The tidy lie, the ugly truth and the liberating reality - Part 1

This is part 3 in an ongoing series entitled “Becoming a People of Prayer” Click here for a listing of previous posts in this series if you want to catch up on what you’ve missed.

The tidy lie, the ugly truth and the liberating reality

Despite the obviousness of the scriptural teaching our human nature and our own insecurities often captain the helm of our soul and we buy into destructive lies that hinder our ability to extend and receive the comfort of God through sharing and prayer in the community of his people. Worse than that, as I listen to some of you become transparent with me (and I’ve really been blessed by the candour some of you have extended me – so thank you) what I see is that there is a lie – under the lie in most cases – that you don’t even really know what the lie is that you’re believing.

What do I mean? Well let’s start with the first lie that I hear from people.

Lie #1

You say...

My needs are too unimportant to bother the church with

This is a lie rooted in low self-esteem. The person who says this has a faulty understanding of who the church is. At some point in your past you’ve bought into the idea that the Christian thing to do is to think of others as more important than yourself, but that in itself is a bastardisation of the biblical teaching. What we are told in the Bible is that we are not to ignore the needs of others for the sake of seeing our own needs met. Philippians 2:3 and 4 says it this way:

Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.

I’ve given it to you in the ESV here because I think that this translation makes the original intent most clearly when it describes that we are to look out not only for our own interests. There is no teaching that says when we care for others that we do so to the exclusion of our own needs, only that in pursuing our own needs we don’t elevate them to a place of importance or priority that diminishes the legitimate needs of others, either in our prayer, our care, or our practical action.

You see when you repeat this lie to yourself you think you’re being modest and unselfish but what you are really saying is:

What you are really saying is...

I don’t believe that any of you genuinely love me

To love is to care. And if you don’t think that the people around you in the church genuinely love you, then obviously they won’t care about whatever it is that you’re facing in life; so why bother wasting everyone’s time by standing up and boring us with the details. Perhaps it’s because you’re not one of the “pillars” of the congregation – perhaps you see yourself on the fringe of our fellowship. Maybe you’re new and don’t have any significant relationships that will give you confidence or perhaps you’ve pulled away from the church in the past and feel as though you’ve squandered credibility and relational currency with people; whatever the reason for your position, you don’t feel as though any of us love you enough to care. This is not reflective of the truth of the matter.

How it really is...

Jesus loves you, and so do we

“A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.”

John 13:34-35

Never confuse relationship with the capacity to love. Romans 5:8 tells us profoundly that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” BEFORE we were in relationship with Christ, while we made ourselves his enemies He LOVED us; cared about us enough to die for us.

I know that as the church today we are not fully like Christ – we are a people in process, on a journey of sanctification until one glorious day when Jesus returns he will make us perfect like him. But even in our broken state, as the people of God we reflect Jesus to each other and to the world. John quotes Jesus saying that you will know those who are my disciples by how they love one another. If you really believe that no one here loves you – what you are effectively saying about this church is that none of the people standing around you are Christians. Is that really what you believe? I really don’t think that it is.  Jesus loves you and so do we. So let’s cast off the lie that your needs are too unimportant to share when we come to pray together.