Forty-Day Immersion: Day 19

The world is unprincipled. It's dog-eat-dog out there! The world doesn't fight fair. But we don't live or fight our battles that way - never have and never will. 10:4 The tools of our trade aren't for marketing or manipulation, but they are for demolishing that entire massively corrupt culture. 10:5 We use our powerful God-tools for smashing warped philosophies, tearing down barriers erected against the truth of God, fitting every loose thought and emotion and impulse into the structure of life shaped by Christ. 10:6 Our tools are ready at hand for clearing the ground of every obstruction and building lives of obedience into maturity. 2 Corinthians 10:3-6, The Message

Day 19

How dangerous is self-deception?

What if I try to convince myself that I am already OK, already walking in total victory? I got through today just fine, didn’t I? I may have messed up a little, but nowhere near as bad as I have before.

You know; before.

Before, when I was in TROUBLE.

Before, when I bottomed out.

Before, when I was backed into the corner, and hammered. Hard.

Before, when I knew I couldn’t do it on my own, didn’t want to try it on my own, was tired of failing on my own.

Before, when my transparency went from clear, to smudged, to smeared, to dirty, to opaque, to painted over.

You know what that’s like.

Faith is faked, along with everything else.

I hate it when its like that. But its so easy to forget how bad it was, because its not that bad now.

We need people to keep us real. I need people to keep me real.

My self-deception is strong when I can tell myself, with a straight face, that

“I don’t need anybody else.”

I love to talk to God. To read the Bible. To think about spiritual things.

I love them, and need them all.

But I can avoid talking to God about the hard things, real change and growth and strengthening that’s lacking in my life.

But I can avoid reading the challenging parts of the Bible, and spend all my time in the parts that make me feel good.

But I can avoid thinking about the spiritual things that need to happen in my life, the growth that needs to occur, the discipline that needs to be accepted and embraced.

I need people.

Without people, no real change occurs in our lives.

Its too easy to say that we are accountable to God and deceive ourselves. We need to be accountable to someone with skin on, someone in the 3-D world, someone who will ask the questions we don’t want to answer.

Just because we aren’t in TROUBLE doesn’t mean we aren’t in trouble.

We have met the deceiver – and he is us.