What Lie Do You Believe?
When plotting a new novel, I pose several questions to my characters.
What are you afraid of?
What wounds from your past created this fear?
What lie are you believing that your past wounds caused?
What is your secret desire, and how is it different from your goal?
What am I (as the author) healing in you? Or what can you do at the end of the story that you couldn’t in the beginning?
Even though I pose these questions to fictional characters, our own worldviews are often formed by lies. We allow past hurts or disappointment to lead to doubt, and then that doubt becomes our doctrine.
I remember getting in trouble in first grade for rolling my eyes. The teacher believed I was disrespecting her, but in truth, I’d been daydreaming about a book I’d read where the main character rolled her eyes, and I was reenacting the scene in my head. In retrospect, I should have been paying attention, but I was mortified that the teacher yelled at me. After all these years, my chest still tightens thinking about it. My classmates stared as she moved my desk to the back of the classroom and had me work on math problems for the rest of the afternoon.
I remember thinking, as I finished page after page of addition and subtraction sheets, that I was never going to let her embarrass me again. In that moment, I internalized the lie that detachment would keep me safe. For the rest of the year, I didn’t hug that teacher, I didn’t raise my hand. I only spoke when spoken to. I withdrew into myself because she lost my trust, and I wasn’t going to allow her to hurt me like that again. Thankfully, that lie didn’t turn into a doctrine. My second-grade teacher was a sweetheart, and I went back to being myself, but I don’t know if that would have happened if there’d been multiple events hammering the same lie into me.
Our lies usually stem from a past emotional wound that induces fear, which creates a coping mechanism to avoid dealing with the insecure turmoil that the fear evokes. The writing world calls this a character flaw.
Women’s flaws tend to stem from our worries. We run through worst-case scenarios of what could happen, then take steps to prevent them (for example, becoming an overprotective mother). Men’s flaws tend to be based on something that has already happened that they want to prevent from ever repeating.
Fear binds us and keeps us hostage to the lie we believe. We each have a purpose and desire that God has placed in our hearts, but our lies, fears, and flaws can box us into a trap. We all need redemption. Like Lazarus, Jesus has called us by name to come out of the grave. He doesn’t want us to be bound by our fears and the lies of the devil. We were made to walk in freedom and the fullness of God.
A lie can hold us hostage, but The Truth can set us free. God wants to open our eyes and show us His truth so we can heal. Ask yourself, what lie do you need to be delivered from? What grave do you need to walk out of so you can walk in freedom and have life to the full? What is God healing in you?
The best way to defeat the lie is by filling it with the truth.
When I’m feeling unwanted, unworthy, or unloved, I remind myself of Isaiah 43:4, “You are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give people in exchange for you, nations in exchange for your life.”
When I feel like a disappointment, defective, or not good enough, I recite Psalm 139:14, “I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”
When I feel rejected, I look to 1 Peter 2:9, “ But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light.”
When I feel helpless or powerless to fix things, I turn to 1 Corinthians 2:9, “It is written, ‘What no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, and what no human mind has conceived—' the things God has prepared for those who love him.”
When I feel like I’m a bad person or it’s all my fault, I read Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh,” and Psalm 103:12, “As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.”
What is a scripture that defeats your lie?
