Proverbs 17:7
Eloquent lips are unsuited to a godless fool— how much worse lying lips to a ruler!
Can you tell me the last time you lied about something and was able to actually get away with it?
What did you really have to do to succeed in that?
I'm often led to a space of amazement, when I witness people lie convincingly and are able to live with it for an extended period of time.
Then I get mad.
Because, I've never been able to do the same.
I learned early on in my life that lying was not the move for me. Only because I wasn't good at it. I would try to lie. I tell you them little white lies would fly pitifully like paper planes crashing into a lit fireplace.
There was this one time in third grade, when I'd forgotten to have my mom sign my permission slip that would allow me to go on a field trip. I forget where, exactly.
My heart thumped violently in my chest when my teacher Mrs Allen asked for everybody to turn in their slips before we could line up to go on this trip.
At that moment, I was harassed by the fact that I never took the slip home to be signed.
I lifted up the top of my desk and reached into it to find a blank permission slip.
#Tragic
Guess what I did?
Hurried up and scribbled my name and then carefully attempted to forge my mother's signature. Got up and handed the piece of paper that would either permit or deny me access to go on the field trip with the rest of my class. I was hoping, praying, and wishing that my teacher didn't survey that thing and instead of allowing me to go on the trip, exchanged my forged permission slip for an in-school detention slip.
Imagine my surprise when I got in line with my belongings and wasn't yanked out and told to have several seats.
I smiled inwardly when I took my seat on the magic school bus headed on a fantastic adventure I would have missed had I not been devious in my ways.
When we all gathered to eat lunch during the trip, Mrs. Allen sat at my table right in front of me.
Didn't think too much of it per say.
I was always one of her favorites.
And she was the only person I would allow to affectionately call me "Tan."
Anybody know that "chung chung" sound effect that plays on the show,
Law and Order SVU?
If you haven't, listen.
That's the sound effect I need you all to get in your mind as to symbolize the seriousness of this particular situation in my history.
As I was taking a bite of my flat turkey sandwich and kicking my weetot feet back and forward to shake off my nerves, Mrs. Allen looked over at me through her thin framed glasses, with her pretty dark skin and Anita Baker hair cut.
She said, "Tan, your mom's signature...it looks a lot like your handwriting."
I can recall a many times dying when I was a child.
This was one of those days, I died.
My feet stopped kicking. The bites to my sandwich turned into mouse nibbles. While Wonder bread and generic mayo stuck to the back of my teeth.
I stuttereed, "Me and my mommy...my mom...my mommy writes just like me."
Chile.
One of my classmates who was sitting next to Mrs Allen cut in and said slyly,
"You mean, you write like your mom?"
If looks could kill.
I gave somebody's baldheaded child the most vicious death stare with invisible laser beams, in all of my 8 years of living. I'm mad I can't tell you guys what happened after this. My memory lapsed at that point. All I can tell you is, a progression of a 3rd grade lying Tanzy died so that today's Tanzy can live and walk in the TRUTH.
!BOOM!
I'm not going to lie and say I've never lied. I will be honest and say that all of those lies fell flat or eventually I would have to tell the truth.
This would be the case even the more when I got saved. My initial cross I chose to bear created an alarm system around my conscious that made lying painful.
Holy Spirit would be my Mrs. Allen now and for the rest of my days.
Lying, just takes a lot of work and effort. When you tell one lie, you will have to tell another and another. And then you're going to have to remember every lie to keep the first lie you told.
I don't know about y'all but that's too much for my life.
Somebody say, "Neighbor, tell the truth and shame the devil."
Satan is the father of lies. And I would assume that anybody who purposely lies on a regular basis and move in snake-ish ways to keep lying are spawns of him.
Liars betray the trust of those they lie to.
Liars will undermine the integrity of a relationship.
Liars self sabotage to protect the lie over the relationship.
Habitual liars have to operate in a high degree of pride which is how most of them wind up believing their own lies. I have placed them on my own personal list as the worst to link up with, before thieves.
If they lied to you before they will probably lie to you again.
That's just the nature of the lying beast.
But what's the difference between a person who keeps secrets and a person who lies?
There is no difference. Think about it.
A secret has to be concealed by a lie or it wouldn't be a secret.
People who keep secrets are trying to protect their chaos.
On the flipside people who are private are trying to protect their peace. People who keep secrets have to start off lying through the gate. Private people don't have to do anything but be specific about who knows what.
Does this make sense?
It all boils down to a word I used earlier; integrity.
The definition of integrity is- the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
I find integrity to be a lost art these days. Especially with social media taking over. A lot of people lack integrity or don't even know what it is to even operate in it.
Believe it or not, we're living in a day and age where a person will secretly hold jealousy, hatred, and resentment towards another person who has a greater following and receives more responses from their audience than them. All the while pretending as if this person is their most favorite person in the world.
Where words with friends will morph into family feuds spilling over onto social media.
Where the boy who cries wolf and declares war on unsuspecting parties, then runs sobbing on FB live to gain sympathy from those who will listen after they don't receive the reaction they was looking for.
Where the things shared with one person to another in confidence is then either blasted to the public or shared with others who don't know this person, after he or she has offended Mr. or Misses Jabberwalky jaws.
Integrity aside from love acts as an adhesive in relationships and people oriented situations. Yet to me it seems that so many are not willing to accept how much of a commodity it is.
Integrity is being honest and moral at all times.
Sparing no cost.
If I told you that in order to enter into this next season and reap some of its benefits set aside for the upright, that there is a requirement to walk in integrity at all times,
would you be able to fulfill your end of the bargain?
Are you a man or woman of integrity already? Do you know what it means to be integrous, now?
Can God trust you with His most sensitive belongings and precious aspects of His heart?
Or are you a person who lies for personal gain and to manipulate outcomes or sway opinions?
Are you mature enough to walk in the level of authority you desire to possess?
Did you know that this also requires you to be marked by integrity?
Most people who have character deficiencies will often be found lacking a considerable amount of integrity. These same people will feel entitled to have access to things that their characters can't even carry or maintain.
These same people will request of others what they themselves don't even advertise or display.
Proverbs 12:22
The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy.
King Solomon was one of the main contributors of the book of Proverbs. If you've never taken the time to soak up it's spiritual nutrients from beginning to end, what are you waiting for my friends? That book is jam packed with all kinds of gems and jewels for everyday life.
It's absolutely marvelous!
Anyway, he's the same person who asked God for wisdom when he was a young man right at the time he was appointed king.
Soon after this, he was tested in his wisdom.
In the book of 1 Kings 3:16-28, one of my favorite accounts in the bible,
two women approached King Solomon over a dispute between them.
One of them told him that her and the other woman lived in the same house. She stated that she'd given birth to her baby three days before the other woman gave birth to hers.
Then she said one night while everyone was asleep, the woman rolled over on her own baby and he died. She went on to tell him, that the woman switched infants.
When she woke up to feed her son, she saw the poor dead baby laying next to her but once she held him up to the sun, she clearly realized that this dead child was not hers.
The other woman hollered, "No! The dead baby was your son! My baby is alive!"
An argument erupted and continued until King Solomon asked for someone to bring him a sword. He told the person who brought the sword to cut the baby in half so that each woman could have a part for themselves.
The initial woman who brought up the charge, cried and told him she loved her son so much. She begged him not to kill the baby but to give it to the woman.
The second woman told him to go ahead and kill the baby so that neither of the two would have him.
King Solomon ordered the swordsman not to kill the baby and to give the child to his mother,
the first woman.
In this account, King Solomon of course was wisdom, the first woman was integrity, the second woman was dishonesty, and the baby was truth.
To me this is a perfect illustration of what it looks like when a person is marked by integrity and when a person is a liar liar pants on fire!
Integrity holds things up to the light to find truth and will concede to wisdom in order to protect the truth. A lie will kidnap truth and flex in front of wisdom.
A lie would rather see truth dead than to submit to wisdom.
In this season, God is looking for a people to embody integrity because those are whom He can trust.
Here's our challenge! Don't you just love challenges? Ha!
We must be willing to seek God's wisdom in order to truly walk in the type of integrity that preserves truth. The only way we can do this is if we let truth live while WE die.
We have to die to ourselves. We have to kill the pride that feeds lies and/or the liars in us.
By doing so we can keep truth for ourselves and put the devil, to shame.
Can you tell me the last time you lied about something and was able to actually get away with it?
What did you really have to do to succeed in that?
I'm often led to a space of amazement, when I witness people lie convincingly and are able to live with it for an extended period of time.
Then I get mad.
Because, I've never been able to do the same.
I learned early on in my life that lying was not the move for me. Only because I wasn't good at it. I would try to lie. I tell you them little white lies would fly pitifully like paper planes crashing into a lit fireplace.
There was this one time in third grade, when I'd forgotten to have my mom sign my permission slip that would allow me to go on a field trip. I forget where, exactly.
My heart thumped violently in my chest when my teacher Mrs Allen asked for everybody to turn in their slips before we could line up to go on this trip.
At that moment, I was harassed by the fact that I never took the slip home to be signed.
I lifted up the top of my desk and reached into it to find a blank permission slip.
#Tragic
Guess what I did?
Hurried up and scribbled my name and then carefully attempted to forge my mother's signature. Got up and handed the piece of paper that would either permit or deny me access to go on the field trip with the rest of my class. I was hoping, praying, and wishing that my teacher didn't survey that thing and instead of allowing me to go on the trip, exchanged my forged permission slip for an in-school detention slip.
Imagine my surprise when I got in line with my belongings and wasn't yanked out and told to have several seats.
I smiled inwardly when I took my seat on the magic school bus headed on a fantastic adventure I would have missed had I not been devious in my ways.
When we all gathered to eat lunch during the trip, Mrs. Allen sat at my table right in front of me.
Didn't think too much of it per say.
I was always one of her favorites.
And she was the only person I would allow to affectionately call me "Tan."
Anybody know that "chung chung" sound effect that plays on the show,
Law and Order SVU?
If you haven't, listen.
That's the sound effect I need you all to get in your mind as to symbolize the seriousness of this particular situation in my history.
As I was taking a bite of my flat turkey sandwich and kicking my weetot feet back and forward to shake off my nerves, Mrs. Allen looked over at me through her thin framed glasses, with her pretty dark skin and Anita Baker hair cut.
She said, "Tan, your mom's signature...it looks a lot like your handwriting."
I can recall a many times dying when I was a child.
This was one of those days, I died.
My feet stopped kicking. The bites to my sandwich turned into mouse nibbles. While Wonder bread and generic mayo stuck to the back of my teeth.
I stuttereed, "Me and my mommy...my mom...my mommy writes just like me."
Chile.
One of my classmates who was sitting next to Mrs Allen cut in and said slyly,
"You mean, you write like your mom?"
If looks could kill.
I gave somebody's baldheaded child the most vicious death stare with invisible laser beams, in all of my 8 years of living. I'm mad I can't tell you guys what happened after this. My memory lapsed at that point. All I can tell you is, a progression of a 3rd grade lying Tanzy died so that today's Tanzy can live and walk in the TRUTH.
!BOOM!
I'm not going to lie and say I've never lied. I will be honest and say that all of those lies fell flat or eventually I would have to tell the truth.
This would be the case even the more when I got saved. My initial cross I chose to bear created an alarm system around my conscious that made lying painful.
Holy Spirit would be my Mrs. Allen now and for the rest of my days.
Lying, just takes a lot of work and effort. When you tell one lie, you will have to tell another and another. And then you're going to have to remember every lie to keep the first lie you told.
I don't know about y'all but that's too much for my life.
Somebody say, "Neighbor, tell the truth and shame the devil."
Satan is the father of lies. And I would assume that anybody who purposely lies on a regular basis and move in snake-ish ways to keep lying are spawns of him.
Liars betray the trust of those they lie to.
Liars will undermine the integrity of a relationship.
Liars self sabotage to protect the lie over the relationship.
Habitual liars have to operate in a high degree of pride which is how most of them wind up believing their own lies. I have placed them on my own personal list as the worst to link up with, before thieves.
If they lied to you before they will probably lie to you again.
That's just the nature of the lying beast.
But what's the difference between a person who keeps secrets and a person who lies?
There is no difference. Think about it.
A secret has to be concealed by a lie or it wouldn't be a secret.
People who keep secrets are trying to protect their chaos.
On the flipside people who are private are trying to protect their peace. People who keep secrets have to start off lying through the gate. Private people don't have to do anything but be specific about who knows what.
Does this make sense?
It all boils down to a word I used earlier; integrity.
The definition of integrity is- the quality of being honest and having strong moral principles; moral uprightness.
I find integrity to be a lost art these days. Especially with social media taking over. A lot of people lack integrity or don't even know what it is to even operate in it.
Believe it or not, we're living in a day and age where a person will secretly hold jealousy, hatred, and resentment towards another person who has a greater following and receives more responses from their audience than them. All the while pretending as if this person is their most favorite person in the world.
Where words with friends will morph into family feuds spilling over onto social media.
Where the boy who cries wolf and declares war on unsuspecting parties, then runs sobbing on FB live to gain sympathy from those who will listen after they don't receive the reaction they was looking for.
Where the things shared with one person to another in confidence is then either blasted to the public or shared with others who don't know this person, after he or she has offended Mr. or Misses Jabberwalky jaws.
Integrity aside from love acts as an adhesive in relationships and people oriented situations. Yet to me it seems that so many are not willing to accept how much of a commodity it is.
Integrity is being honest and moral at all times.
Sparing no cost.
If I told you that in order to enter into this next season and reap some of its benefits set aside for the upright, that there is a requirement to walk in integrity at all times,
would you be able to fulfill your end of the bargain?
Are you a man or woman of integrity already? Do you know what it means to be integrous, now?
Can God trust you with His most sensitive belongings and precious aspects of His heart?
Or are you a person who lies for personal gain and to manipulate outcomes or sway opinions?
Are you mature enough to walk in the level of authority you desire to possess?
Did you know that this also requires you to be marked by integrity?
Most people who have character deficiencies will often be found lacking a considerable amount of integrity. These same people will feel entitled to have access to things that their characters can't even carry or maintain.
These same people will request of others what they themselves don't even advertise or display.
Proverbs 12:22
The LORD detests lying lips, but he delights in people who are trustworthy.
King Solomon was one of the main contributors of the book of Proverbs. If you've never taken the time to soak up it's spiritual nutrients from beginning to end, what are you waiting for my friends? That book is jam packed with all kinds of gems and jewels for everyday life.
It's absolutely marvelous!
Anyway, he's the same person who asked God for wisdom when he was a young man right at the time he was appointed king.
Soon after this, he was tested in his wisdom.
In the book of 1 Kings 3:16-28, one of my favorite accounts in the bible,
two women approached King Solomon over a dispute between them.
One of them told him that her and the other woman lived in the same house. She stated that she'd given birth to her baby three days before the other woman gave birth to hers.
Then she said one night while everyone was asleep, the woman rolled over on her own baby and he died. She went on to tell him, that the woman switched infants.
When she woke up to feed her son, she saw the poor dead baby laying next to her but once she held him up to the sun, she clearly realized that this dead child was not hers.
The other woman hollered, "No! The dead baby was your son! My baby is alive!"
An argument erupted and continued until King Solomon asked for someone to bring him a sword. He told the person who brought the sword to cut the baby in half so that each woman could have a part for themselves.
The initial woman who brought up the charge, cried and told him she loved her son so much. She begged him not to kill the baby but to give it to the woman.
The second woman told him to go ahead and kill the baby so that neither of the two would have him.
King Solomon ordered the swordsman not to kill the baby and to give the child to his mother,
the first woman.
In this account, King Solomon of course was wisdom, the first woman was integrity, the second woman was dishonesty, and the baby was truth.
To me this is a perfect illustration of what it looks like when a person is marked by integrity and when a person is a liar liar pants on fire!
Integrity holds things up to the light to find truth and will concede to wisdom in order to protect the truth. A lie will kidnap truth and flex in front of wisdom.
A lie would rather see truth dead than to submit to wisdom.
In this season, God is looking for a people to embody integrity because those are whom He can trust.
Here's our challenge! Don't you just love challenges? Ha!
We must be willing to seek God's wisdom in order to truly walk in the type of integrity that preserves truth. The only way we can do this is if we let truth live while WE die.
We have to die to ourselves. We have to kill the pride that feeds lies and/or the liars in us.
By doing so we can keep truth for ourselves and put the devil, to shame.
I
Amen and amen! This was good to me! I can identify with growing up not being able to lie well. I was convicted with just the THOUGHT of lying. I had my periods where I would lie but it was like you said, feeling so much anxiety about it that I thought my heart was going to explode! I really dislike lying and being lied to. I would rather the truth be told to me EVEN if it may hurt my feelings.
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