truth
photo credit: I @ingmarr
I remember smiling on the outside and being fully engaged with my children and others when I was with them, or so I thought. The moment I was alone it all started playing in my head. Like a broken record, stuck on the same line, playing over and over, saying everyone would be better off if you weren’t here. Your husband would be happier, and your home would be more peaceful for your sons. His anger is because of you. His unhappiness is because you aren’t enough.
This folks, is captivity. This is bondage, and a perfect example of how the enemy uses our past to keep us from living the lives God desires for us. “Satan sets the FREE captive through lies,” Beth Moore. (Hang in there with me on this one.) What Beth is saying is, Satan uses our past, our weaknesses, and our sins to bring us into a “specified” state, a state of bondage. We are free in Christ when we believe His truth about ourselves, but when we listen to the enemy’s lies about who we are, we are in captivity. This is what it means to be in spiritual warfare. God/The Holy Spirit was fighting for my thoughts, and so was the enemy, and to the degree that I was believing those lies and not listening to Truth, I was in a deep bondage that was terrifying and very, very dark.
What is truth and how do we know what is true?
Jesus answered, “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6) Jesus is saying he is not only true, but truth itself: in Him there is nothing false, fake, or uncertain.
“The words of John 1:1 set the stage for this very fact: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. In this one sentence, John is proclaiming Jesus as ‘the Word’, which would have suggested that he is the beginning and culmination of all that has been true throughout eternity, and that to seek the truth ultimately leads us to seek him. When we seek to figure out what is the truth and what is a lie, we can measure it against the words of Jesus, who himself is the truth.” ("I Am the Way, the Truth, and the Life" - What Jesus Really Meant-Jason Soroski)
It's crazy and scary to realize how crafty our enemy really is. I grew up knowing the Lord and loving Jesus. I knew Him in my heart and soul. I can honestly say that Jesus was my friend. (Still is 😊)
I knew His truth, but the enemy knew my weaknesses, sins that weighed heavy on my heart, things in the darkness that I didn’t want others to know, and he collected them and quietly, persistently kept whispering to me how “unforgivable” they were, how disappointed everyone would be if they knew.
He hammered on me that Jesus was ashamed of me and how unworthy I was of Him and His love. He chipped away at the pieces of my character that God meant for good, those being my desire to please and honor those I love, especially Jesus. He perverted those character qualities until my confidence was broken, I was broken, and he used my ex-husband as his weapon to deliver those final destructive blows. Those blows pushed me into a deep darkness, resulting in bondage and spiritual warfare inside my head. It’s even more sickening that the enemy used my ex who was also trapped deeply in his own bondage to try to break me and destroy my faith in God, to destroy my testimony to our sons, and destroy their walk with the Lord. You see, Satan isn’t satisfied with one life; he wants to destroy all God’s people.
“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour. Resist him, steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same sufferings are experienced by your brotherhood in the world.” (1 Peter 5:8, 9)
This scripture reminds me that we are not alone in our fight against the enemy. We can be strong in knowing others fight this same battle. This is important because the first thing we want to do when we are in bondage is isolate ourselves, but it’s THE WORST thing we can do.
Isolating allows Satan to develop strongholds on us that are even harder to break.
Lean into others for support and seek Godly support and encouragement.
What ultimately brought me back around and freed me from captivity was God’s word/the truth. 1996 we moved to Kansas. I was in the depths of despair. It might not have shown on the outside, but inside, I was barely hanging on. I was trapped so deep in bondage that I actually believed my entire family would be better off if I weren’t even alive. In full disclosure and complete transparency, I need to state for the record, while I never contemplated suicide, I begged God to end my life. That’s how bound I was in the devil’s lies.
Fortunately, The Holy Spirit lives in me, and God’s light/truth was fighting for me. Shortly after moving to Kansas, I was invited to join an international bible study called Bible Study Fellowship. Over the next four years, I immersed myself in God’s word, surrounded myself with sisters in Christ, and in time, God’s light overcame the darkness. God restored truth in my life, and my faith became mine.
Little did I know He was preparing me for battles yet to come. Those battles were to come in a variety of forms and disperse themselves unpredictably over the next fifteen years.
Abruptly, our home became what you might only hear about in a Jerry Springer show. Humiliation, devastation, confusion, betrayal, lies, hurt…there really are not enough adjectives to describe the truth of who and what was breaking me down.
But God had prepared me to face it, and with Christ as my solid rock, as the storms raged on, I stood strong because of Him.
And just look at me now!
Look what You've done, look what You've done in me
You spoke Your truth into the lies I let my heart believe
Look at me now, look how You made me new
Oh, the enemy did everything that he could do
Oh, but look what You've done (Tashsa Layton)
God tells us in His Word, (Ephesians 6: 10-14), that we must, “Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes. 12 For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. 13 Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground…” But what is THE FIRST piece of armor we are told to put on? 14 “…and after you have done everything, to stand. Stand firm then, with the belt of truth buckled around your waist…”
Why is the belt of truth the first and most important piece of armor for us? Because victory always begins with truth! “Deception is the mask of Satan. All he can do is lie. He is the master illusionist.” (Priscilla Shirer, The Armor of God)
So, how do we get back to or find this truth so that we can stand firm with the belt of truth buckled around our waist? John 1:5 tells us, “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.” Jesus is the truth. He is the only way out of our darkness. Through a personal relationship with Him, Jesus assures us that He will be our shepherd. Like sheep know their masters voice, we too will know His, IF we learn to hear and identify it. This knowledge develops through spending time in prayer and in His word. Before we can find freedom/light, we must first acknowledge our captivity.
Something to consider: Am I in bondage, believing Satan’s lies? Maybe I’m not believing lies, but I’m in denial about things that need to be addressed? What is my bondage? What idols am I turning to, to escape my pain that perpetuates this battle I’m in? What is the enemy using to keep me from being who God has called me to be? Is it lack of belief? What about apathy? Sometimes, we aren’t even a threat to the enemy because we are dead in our faith and therefore not even a blip on his radar. ☹
