Embracing Inner Truth: God's Call to Authenticity

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We live in a culture that is steeped in falsehood, deception, and lies. The father of lies controls the atmosphere in this world, the spiritual atmosphere, and it comes through our culture very strongly. For instance, take the academic system that you guys are raised in. [00:03:55]

Commerce lies to you every time you see a commercial or you see an ad in a magazine or you see an ad on the internet. It is full of half-truths and exaggerations. Isn't that true? They're lying to you. I mean, I wish I had taken the time to really give you some of the mendacious whoppers that they spew out. [00:06:21]

The political system is rife with deception. You know, even a good man, quote-unquote, a good man who really wants to serve his country, you cannot get elected to public office without telling exaggerations and half-truths because our country will no longer accept someone who tells the truth. [00:12:27]

The evangelical system at some level lies to you. I asked, I sent an email out yesterday morning to the staff, and I asked, especially the counselors, tell me some of the things that you guys are hearing. You know, and I got a lot of good stuff from everybody. [00:22:36]

God desires truth to reign inside you guys. He desires your whole inner being to be taken up with truth, defined by truth, controlled by truth, led by truth. He wants all the deception cleared out of there so there can be an open communication between you and Him. [00:38:30]

You must renounce all deception. That would make sense, right? It has to start with repentance, doesn't it? You must be done with fake, superficial, outward religion. And what I mean by outward religion is image, facade, fake, you know, where you're acting the part but there's no reality going on inside you. [00:40:20]

You must allow God to expose and root out all the falsehood out of you. That falsehood, those lies that you have believed in the past, and false perceptions and stuff like that, they keep a crank in your armor, and the enemy can just slip through in and out all the time. [00:51:18]

God wants to unravel the web of deception that's been built up inside you over the years, years in this devil-infested planet. There's so much that has gotten inside of you, me too, but the only difference between you and me is that I've been in this process for a long time. [00:52:12]

God wants to do a deep work inside of you guys. It's your only hope. You know, it's your only hope. I'm not talking to a 17-year-old who hasn't really been involved in sin and pretty decent kid and stuff, you know. No, you guys have given yourselves over, right? [00:58:13]

He knows that in order for Him to accomplish what He wants to accomplish inside of you, He must first tear down the rotten, filthy structure inside of you so that He can build something godly inside of you, so He can build truth inside of you. [00:59:05]

We live in a miasma of deception. It's, you know, miasma is like a swamp with noxious fumes. That's what a miasma is, and we're breathing this stuff. It's just in us. It's like everywhere we turn, it's just contaminating us and polluting us and twisting us inside. [01:01:54]

Help them, Lord, to develop godly convictions, a godly determination to walk in the truth, to live for the truth, to speak nothing but the truth. I pray, Lord, that you would get that into them in a very powerful way, in Jesus' name. [01:07:02]

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