Lies We Tell Ourselves Webinar

Welcome to our mentor webinar.

The topic today is Lies that we tell Ourselves and it is going to be focused on both personally, but then also as we work with others and as we mentor for others, often we can find individuals trapped in lies. And we need to bring those into the light of Scripture.

I’m joined with my colleague and friend, Matt Kaufman. I’m Arlan Miller, and we’re looking forward to having a conversation about this topic today. Matt, any beginning words or anything you wanna share as we get into this topic.

No, just that I’m excited for this topic. I had a really delightful conversation with Brian Sutter regarding this topic.
And he really shed a lot of light on this topic. For me that’s been very helpful and I really think that there’s some low hanging fruit for mentors to grab a hold of. So looking forward to the conversation.

Okay let’s go ahead and get started here. As we get into this, just a Scripture to begin to wrap our minds around. We see that Christ often brings light to our stories. That’s how we have titled it here and here there’s a brief episode. Matt, I’m interested in your thoughts on here’s the context, Jesus is passing by He’s with these disciples. This is in John 9. It’s a familiar passage, I think for most of us. And he sees a man which was blind from his birth. And this is what the Scripture says. His disciples asked him saying, Master, who did sin, this man or his parents that he was born blind? Jesus answered and said neither has this man sinned nor his parents, but that the works of God should be made manifest in him. And He goes on and He says, as long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world.

At least to me that Scripture speaks, I think, to Christ’s ability to bring light into situations that maybe aren’t as clear. And perhaps our ability, if we take the role of the disciples to quickly jump to conclusions or assumptions as to why something maybe is happening.

Matt, what stands out to you as you think about this Scripture in the context of this discussion today?

Arlan, I think this is an excellent example that is just quintessential Jesus and that He challenges the preconceptions of people. So, the disciples said, we’ve got a blind man. Somebody said, was it him or his folks. And that was leading them to certain conclusions, the way they were processing their world, that presupposition that the disciples had was meaningful. And what Jesus comes in does is rewrites it. He rewrote the situation and brought clarity and He does that over and over whether it’s the woman at the well, whether it’s healing a person, touching people He shouldn’t be touching, talking to people He shouldn’t be talking to. He just over and over again, reaches in and resets our thinking because our thoughts and our beliefs, Arlan, have implications. And I think we’ll see that today. My mind goes to that example that we often use, probably, maybe you’ve heard us talk about how thoughts lead to feelings and feelings lead to actions.
And I think sometimes we can be centered on actions and we often in our own lives and the lives of those, maybe we are mentoring or helping we think about actions that wanna be changed, but really, I think, where the Scripture calls us to is to back that up a couple steps, really to that thought area.

And that’s again, like you said, that’s what Christ is doing here with His disciples. The disciples’ thought pattern was maybe oversimplified. They’re like bad thing must equal a sin that’s in this person’s life or in their parents’ life. And is seeing what Christ is doing here is, like you said, He rewrites that. He changes the question or changes the equation to something deeper to get our thoughts lined up with truth. Which is where we’re going today. Correct? With the discussion. Yep.

So go ahead and advance the next slide Arlan, because I think what you said is the behaviors are really loud in our lives. And here on this slide, you see a visual here where vice is enlarged and I’m sure if you’re in a mentor, mentee relationship, it’s not hard to surface vice. Often that’s what comes to us. I’ve got a problem with this issue in my life. I need help, this issue in my life has taken me for lunch. I need it resolved that vice is large.

Yeah, and I like that. And that becomes what we fixate on. But what I think can be really helpful is to go deeper than that. So, what are the feelings that time times drive that behavior? What are the thoughts? And what this seems to signify, now break this down a little bit. So there are lies, leads that vice and then even deeper. There are rules that lead to that lies. What does that what’s that communicate to us? The lies lie beneath the vice and often we’re reacting to the things that we believe and those vice play to those lies very much. And then beneath those, there are wounds that have given rise to the lies. Now we have a little bit of a perspective here. Notice the wounds are small. That doesn’t mean that the wounds are insignificant. It just means that the wounds might just like wounds on your body, that they come in a whole spectrum of severity.
But every wound has impact. So even though the wound might not even be understood, a person might not necessarily realize that they have a wound but a lie has stemmed from it. And then that lie is often what our mind plays to. But again a person coming to us probably is not aware of even the lies they believe, and may or may not be aware of wounds in their life.

Wounds are significant, but that’s not necessarily what we’re gonna unpack here in this seminar, nor is it something we would necessarily saddle a mentor to do? There are therapists that handle wounds. But I think the good news of this presentation is there is a lot of good work to be done at the lie level. And in fact, the lie level might be more accessible than perhaps the wounds are.

Sure. So what I’m hearing is say is that the lies or the vice, and those are the more visible things, but then you, there’s a point when it’s important, you’re gonna look beneath the surface or consider what’s beneath the surface, and that could be driving some of that behavior.
And that’s really where we have an opportunity as helpers, mentors to encourage others, to be a sounding board for others, or to help keep steering people towards the truth. I go back to that example of Christ, where the whole, to some extent, one of His whole missions on earth was to steer people towards the truth. I think He says that towards the end, He says, I came to bear witness towards the truth. And that’s an opportunity that we have in this specific regard too. Let’s break this down just a little bit more if we can. Next slide walks into this just a little bit again, the same graphic in front of you, wounds, lead to lies, lead to vices or behaviors.

A few different thoughts here, Matt, I’m going to look to you to walk these three. I think our basic Axiom here is that we have been wounded in the past, we will be wounded in the future. Those that we mentor have been wounded say will be wounded. We cannot structure our life and protect us against wounds. Now again, let me give a bit of a context for what I mean by wounds. Yes. Abuse is wounds. Big trauma is wound for sure. We want to avoid those at all costs. But that’s not all that we’re talking about here. A wound could be as seemingly insignificant as a teacher in the third grade, wagging their head at your misspelled word yet again. And just exasperated I don’t know. I don’t know if you’ll get it, it was a bad moment. It was a bad moment in her career. It was and most people maybe shrug it off. You internalized it and you don’t remember that didn’t necessarily send you on a trajectory.

It just was one wound that gets stacked upon another. And we can’t orchestrate our life such that we can’t and never be wounded. The point is we will be because we live in a broken world. And so I think it’s important that we start with that, that axiom, we’re not trying to uncover who did a terrible misdeed to our mentor. That’s not gonna be necessarily helpful. The point is our mentees have been wounded just as we have.

Yeah. Appreciate that about guarding us vs what we are, that part is important. The wounding is important. There’s a time and place where it might be necessary to go deeper. And we’ll talk about that here a little bit later on as to how do we help maybe encourage that or help make that happen. But I like the idea and I shudder a little bit, even as a parent of the idea of these interactions and these things that just happen sometimes in the course of a day that can really have a lasting impact whether it’s on our children or on those that we interact with. And as we come into people’s lives there’s an there’s an aspect of trying to uncover, or just start to see, where is where is there a deeper issue that could be there? It really gives me pause to consider my interactions right. With individuals. But to some extent, I think the point would be there, Matt.

You can’t, you’re not gonna be able to avoid those offenses will. There will be situations that arise because we’re fallen people, interacting, in a fallen world by giving credit to those and the impact that they can have. That’s an important aspect.

Yeah. And we’re not gonna be able to like uncover all the wounds that our mentees have experienced. That’s not the objective here, but our goal is simply to help mentees deal with wounding, right? That’s the life skill and that we do deal with it, and this is beneath the surface.
So that’s really what we’re trying to equip you all and to do is help. So, what does that look like? And I think a great place to come at this is at the lie level. Again, that wound is going to manifest itself in a lie and sometimes lies are easier to identify than wounds.
That second great experience. I don’t remember that. That’s not the point. The point’s not to uncover that, but there are certain lies that have given way and that’s playing out in our life. And so simply identifying and addressing lies is just a maintenance interaction that we have with people speaking truth, affirming truth, identifying falsehood, letting falsehood go, that type of thing. In a little bit, I think we’re going to share just like a list of lies and use that as a little bit more of a practical context of how to do this, but can you just give a general definition of a lie? What is a lie? What kind of thing should we be looking for as we listen to others, as we are interacting with them, helping them?

Yeah. A lie comes in a lot of spectrums from being completely false. God does not love you. God does not love me. Okay. Completely false. And that’s a lie that gets lodged in people and you can believe that when that lie is lodged, this complete falsehood, it’s going to bear out in their behavior. It’s going to change their world. For the worst. And then there are lies that are playing on truth. Like everything I do, I mess up. Okay. It’s an absolutest statement that says everything I do, I mess up. I mess up a lot. I make mistakes. But I don’t, everything is not a mistake. Does that make sense? But there again there is a hook there with that absolutest statement, that’s gonna make a difference in how I behave. Sometimes they might not even square with reality, right? Individuals can believe something that doesn’t square with just regular reality. And sometimes we have an opportunity to help shepherd them towards reality.

Sometimes if I’m hearing you correctly, it’s about this idea that we just, we take things to extremes, and if there’s a little shade of truth in there, but the lie is the devil or Satan kind of coming in there and making it an absolute statement or an extreme statement that really then drives their behavior towards hopelessness or despair or something like that. And then other times, I think it’s just perhaps those untruths, that don’t line up with Scripture. So, part of it, I think, as a definition, a lie is anything that does not line up with the truth of Scripture. And sometimes the opportunity is to shepherd an individual towards understanding the truth of Scripture more. Is that a fair way to discern it there?

Yeah, I think so. And I think we’re gonna find Scripture to be an excellent place, but truth, wherever truth is. So, the truth of Scripture and the truth of my own self, get into a person as well. And that is going to make an effect that’s going to affect it’s gonna make a difference in their life. Again, imagine the difference a person who says right now, actually right now I have an acquaintance who is convinced that he can never change. He’s going through a difficult divorce. He’s made some major mistakes and he is convinced that he cannot change. That’s a paralyzing ideology. And it has got momentum. That’s going to be detrimental. And so he needs to. And so that’s the point of my interaction at this point is that no, change is possible. Change is possible. And so that’s what we wanna do. Yeah. We need to identify the lie and we need to supply truth. Yeah. Cause that truth is that statement says that truth will make a difference in their life. When we point people towards truth and lead them in that direction, that will make a difference. Yeah. I’d like to dig a little bit deeper on the practical level map, but any last thoughts before we go to the next slide, which is really where we’ll spend the rest of our time and just, yeah. Focus practically on how to look at this. Yeah, let’s go there.

Okay. If you look at this next slide, you see again, that same graphic there, and there’s two aspects. We’ll talk through the bottom aspect first and then we’ll go up to the top aspect that helps the bottom, to happen. But the bottom speaks to how, what are the steps to, to helping someone, overcome in this area? Go through that, Matt, you know what’s that look? Okay. Again, we’re not necessarily uncovering the wound. Okay. That’s beyond us. And, if it needs to be unpacked perhaps that’s for a therapist, but surrounding the lies on the, how there, or looking at the left hand side of the screen, we identify the lie. We correct the lie with truth. Number two. And then we support the truth with repetition. Okay. And I think we’ll find identifying lies is actually easier than what than what you first might think. As you talk and engage with a person. If you have it on your mind to say, what lie is this person believing?

It will be very helpful in helping you come up with questions and how you would question a person. But here in a moment, we’ll go to a document that’s got 25-30 lies on there that are really good place to. And I think with that document it will probably launch good discussion to uncover even more even more lies. But yes, the steps identify the lie, correct the lie with truth, and then support the truth with repetition. Maybe I might say a little bit about number three there, Arlan. Yeah. You correct the lie and support the truth over and over again, until it’s their idea. Sometimes you have the light bulb go on and they come back to you. And they said, you know what? I realized that change is possible because of Jesus. And at that moment, you don’t tell ’em you told them, so you say, oh, that’s right. That’s right. That’s it? Because it takes a while for truth to set in when lies have ruled the roost for so long.
So it must be with repetition.

Yeah. I really like that thought Matt and it just speaks to, I think, the depth of change that we’re looking at. I think sometimes when you interact with individuals, you can make people behave appropriately for a period of time. You can, dress them up and clean them up and so on and so forth.
And they’ll do okay for a little bit. But if it doesn’t go to that heart change or that mindset thinking change that deeper change then after the pressure is not applied, you go right back to it.

I think there’s an example I’ve heard before. And it resonates with me. We have a newer puppy in our household, and we can clean that puppy up for a period of time. We can put him in the bath, and we can wash them up and all of that and make them look, really good. But as soon as we let go and turn our heads, he’s off running, and he’s got to be dirty again in two minutes. And I think sometimes we can approach individuals that way. Where we can try to just cover it up for a period of time. But what we really need to be thinking about is that deeper level of interaction and that doesn’t change. If someone’s been caught in a lie for five, 10 years God’s grace is powerful, but it often is going to take a period of time to unlearn or relearn that proper behavior or the truth that goes with that. And so that repetition aspect really resonates with me, and it actually should be a hopeful thing. For those of you out there maybe who are interacting with people. And it seems like it’s going nowhere. There’s a marathon stick with it type mentality that goes with people helping that’s really important.

And I think too Arlan I think the hope here is that sometimes we can get exasperated with the vice that we’re dealing with. You did what again? Yeah, didn’t we talk about that? Haven’t we put safeguards in? But if their behavior is being propped up with some deep-seated lies, then that’s why. So at the top part here, we have a series of helps and there’s a few documents here. I’m going to click through these links. Just at a point, we order these resources as well as this PowerPoint are all going to be on the web article around this webinar. We hope recording it. We’ll put the recording up there, like we do, we’ll post it on our website, the building links at the bottom of it that take you to each one of these documents.

Because I think they’re really helpful. As you interact with people. So, the first one, we have a document called common lies we believe, which we’ll go to here in just a second, which really lays out several lies. Matt said that they, we often see in ourselves and in others. Then you create a statement that corrects the lie. You reinforce it with the truth of God’s Word. And there’s a couple of other documents here. God’s Promises to the Believer and Negative Thinking versus God’s Promises to us. These are some very commonly used documents on our website that really just take the truth of Scripture and point us to it. So, let’s look at some of the lies that we’re talking about, just to give you a little bit of a context of what we might be thinking here should hopefully be popping up here. Let me maybe X out of this. So, here’s an example of that document. If it calls itself up here, it is. So just a whole series of lies, right? 25 30, maybe even more than that, lies. And so, you just take a little bit of time here as you just have that exposed to you on the screen. I’ll read through a few of them, but skim through that and see if you’ve ever heard these statements in yourself or in those you interact with.

So, statements like, everyone hates me. Or I am a burden, or I am a failure. God does not care about me. I cannot please anyone or God never does anything for me. And now just read through some of those other ones and just think through some of these statements that we find ourselves repeating, I think in our heads at least, or we find others repeating in their heads over and over again.

Matt, have you ever used this document in working with others specifically? How has that worked out as you’ve walked through that? I think it’s a really nice document. You can give it to people and say, hey, check any of these and apply. And it was interesting given to a 16-year-old young man. He circled eight or 10 of them. And it’s a astounding when you look at the lies and then you look at the individual, a lot of things make sense okay, I get it now.

So, our participants there’s a lot here, but this is a great way to start to elevate some of the lies and they will probably need to be mined. Okay. I notice you marked this. Let’s talk about that to get, to really flush it out. But this is a great starting place. That’s helpful that, and that gives a kind of a lens. So, you could print this document off. You could hand it to someone say, give me any of these statements that you find yourself repeating to yourself over time. So, let’s take one. Let’s say they mark this one here. I’m not good enough. Down here towards the bottom. And they say, yes, this is something that I find myself, repeating over and over again. That’s the, okay. So, we’ve identified a lie that they at least, you know, that is in their life. What’s the next step then, Matt as we walk through our process, how do we help at that point? I think I would want to know a little bit more about this. Good enough for what? Good enough for who? I think would be important, follow up questions to get a, an understanding of where they’re getting that information. Is this coming because they can’t seem to satisfy a boss or a spouse or a or somebody, or is it because they have been unable to accomplish certain things? But I am not good enough is a very personal shame statement that tells me at the very core, I will never be good enough. So, it’s a very insightful question. It, it even, I like the idea of just asking some of those questions for follow up, just to give some context and cradle it in.

Okay. Where, how often do you find yourself saying that? Or do you find yourself saying that after, what just happens that caused you to jump to that place? Of not feeling good enough or not feeling worthy enough? So, we’ve mined it a little bit deeper. We help at least bring it into the light. That’s a little bit what Jesus says in that initial story. I am here to bear witness to the truth. I’m going to bring things into the light and the light of the word of the world. Then what we do at that point, Matt? I think what we want to do is correct it. We want a new script to run in their mind.

Now, some of these lies are easy to rewrite, God doesn’t care about me, this the third one up there. That’s easy to rewrite. God cares about you dearly, right? So, you could just easily negate it. And you’ve got your script. But one, like what you had mentioned, there was a little bit more nuanced. I’m not good enough, right? I think what we want to play to is the value of that person. I would want to start to run a script of value. I am valuable and able to contribute. I am valuable and able to contribute. You are valuable and will contribute. Again, if that is, is if that’s the nature of not being good enough, maybe the nature of not being good enough is not pleasing, pleasing certain people.

Okay. You are valuable and pleasing, right? Could be something again a script. And now as I interact with that mentee, I know top of mind in what I say and how I interact with them, that I want to reinforce value and that this person is pleasing rather than to reinforce that here’s another example where you just weren’t good enough. So, we help point them towards sometimes there’s an inconsistency in their argument, right? So, we help point to that. If the lie doesn’t score with reality, we can help point towards the inconsistency of their argument. But in general, we’re pointing them towards examples or experiences where that lie just doesn’t quite fit. It falls through. There’s got to be an aspect here though, pretty quickly where we go to God’s Word. And we start to share some of the truth of that. So, a little bit of this is presupposed upon a respect or an appreciation for the truth of God’s Word, a desire in a believer’s heart or something to want to believe it and live according to it. And that’s really where I think some of these other documents come. Actually, can I make a comment there, Arlan, because I think you’re right. Let’s take another example. Maybe it’s a failed business, a sequence of failed business ventures. Where a person says, I am not good enough. I am not good enough. I am a failure and he’s got it all wrapped up in being a manager of people or an entrepreneur. It might be disingenuous for me to say, no, you’re going to be a great entrepreneur and a great manager of people when that’s not his skillset.

Yes, what we try to do is speak truth. And the problem there is that his personal value has been placed on his managing skills. So, I need to uncouple those. We uncouple his value from his management skills, and we see his value upon something different, as you mentioned, the Gospel comes to play here wonderfully among many other things. And that might be something that we think about.

So, to that end, as we look into the Scripture, there’s two other documents on that PowerPoint and they’re on the website they’re readily accessible. One of them is God’s Promises to the Believer and what this document does, and you don’t have to use these documents. You just take the truth of the Scripture is what we’re really trying to do. We just have taken certain verses that aren’t commonly helpful and put them in one spot. But you see a series of promises that any believer can cling to. The first one pushes towards eternal life. It rewrites that script a little bit. Like you’re talking about, Matt, to say that no value doesn’t come from success in this definition. Value is going to come from a more eternal type of perspective. Or that I am a child of God. I have access to God, on and on. You see a list of different Scriptures that can be really powerful to speak to them. One of the ones that I think personally I have found myself in the last little bit to really clinging to is in Colossians where it speaks to this idea that I am complete in him in Christ.
We are complete in Christ. It’s a truth. I can start to wrap my mind around. And if I personally listen to the lies that can go through my head that speak to this idea of completeness comes from, like I said, before, success in this regard or achievements over here or something else, I have to rewrite that script and say, no, completeness is really only found in one place.

That’s not easy work necessarily, Matt. I mean, that takes time, and it doesn’t stick right away often. But that repetition can be helpful. Arlan, I would like to maybe make a comment, let’s take Ephesians 1:4. It’s right there. I think there’s a real benefit in us taking Scripture. Now I could give that Scripture right to my mentee who’s struggling with feeling like he’s nothing or unwanted or discarded. I could say no, Ephesians 1:4. And I could just give it straight as Scripture. That’s wonderful. But if you can personalize the verse and basically say the meaning of the verse directly to them personally to say to you.

Arlan, I’m using Ephesians 1:4 now. Arlan. God has chosen you. God has chosen you to be holy and blameless before Him in love. That is what God’s intention for you is. That’s God’s purpose for you. Notice what I’ve done. First of all, Arlan, it has now come from a person. And sometimes when we hear God’s truth spoken through people’s mouths it elevates and it highlights it in ways when that, just reading it in the Bible doesn’t because it’s very easy to read this in the Bible and say, yep, they’re talking about my neighbor again, Ephesians 1:4 yup that’s my dad for sure.

But then all of a sudden it came through the mouth of a person confirming that truth to you again. So, I guess my encouragement would be to personalize the verse and then speak that truth into them. I mean that a very practical level, that could be a great homework assignment. If you are working with an individual and you sense a lie that’s been going on in their life for a period of time, you can begin. It’s not going to be, again, I like that idea earlier about the light bulb has to turn on in their life, right? It has to become in the heart that. On the surface level, they have to believe it, but give them a Scripture like that and say, write it out in a personalized type of way to yourself every day for the next two weeks and pray it through and meditate on it for 10 minutes every day.

And then let’s talk about it. Let’s talk about what God has revealed to you through that time. There can be real power there through the power of God’s truth and His Spirit working there. One other document, we bring attention to the other one that’s on there. Our Negative Thinking versus God’s Promises to Us again, similar type resource.

It actually brings together a little bit on the left-hand side, you’ve got our thinking our negative thinking, which are sometimes lies that we tell ourselves, I’m not able to do it. Or nobody really loves me. And then on the right-hand side, you have some of the promises you can do all things through Christ, which strengthens me is a promise that speaks to that.
And I am not able to do it well, you might not, but God is able to make all grace abound to you that you can have all sufficiency and all things that can bound to every good work, as a promise that God is close to you. Just resources, I think, available to help with that process of pointing towards the truth. Any comments on this? I’m going to walk us back here to the PowerPoint one more time. But any comments on this document before I do, Matt?

No, I think the document’s great. So, as we walked into this here then. So again, the steps become, identifying the lie, correcting the lie with truths, and then supporting that through repetition. And that’s the relationship aspect of mentoring someone is ongoing relationship of encouraging that truth, and then in the top right, you have a series of help documents that help you identify the lies and then documents will help. In a second here, I want to turn it over. If any of you have questions and you want to chat them in, you can, or if you want to unmute your mic and ask them you sure can.

Questions that came up as people registered that I’d like to bring up here at this point, Matt. One of the questions that came up as people registered and they offered questions was just around this idea of when do you seek professional help or when, oh, when is it, we’ve helped identify the lies, but you sense that there’s a need to go deeper towards that wound type area, an area that none of us are probably qualified to really, fully help all the way, that we need extra help or extra resources for how do we know when we need to go to that level? Matt, any things you’ve learned or any tips that you’ve gained to help the listeners?

If a wound is still open, then it needs to be healed and you’ll know that because the lies persist. And so, I would say if the lie persists to the point where we’re not moving along, then perhaps deeper work needs to be done. And so, I would let that, time somewhat tells whether there’s deeper work that needs to be done. And then to include another layer of help. Certainly, so that’s over a period of time where just a continual no progress over a period of time equals stuckness. That’s at the point where more resources are needed. And I like what you said there at the end. I think that’s very true. Sometimes we can view a situation like that. Number one, as a failure on our part, which it’s not in any way, shape or form or as like a handoff, and then I’m done type situation, which is not the correct way to view it either necessarily it becomes a both and scenario. We are willing to help together with somebody else. So, our role becomes encouraging, continual encouraging in the truth, but then there’s also someone else assisting with the process who’s probing deeper into some of the wounds and some of the issues that might be underneath. Is that a fair way to look at it?

Yeah. So, here’s the second question that came up again, and then I’ll open it up to the audience, anybody who has a question they want to share. We’ve talked a lot about helping others. And part of the entire idea here is that you’re a sounding board and you’re listening well, and you’re starting to see things that don’t really square with reality or don’t square with at least the proof of the Scripture that, a signifier, there’s a lie there somewhere.

What about in yourself? How do I handle this idea of self-deception perhaps of where I don’t even realize the lies that I myself might be thinking about on a personal level again, Matt, any thoughts on them on what to do in those situations or how to counteract them?

Yeah. When we are isolated in our own thoughts we tend to go towards an unhealthy spot. So, it’s a matter of being allowing input from the outside, which God’s Word certainly would be the first go to that, calibrates our thinking and challenges our thoughts and the lies that we personally believe, but also letting others in. And that’s the beautiful part about a mentor mentee relationship. But it doesn’t have to be that structured. It can be just allowing people in checking thoughts against what other people reactions would react to helps us gauge those things. So, I guess my two answers would be certainly input of the Scriptures and input from other Christians.

That is helpful. There’s, that comes my mind. There’s that concept, physician, this idea that we take our own medicine so that we’re willing to lean into it ourselves and hold ourselves accountable to that. And then I think the other aspect is, sometimes how do you identify a falsehood?

By knowing the truth really well, that helps the lie or the falsehood stand out even more starkly. And so, part of the solution, again, not anything I think that profound that we haven’t thought of before, but just it’s still the right answer. Part of the solution is just knowing the truth and immersing ourselves in the truth of the Scripture. That’s going to help us point out or reflect or identify those lies even more quickly as they start to emerge. Any questions from the crowd or from the audience, those of you who have joined us today, any questions you’d like to offer, if you would wanna unmute your mic and ask it, feel free to do so. I haven’t seen anything chatted in through the chat bar. Any questions we’ll leave it open here for just a minute if anyone would like to ask anything.

Arlan, yeah. We ever put the line… Say that again, or repeat that just a little bit more. Would we ever try to identify the lie for them? We wait until they tell us the lie until they speak it. Would we ever confront them and say, could this be what you’re believing or not? Put it out there and say, I think you’re believing this lie. Or do we wait for them to bring it the truth or bring it to light?

I have one thought, Matt, and I’ll turn it over to you. I do think that’s the beauty of a handout like that Common Lies We Believe. It’s a way to maybe safely let them self-identify some things and get some things on the table where they might be wrong. They might fill it out, incorrectly, but at least at least from what we’re seeing, but it, at least it allows us to begin to say, you identified this one and tell me, how you see that and so on and so forth. What about this one beside it? Do you ever find yourself saying that, gently probing into it?

Absolutely. I think that could be an appropriate approach at times. Matt, any thoughts to that? Yeah, I would agree with that. At the end of the day, they need to own it to the point where they agree. And where does that agreement, how does that, how do we arrive at that agreement and come to that agreement? It probably can take different forms. I guess my one comment would be. Patient and allow them to patiently come to that agreement and that understanding and leading them there, I think is a great idea. And by positing questions, do think that you believe this, or what is your thoughts on that? Or I think you can, I think you can lead them very gently, very nicely to uncover those lies. So, I wouldn’t shy away from that.

I think it’s probably fair to say too, that, if we’re a fixer by nature, right? In time we kind of wanna wrap this up in two sessions or less, and you jump into, this is a little bit deeper water, right? And you jump into the deep water right away without building safety. I think, it’s not gonna be as successful.

I think, there is a little bit of a nature with this, that is built upon relationship and time and safety and trust and vulnerability to get into the deeper areas here. Which is all it’s a wonderful opportunity, that we have as helpers to encourage others. Let me say this too to Gail’s question. That if you perceive that they are believing a lie you can still speak truth to that exact point without them understanding it, that it’s a lie. And truth in all of its forms is a beautiful thing. So, if you have a premonition that there’s a certain lie that they believe you can begin rewriting it by just interacting according to the truth of it. They might not necessarily think that they believe that their physical appearance equals their worth. Maybe they’re not going to agree to that, there’s something there then you can speak to them and appreciate their inner qualities verbally and all of those ways that starts to write the truth into the way they should be thinking about their appearance. If that makes sense.

Let me let me bring this to a close then. Just as I said before, we will process this recording. We’ll get it out onto our website, under the website article of this webinar. All the resources we talked about are gonna be on that on that webpage as well. So, you can download those and have those available to you. And that will be emailed out to the list and to the group here in the next few days as we get that done. But thank you for joining us. Those of you who joined us. Thank you for considering this weighty topic. And we really appreciate your willingness to tune in with us, Matt, any last words or any last encouragements before we sign off?

I, you know what I do, if I were to maybe adjust this slide, I might say it this way, reinforce truth with God’s Word and with your word. What I mean by that or your example. What I mean by that is this. If a person is struggling with nobody cares about them. A great way to rewrite that is to care about them. Yeah. You can tell that God cares about them and you can quote all the Scripture about God caring about them. But you caring about them will probably go even further.

And so, if you go down that lie list, you’ll find that, that you actually have a great advantage and a position to rewrite based on your own input into their life, as well as God’s Word for to be the hands of Jesus in real practical ways. And thank you for that. Thank you for that reminder. And thank you for each and everyone. And all that you do to be that encouragement to others and to love as Jesus loves a wonderful opportunity and wonderful ministry that we have to enter into.