Belt of Truth, Live Truthfully, Pastor Josh Lilly, May 24, 2026 9am

When we're lying, we're joining Satan and his work. In John eight, Jesus tells us that Satan is the father of lies. When we lie, we're speaking Satan's native language. We're not speaking the language of our good father. When our words distort the truth, when our words destroy others, the belt of truth is loosened in our lives, and we're working for the enemy. And one of the sinister ways that the enemy likes to destroy relationships, marriages, families, and churches is underneath the disguise of truth. People, sometimes with good intention, will gossip under the disguise of, I'm just speaking truth. [00:43:21] (62 seconds)  #TruthOverLies

Gossip is joining Satan in his work. It's talking about someone, not to someone. It's talking about someone, not to someone, especially in a way that damages the reputation, hear me, even if it's true. Sometimes we justify our gossip by saying, this must be heard. We're gonna talk more about that in a minute. Speaking truthfully is refusing to work for Satan and is joining God at work. I'm reminded of Titus one. Paul writes to Titus and says, God cannot lie. Do you believe that? God does not lie. He doesn't want to lie, but further, he cannot. It's not part of his character. God never lies. He cannot lie. He always tells the truth. [00:44:31] (62 seconds)  #NoMoreGossip

But speaking truth doesn't just require, wisdom, understanding both sides, doesn't just require speaking the truth in love, but it also requires restraint. See, truthful people do not merely tell the truth. Don't miss it. They steward truth faithfully. Living truthfully means we wisely steward when, how, and to whom we share information. We don't weaponize truth to harm others. We steward it to bless them. When's the last time you stopped before you shared information to think, why am I sharing this? Am I sharing it for the good of others to build them up? Or am I sharing this information to tear someone down? [00:48:40] (55 seconds)  #StewardTruth

Emotions are real but not always righteous. They tell us that something's happening inside us, but they don't always tell us the truth. And, certainly, are many non christian voices that would tell us rightly today that our emotions should not be ignored, they shouldn't be denied, they shouldn't be stuffed down. But many of those same voices will tell us that we can trust our emotions and that our emotions are even self validating. I wonder if you've believed that lie, that you can trust your emotions, that they're self validating. Scripture tells us that we really can't trust our emotions. We have to regularly and consistently take them to the Lord because our emotions, just like everything else in this fallen broken world, has been messed up by sin. [00:34:59] (60 seconds)  #CheckYourEmotions

Before we fire off that email, before we reach out to someone to give them a piece of our mind, before we clam up, before we seek a dark room to hide in, we need to bring our emotions to God and ask him to reshape them so that we can respond rightly. Respond out of a renewed heart. Respond in a sanctified way. The enemy would love for you to live by just continuing to dump your emotions on anyone and everyone and to never take them to god. And if you do that, you're not living truthfully. If you don't check your emotions with the lord, you're not going to live truthfully. You've believed the lie of the enemy that your emotions aren't tainted by sin. Let's not believe that lie today. [00:41:10] (57 seconds)  #PrayBeforeYouReact

So Christians don't deny our emotions, but we don't enthrone them. We bring them before God to be aligned with the truth of who he is, to be aligned with the truth of what's going on around us. See, the enemy loves to take our real emotions and to twist them up into sinful responses. He loves to take anger and turn it into what? Bitterness. So that a deep root of bitterness will grow in our hearts toward people, so that we'll start viewing people as our enemies. He loves to take our fear and turn it into a sinful response of control so that we wanna take control from god as if we could and somehow control everything around us. [00:37:35] (45 seconds)  #EmotionsUnderGod

The second thing we need to do to keep that belt tight around us to live truthfully is to speak truthfully. And the question that I wanna ask us this morning is this, who are your words working for? Who are your words working for? Have you ever thought about your words working for someone? What does your speech reveal about what's going on in your heart? Jesus said, from the what? Overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. Sadly, because we don't always stop to check on our emotions, we don't always know whether or not our heart is healthy or unhealthy until we hear with our ears what we've spoken with our mouth. And by then, it's too late. It's out there already. [00:42:13] (52 seconds)  #WordsRevealHeart

Restraint in speaking truthfully is the ability to use truth the right way at the right time instead of slinging it around and creating a mess. Boy, it's a heavy one, speaking truthfully. The enemy loves to get right in the middle of our lives as it relates to our words. And just as James tells us, the tongue is something that no one can tame. It's a deadly evil, he says, and full of poison. It will start a fire and burn up everything around us. To live truthfully, we need to be people who speak truthfully. But we also need to be people who act with integrity. To live truthfully means we act with integrity. Does our public life match our private life? Does it all look like Jesus? [00:49:56] (57 seconds)  #TruthAndIntegrity