Lying

I promise that this post isn't going to just be a bunch of untruths that I string together. It mainly is going to be about things that I am seeing during my reading. I had mentioned the whole idea of watching our words brought up by Jacobs in his book, but didn't dive too much into that. But, it did spark a part of me to take notice of those verses while reading Proverbs.

In a recent passage, verse 12, I counted that lying or watching our words is mentioned about 7 times in the 28 verses. So, about 25% of the time in this one chapter, God makes mention of how important our words are. I don't think that I am overstating it when I say that our words matter. If we take just the verses that deal with lying, of the 7 verses, about half, 3 maybe 4 (verse 6), are out right condemning verses. This just speaks to me about what I say and what I should say.

I was telling my email study partner that I often have an urge to tell a lie. And most of the time its for no reason whatsoever. I just get these thoughts that it would be more fun, I guess, to withhold the truth rather than just tell what actually happened. Is it from a desire to make me seem more interesting? Is it just an impulse that my worldly self wants me to act on? Its a real struggle that goes on in my head. I would like to say that all the time I recognize this and choose the right path, but thats not true. See, even in typing out this about lies, I am tempted to lie. Its a never-ending cycle.

This really makes me focus on what I say. The idea that my mind is in constant battle with my words and with the truthfulness of them in question, I have to be diligent to choose carefully. I wish that I did that more. The problem, of course, is that I am lazy. I don't mean that as a condemnation on my lifestyle, I mean that as a fact that I am not as disciplined as I would want. To take the time and watch carefully everything that you say, that takes effort. Most of the time, I think that we don't want to put forth that much energy. I might be alone on this and thats ok, because mainly I am being confessional here.

Thankfully, our salvation does not hinge on being diligent to watch our words or even to keep up our desire to be mindful of things we say. During our bible study on Faith, there was a part that talks about how faith isn't a formula. Well, I think that can be expanded to our whole Christian experience. Its not a formula where we have to act or do a certain thing. Its an experience. Its a changing, growing relationship. We may not do everything perfectly, but because of God's love for us and our love for God, we try. I also think to a O.C. Supertones song that I used to love. The lyric is, "God I failed, but at least you know I tried." That was from their first album, which was released back in 1996. Over the years, that has stuck with me. The reason being, I get the reassurance from God that while I might not always get things right, that I should keep trying because He is so worth the effort.