Deceiving Yourself

I have often said that "man is the only living being that has the ability to deceive himself". We all go to such lengths to convince ourselves that we are right. In doing so we hedge ourselves off from the very circumstances and people who hold the key to our progress. If we don't deal with our weaknesses as well as continuing to strengthen our strong points, we will become imbalanced and eventually have some kind of fall. A major part of dealing with areas of weakness is understanding that we very well may be blind to those areas. Since we are masters at self deception that means that we learned early how to avoid or look the other way from our weaknesses and emphasize our stronger characteristics. It's a basic human instinct to "isolate and insulate". We remove ourselves from tough situations and honest people. We surround ourselves with that which is pleasant and people who always agree with us. History screams the reality of this kind of erroneous life building, from Hitler to the very one you are thinking of as you read this.

How then do we avoid the pitfalls that our own weakness can build? First, it takes brutal honesty with yourself. Winkey Pratney once wrote that we at least need to listen to our enemies, because they may be the only ones who tell us the truth. Granted, our enemies may be wrong and out for our harm. However, a good prayer to pray is, Lord, let me hear whatever shred of truth lies within the words of my enemy. If there is truth there, let me hear it. We need never fear truth. Once we mine the truth from the criticism, like the Father does with our sin, cast the criticism far from you while retaining the truth. There is only death in morbid self examination. There is no relief from being overly critical, only condemnation and immobilization. Then, take the truth from the criticism and bring it into the light of Scripture and with the help of the Holy Spirit, and allow them to change you accordingly. This kind of courageous self accountability will lead you to higer ground. After each such encounter, you will find yourself a new person. You will be "arriving" in an ongoing way and building on victory after victory. It is also important to build around you people of a love relationship who "truly love you". They love you enough to pat you on the back and say "well done". Boy, we all need that! They also love you enough to get you alone and say, "you need to take that to Jesus, I think you missed it there". As much as I hate to even write this, my greatest measures of growth have come from the "wounds of a friend".

May the Lord grant us the strong courage to do that which is possibily the greatest act of heroism, face our own weaknesses.

I salute you fellow soldier as we challenge those enemies not only "out there", but also those "in here".