Lies Women Believe Part 1: How Do Lies Work?

(Eve's links: Women's Role in Society. CWLC Women' Conference Ormoc, 7 March 2020)

In the beginning, God.

God created the heaven and the earth.

Everything He created was good.

God also created man. Both Adam and Eve. 

He created them in His own image. Male and female He created them.

Then came the serpent. The Bible said that the serpent is more cunning. 

If we go back to the moment of creation, God created everything good. The earth, the sky, the animals and even humans. But what came after was the serpent, in a form where he offered an alternative fact that we took in as a lie. He started asking Eve “Did God actually say that…?” Before there was death, there was the lie. But before the lie, there was the Liar. (Wilson, Jared C.. The Gospel According to Satan. Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.)

Who was this serpent that the bible was talking about?  Satan the deceiver. He is the Father of lies, 

You belong to your father, the devil and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. John 8:44

Satan himself also masquerades as an angel of light. (2 Corinthians 11:14)

Satan also is a Schemer.

Put on the whole armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. (Ephesians 6:11)

He came to Eve not with debates on who God is or preparing arguments, rather he came to put doubts on Eve. He started with the lie “Did God actually say…” Then slowly, he added, “ Surely you will not die, your eyes will be opened, you will be like God.” Forgetting that God created her in the image of him.

Thomas Brooke a pastor once said, "Satan promises the best, but pays with the worst; he promises honor, and pays with disgrace; he promises pleasure, and pays with pain; he promises profit, and pays with loss; he promises life, and pays with death."

When we look at the passage, Eve saw, that the fruit was a delight to the eyes and to be desire to make one wise. Delight it meant to have extreme satisfaction, and to desire is to long for. When we come to think about it, what's wrong with the picture? 

God created everything good. They have the whole garden for themselves, food to eat, everything was provided but 

They saw their nakedness, they did not see what God created was good, their eyes were opened

How do lies work? 

Taking this from Nancy Wolgemuth, she’s the author of Lies Women Believe, she said that There is a progression of the lie that leads us to spiritual bondage. That spiritual bondage is what will keep us from fulfilling the role that we're suppose to truly be.

1. First we listen to the lie. 

We start by entertaining the doubt in our thoughts. Well, there’s no harm in listening to it. Is listening wrong? Absolutely not. But listening to something that is misleading from God's word is dangerous. This is why we need to be vigilant and filled with the knowledge of God's word. Discernment is necessary. 

"Listening to things that are not true is the first step toward spiritual bondage." - Nancy Wolgemuth

Listening to counsel or ways of thinking that are not according to the Truth is the first step in developing wrong beliefs that will ultimately place us in spiritual bondage. In a world that is full of half-truths and little lies, we expose ourselves to it, listening. Warnings from the Bible tells us of false teachings, but it also reminds us to keep God's word. Psalm 119:11 says, 

"I have hidden Your Word in my heart, that I might not sin against You." 

2. Then we dwell on the lie. 

We women like to analyze, to over think, then we start with, “Well, why not? He could be right?”

The lie takes hold when we dwell on it. We open ourselves up thinking about it, start asking questions. "What if..." "That does not sound so bad, right?" Mulling over it continuously that we are convincing ourselves otherwise to the point that lines are blurred.

3. After we believe the lie. 

We start including it in our lives, we start by accepting it and making it into our core beliefs. 

I was watching an episode where a woman was selling a mirror that if you look at it, you look skinny and the idea was, "If you look good, you feel good. Because you look skinny in the mirror, you start to believe it and allow yourself to think, yes, I look good therefore I will feel good. But that deception only comes when you look into the skinny mirror. What happens if you look in a regular mirror? 

4. Finally we act on the lie.

"Belief produces behavior. Believing things that are not true produces sinful behavior." 

- Nancy Wolgemuth

We allow the sin to take hold of us that we start to believe it is our truth and we act upon it. And once we act upon it, it becomes easier and easier to continue acting on it because it becomes our nature. I remember having training with Stephen Covey's 7 Highly Effective Habits of a Leader where as our leaders will set a goal for us to do things everyday until it  becomes into habits. The same way it is with sin. We act on it to the point that it becomes so easy for us that it becomes a habit, and later on we're so used to it that it will be hard to remove it from our system. 

Now knowing the progression on the lie helps us identify the lies and how we can stop from falling into it. 

Lies Women Believe Part 2: What Are The Lies We Believe

Lies Women Believe Part 3: How To Deal With The Lies

Sources:

Wolgemuth, Nancy DeMoss. Lies Women Believe/Lies Women Believe Study Guide- 2 book set. Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition. 

Wilson, Jared C.. The Gospel According to Satan. Thomas Nelson. Kindle Edition.