Embracing Gospel Truths to Overcome Life's Lies

There was a lot of people to be able to share what they were believing, and so we're going to be talking about that the next few weeks. I'm excited to be able to share that with you.

We have a few ways to give to the kingdom. We have instituted some new ways to give, such as recurring gifts and giving through stocks tax-free. My friend G1 is planting a church in Seoul, South Korea, with his wife and two kids. We had a fundraising dinner for them and were able to provide them with resources to do their work. There are many resources in the Bay Area that can be used to expand the kingdom. We need resources to keep doing ministry here, but we also need to expand our resources to help people outside of this church. Some of the money that goes to the church goes to people like Jiwan.

We are starting a series called "The Truth About Lies," where we sent out a survey to see what lies people are believing. We received many anonymous responses and will be talking about them over the next few weeks. Believing lies can be destructive and hinder us from walking into what God has for us. We want to be able to spot lies and deploy the truth to fight them.

Before we even did a survey, it was clear that many followers of Jesus were being riddled with lies that distorted their view of God and self. It's not enough to just expose the lies and discern them; we have to deploy the truth.

The Bible is clear that we reap what we sow. If we sow into the flesh, we reap corruption, but if we sow into the spirit, we reap life and peace. Even though we are saved by the gospel, our actions still matter. Believing lies can affect how we live out the good life that God has given us.

We are taking the next couple of weeks to unpack the lies we believe about ourselves. We want to understand how they are hurting us, fight them with the truth of God, and root ourselves in Christ and our identity. Jesus works so hard to give us forgiveness, peace, acceptance, and more through His blood. However, it can be hard for us to experience and receive these gifts if we are partnering with lies that fight directly against them.

We can see this in the responses from a survey in a church. Some of the lies that were repeated were: "I'm not good enough and I'll never be," "If my personality changed, people would love me," "I'm a burden to people," "I should just isolate myself," "I will always be an addict," "God won't accept me," "Everyone else thinks I'm stupid," "People tolerate me," and "If people knew my past, they would hate me."

It is important to understand where these lies come from. We can look to the Bible and worship to help us understand why we are struggling with these lies and why we feel attacked by them. We have an enemy, Satan, who is looking to oppose us. Jesus tells us that Satan was a murderer from the beginning and he does not stand in the truth. He is a liar and the father of lies. Revelation tells us that the great dragon, another name for Satan, was thrown down, and he is the deceiver of the whole world.

His main purpose in trying to deceive us is to lead us away from a sincere and pure devotion to Christ. We need to stay alert and watch out for our great enemy. We need to be aware of why these lies are coming into our minds at a rate we may not be able to handle. We can look to the scriptures and the Holy Spirit to help us follow Jesus and believe these things.

We know that there is a viable option that maybe nothing is wrong with God, or you, or someone else. There is an outside force trying to oppose you. That force is Satan, the father of lies. He is trying to deceive us and take us away from Jesus. His main goal is to lead us away from Jesus and his vision of the world.

We must know that we have a cunning enemy who is working day and night to destroy our spiritual peace, rob us of our confidence in the gospel, and lead us to disbelieve God and walk away from him. This is Christianity 101. The first pages of the Bible introduce Satan as the deceiver, and the last pages of the Bible talk about Satan the deceiver being crushed. He is defeated by Jesus, but he is still roaming around deceiving. He is defeated, but he is still dangerous.

We cannot afford to believe everything we think and feel. We have to fight against the demonic and destructive lies with the truth of God in the gospel. We have to notice the lies and fight against them because they are coming like a barrage.

Many of us believe the lie that we are not good enough. We may think we are not a good enough spouse, parent, leader, employee, daughter, or sibling. We may even think we are not a good enough Christian. We may think we will never measure up, keep failing, keep letting God and others down, be deficient, lacking, and defective. We may think we are not doing as well as others, or that we should be doing better or more.

But what we are really saying when we think these things is not about what we are doing. It is something deeper. We are saying that we are not worthy of love, acceptance, and belonging. We are saying that we are not worthy of the grace and mercy of God. We are saying that we are not worthy of the hope and joy that comes from a relationship with Him.

We must remember that the Bible tells us that we are worthy of love, acceptance, and belonging. We are worthy of the grace and mercy of God. We are worthy of the hope and joy that comes from a relationship with Him. We must reject the lie that we are not good enough and embrace the truth that we are worthy of God's love.

When you think or feel you're not good enough, you're not really talking about what you can or cannot do as much as you're talking about your sense of worth and identity. Sure, you look at your activity, effort, work, and accomplishments (or lack thereof) and start there, but that's not what you're really saying. There's something deeper that you're wrestling with.

It's not just that you didn't do well here, you dropped the ball as a parent, or you didn't read your Bible. It's not just stopping at that, which is harmful in itself, but there's something else. You're not just saying, "I didn't do well here," you're saying, "Because I didn't do well here, I'm of lesser importance, I'm not as respectable, I'm not as worthy of love."

It's one thing to say, "I'm just not checking off all the boxes," and that's the issue in itself, but I think many of us, if we were honest, if we peel back the layers and get just a little bit deeper, what we're saying is, "Because I don't do X, Y, or Z, I feel this way." It's more important than just activity because now it's touching our identity.

I don't know if you know this, but your life every day flows out of who you believe to be yourself, who you are at the core of your identity. That dictates how you live, whether through an insufficient identity, a distorted identity, or a gospel identity. You and I are all living out of our identity, and so this is a really urgent thing to address if we are now thinking that our identity is messed up because of what we're not doing.

This lie seeks to not only make war against who God says we are in Christ, and it's doing that. This lie is attacking who God says you are in Christ, but it also is attempting to rebuild your identity off of your own activity, and that's a really dangerous thing.

Here's what I want to say: this is so important to understand why this is dangerous. If Satan could confuse who you are, he can more easily influence what you do. If Satan can confuse who you are and make you distort your identity, then he can easily influence what you do and how you should live. Why? Because we are people created to live out of our identity. So if your identity gets jacked up, your actions will follow.

Many of us are led away doing things that are not gospel-like, centered in Jesus, and healthy, not just because we do bad things, but because there's something deeper with the identity and who we believe about ourselves, who we believe God thinks about us, and what we think God thinks about us.

Your identity is central to the gospel because in the gospel, your identity is remade. The world says you have to earn your identity, but the gospel says you are given an identity. Very different; one is really burdensome, the other, like we talked about last week, is an easy and light yoke that you don't have to strive for.

But because Satan... If we believe the lie that we are not good enough, it can influence who we think we are and what we do. This can manifest in a few ways. Firstly, we operate from a place of scarcity, believing that we will never have enough or be significant enough. Secondly, we live in a state of doubt and insecurity, constantly wrestling with our identity. Thirdly, we recoil and isolate ourselves from others, believing that we are not good enough to be part of a community or to serve. Fourthly, we resist being affirmed by God and people, feeling that we are not worthy of it. Lastly, we don't step into what God has for our lives, believing that we are not good enough or ready to do so.

These lies can have a real impact on our lives. I have seen people in the last few weeks believing these lies and resisting being affirmed by God and people. They have buried their God-given gifts and have found it hard to receive God's love.

People often bury the gifts that God has given them because they feel that they are not good enough. As a Christian, you have a God-given gift from the Holy Spirit that is meant to be used to build up the body and glorify Jesus. The last thing you're supposed to do with that gift is bury it, but Satan loves for you to bury your gifts. He loves for you to sit on the sidelines in church; he loves for you to say they don't need my gift, I can't use my gift, I'm not qualified. It tells you that you have nothing to contribute.

You ever thought about that? People often think that they have done too many bad things and have nothing to contribute to the kingdom, which leads them to settle and give up on trying. Satan wants to silence you so you don't follow the Holy Spirit and speak His word, but God wants you to speak up because His spirit is in you.

Lastly, it makes you live like you are disqualified. You disqualify yourself before you're actually disqualified. There are only specific roles, such as Deacon and Elder in the church structure, that have qualifications. You cannot disqualify yourself from being a Christian. Your disqualification is the reason why you are a Christian because you accept that you're disqualified and accepted Jesus's qualification.

So you cannot think because you have done so many things wrong that you have to bow out and not be able to live the life that God has for you. Satan's perfect tool is to silence you to stop you from living in confidence. If we partner with it and say I'm not good enough, I'm never going to be good enough, we are quenching the life of the spirit in us.

God knows you more than you know yourself, and so if He's willing to put His presence in you, you should believe that you're good enough through His presence. We are sometimes suppressing the call of God on us. There's a call that God has on each of our lives that we need to walk into, and we are emasculating Disciples of Jesus by not stepping into that.

Satan loves to quench God's activity in us, and he does this by partnering with lies. We can't help the thoughts that come into our minds, but we have control over what we believe and what we don't believe. We need to fight against this lie instead of just sitting with it and letting it ruminate and resonate in our hearts.

The gospel truth can help us battle this lie, and if we do, we will see more fruit, more disciples made, more generosity, more spiritual gifts being used, Jesus being lifted up higher, and more love and sacrifice being exercised. What's at stake is not just believing the lie or not, but being used by God, receiving His grace, and expanding His kingdom in our lives and in this world.

The Bible is the sword of truth, and what do we do with swords? In modern-day Christianity, we buy a lot of swords and we put them on our desks, make them look nice, and post them on Instagram and Twitter. But we don't use them. If you're given a sword, you don't just buy a lot of different variations of the sword just to study it. You have to use it. You study the sword so you can use it. You study the Bible so you can use it.

We need to know the truth so we can actively use it to fight the lies. It's not enough just to read it. You have to read it and then make war against the lies with God's truth. You have to put it into practice. Satan is not stopping his barrage on our minds, and the gospel is not stopping its powerful word. Which one will we deploy and use? Thankfully, the gospel has very clear answers to this destructive and burdensome bias.

Second Corinthians gives us three paradigms, or words from the gospel, that we can use to figure out what Jesus is saying to us. These are a freeing reality, a constant reality, and a comforting reality. The freeing reality is that we are not expected to be good enough. We need to hear that we are not good enough, and that we are not able to be good enough. We are not expected to be good enough.

Paul knew something that was so freeing. We need to know that we are not sufficient or competent in ourselves to claim anything that is coming from us. Our sufficiency is from God. You have to be good enough, but you aren't. You can't be good enough, and that's why the gospel exists.

The gospel is the difference between God's gracious justification, where he makes you right on his own, and you earning and striving to check off all the boxes. Don't make your activity your identity because your activity rises and falls every day, and so your identity will too. Jesus came to do what you cannot do through his perfect life.

The essence of the gospel is that God comes down to do what you cannot do. What Satan wants you to believe as a Christian is that you're saved by grace but sanctified by works, but Paul says that's not it. You're saved by the spirit and sanctified by the spirit, and God is sufficient where you are not. You don't have to be perfect because God is perfect.

This isn't a license to sin, but it is freedom from having to be perfect and freedom from having to measure up to get something of your worth and value. God is sufficient where you are not, and that is such a beautiful thing.

We often paralyze ourselves from God's activity because we focus on our own activity and the activity of our loved ones. Paul says it's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. The way to follow Jesus isn't strenuous activity, but surrender to God's gracious activity through us. God's power works best in our weakness and insufficiency.

Every area we feel not good enough is a space that God wants to fill with his grace. We must own our not good enoughness in order to make room for God's grace to come in and empower us. There is freedom in knowing we can't be good enough, and that God's grace is designed uniquely for those gaps in our lives.

Good enoughness can be a difficult concept to understand. We often feel like we are not good enough for something, and that can be discouraging. However, the gospel is different than other religions in that it says God has given us grace to lift us higher than we could ever be in our own strength. This grace is sufficient for us, even in our weakest moments. God's grace is a freeing, fulfilling, and comforting reality.

First, it is freeing because we are not able to be good enough on our own. We can never measure up to God's standards, but His grace is sufficient for us. Second, God's grace is fulfilling the gap. When we open ourselves up to Him, His grace floods in and equips us for what He has called us to do. Lastly, it is comforting because God loves us and accepts us into His family as children, even when we are not good enough.

John 3:16 says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life." This verse shows us the great love that the Father has lavished on us, saving us while we were still sinners. We can take comfort in knowing that God loves us and accepts us, even when we are not good enough.

So, today, think about what gaps you have in your life. God's grace is sufficient to fill those gaps and equip you for what He has called you to do. Let us remember that we are worthy and valuable in God's eyes, and that His love for us is fierce and lavish.

We often feel like we are not good enough. We may be hard on ourselves or feel like we are not worthy. The Bible knows this and keeps repeating that we need God and His love. We need to be reminded that God's love does not depend on our performance. God loved us before we ever followed Him, even when we were actively against Him. His love is so much greater now that we are His children.

We don't need to do anything to deserve it; our job is to stop and receive it. Satan will try to tell us that we are not good enough and that we need to deserve God's love, but thankfully that is not the Gospel of Jesus. We can remind Satan that Jesus came to save us and that His grace fills our gaps and His love is poured out on us, showing our worth and value.

We fight this lie of not being good enough because the other option is to let it sit rent-free in our minds, and it will destroy us. The Gospel has tools to fight this lie, and they are not fancy tools, but the pure and simple Gospel. We are saved by grace, not by works, and we are loved by the Father, not because we earned it. We are filled by the Spirit, so God's presence is with us.

This means we don't have to worry about being good enough because in His eyes, we are locked in. We can turn Satan's attacks into a field for praise. We can thank Satan for reminding us that we are not good enough and use it as an opportunity to praise Jesus for saving us while we were not good enough. We can crush Satan's head because Jesus is a snake crusher, and Satan is defeated by Jesus.

We will have a formation time to process the Gospel of Jesus and then open up space for us to pray for each other. We can answer the question of which Gospel truth we need the most to fight the lie of not being good enough. We can be open and transparent and start doing war with the Gospel of Jesus. Then we can use the power of the Spirit to pray this through.