that?  Why doens’ God just attach a string to every human and tug them until they act like he wants?

Fortunately, that’s not how we were designed.  We have free will to believe and act how we want.  We can accept that God loves and cares for us or we can reject him and live how we see fit.  Remember though that you can’t do without God.  Whether you acknowledge it or not.  If you thnk that you can live withough God.. hodl your nose an stop breathing. 

1. He allows suffering because he's not love