God's Boundaries for Abundant Living - Declaring War on Deceit, Part 1

When someone lies to me, it hurts. They betray my trust, and I get angry, and I have it on good authority that you feel the same way, too. So why do we lie to one another? And maybe more importantly, how do we stop?

Stay with me. What happens to our relationships with God and others when we lie? As he picks up in our series, God's Boundaries for Abundant Living, he'll break down seven reasons we lie, then provide some remedies for us to stop. After the teaching, Chip will join us in studio with some powerful application for us to think about.

So if you're ready, Chip's in Exodus, chapter 20, verse 16, for his talk, Declaring War on Deceit. But here's the caveat. There is no police force. There are no security guards. There are no jails. There are no prisons. There's no highway patrol. You can't dial 911 if there's an emergency.

There's no judicial system. You're on the move, and you're traveling, and you've been given some rough instructions, but a huge herd of two to three million people with all your livestock and everything that you have, and you gotta figure out of two or three million people, there's a few people that are gonna do a few bad things, right? As we enter into the ninth command, it is written into that context that they didn't have police.

I mean, all these people, and you ask, well, what kind of system did they have to keep social order? And of all the commands, this one, you need to understand the historical context to understand Exodus 20, 16. The ninth command is God's boundary for truth, justice, and trust. It's the primary application to this command, although it gets broadened to personal integrity, although it's quickly broadened to you telling the truth and me telling the truth, the primary application of this command when it was given was it was Israel's court system. Notice as I read it, Exodus 20, 16 says, you shall not give false testimony against your neighbor, and let me play out for you how it would happen. Someone steals something from you, or we find out that your 15-year-old daughter was raped, or there was a fight, and someone on the way back from this side of the camp to that side of the camp was brutally beat up, two guys out of the tribe of Benjamin, and you're from the tribe of Judah.

What do you do with that stuff? Here's what happened. First, the personal offense would occur. You would do the investigation and research and find out, and you are a community of people, and you would discover as best you could, finding some witnesses, this man or these people or that woman did that event. She stole it, and then you would have eyewitnesses come before a judge, and if you look at, remember Exodus 18?

It used to happen. Moses was trying to pull this off all by himself. Jethro said, hey, you were gonna wear yourself and the people out, and they developed a fairly complex system of judges over 50 and 110 and all the rest, and then the Supreme Court-type stuff came to him. And so this offense would occur, someone would be charged with the crime, and then the entire judicial social system was based on eyewitness testimony. I saw her go into your tent and steal that. I was behind the tree when those two men from the tribe of Benjamin beat this man up. And so they were called to be witnesses. Everything about justice and social order hinged on people obeying the ninth command. You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

Now, you ask yourself, that sounds like a kind of shaky system. If people lie a little bit, you could have some big problems. In Exodus 23, one to seven, you might jot that down, and Deuteronomy 19 verses about 15 to 21, there were some warnings to witnesses. The first warning was is that if it was a capital offense and you were one of the witnesses, you would be one of the first people to be involved in the execution. In other words, if you said, I saw those two kill that man, they would say, okay, you were one of the witnesses, and they'd put the stone in your hand, and you would be the one to actually initiate the execution. If, by chance, they find out that you are lying, whatever offense, later in Deuteronomy 19, about 15 to 21, whatever offense that you lied about, that was your punishment. The level of scrutiny was you better tell the truth, because if you don't tell the truth, you're going to find yourself culpable of murder, and if you don't tell the truth and anyone finds out about it, whatever crime the other person's punished for, they're going to turn around and punish you.

The first and foremost application of the ninth command was to bring about justice, truth, out of, imagine, I don't care how good the people are, two or three million people, you had people lined up from morning to night with cases of judgment against one another. As this command expands, Leviticus 19, 11, Israel's code of conduct, it's not just in lawsuits or eyewitnesses, it says, do not steal, do not lie, do not deceive one another. And so the idea was more than just telling the truth in a formal court, but it was that you were to be truthful all the time with everyone.

The New Testament picks it up and expands it even further, where we're to have integrity in everything. The apostle Paul, speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in Ephesians chapter 4, verse 25, says, therefore, each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one body. And the put off falsehood is not just in your speech, it's your actions and your life. You are going to tell the truth in what you say and how you live. You're not going to even leave false impressions by your silence. I think we would all agree, I had one of those good grandmothers, she was from Scotland, and she had a number of little sayings, and we weren't Christians, but we learned later that she was, and she had one of those little sayings, and you can quote it with me, right, honesty is the best policy, isn't that great?

The other one was, Chip, if you can't say something nice about someone, don't say anything at all, right? You know, honesty is the best policy. The fabric of human relationships are based on that one issue. You realize that if people aren't honest with you, if you're not honest with each other in your marriage, if you're not honest with your kids, if you're not honest with a friendship, if you're not honest in business deals, if you're not honest in the church, if there's not honesty, there's not trust. If there's not trust, there's no relationship. It's just pseudo relationship. The commodity of human relationships, just like economies are built on money, relationships are built on trust, and under trust is what? Once a person lies to you once, lies to you twice, what do you think about the next few things they say?

Hey, man, you know, I don't know if I can, I don't know whether this is for real or not, right? And so we all want, I don't know about you, I want people to tell me the truth. In fact, as I get a little bit older, I even want people to tell me the truth that I don't want to hear. Because what I've learned over the years is the truth I don't even want to hear, if I don't hear it, if people don't tell me, I'll end up facing that truth probably more painfully later.

I've gotten to the point where if I've messed up, tell me, show me, help me, because it'll be more pain later than hearing it from you now. And yet even though we all want everyone to be honest with us, the research indicates that at least in America, we're not doing too well here. 91% of Americans said they lie regularly about trivial issues. 36% said they lie on important issues.

Half of salespeople, and don't take this personally, I'm sure you're one of the honest ones, say they lie to customers. And despite all of us wanting everyone to tell us the truth, the truth is a fairly rare commodity. And I want to just take some time now and I want to walk through why is it that we lie.

I want to unearth, I want to do a little probing. I lie, you lie, we're people, we lie. And then I want to ponder the consequences of what lying does to our relationships. And then finally, I want to give you a game plan. I want to give you a game plan for personal integrity in your speech, your thoughts, and your relationships. And if you've got that trusty pen that I've asked you to bring, why don't you pull it out.

And I actually want you to jot these down because they'll be helpful. Let me give you at least six different reasons why we lie. The first and most common reason we lie is fear.

Fear, F-E-A-R. We lie to cover up the fear of consequences, the fear of getting caught. It's a good short-term solution. I learned it as a kid. Did you do that, Chip? No. Well, why did I say that? Because I was going to get spanked if I said yes. You think I'm dumb? I'm not going to say, yes, I did that. But what do you find out? It always gets you later.

And some of us are still doing the same thing. As the patrolman pulls you over, did you know the speed limit? I didn't know. I was unaware. My foot was locked on the gas pedal.

This is a new car. These cruise controls, they never work the way you're... We just lie. When faced with something, the fear of the consequences, we can have an automatic response, short-term cover-up, is to lie. The second time we lie is when we're hurt.

The goal is payback or vengeance. Someone has wounded us. Someone has said something. Someone has taken something from us.

We're angry and we're bitter and we're resentful. And the lie, according to Scripture, that often comes out of this is what's called slander or gossip. And so we attack or assassinate another person's character. We pass on untested truth or we make up stuff about people. And I don't know anyone that hasn't been guilty now and then. And even in our marriages, when you've been wounded and when you've been hurt, have you ever found yourself lying, you know, shading things about your mate's behavior to make him feel really bad?

Sure. We lie because of fear. We lie for payback or vengeance. The third reason we lie is because of insecurity.

Sometimes we just lie to impress. I remember being at a concert. Most of my kids are musicians. And I was at a concert.

It was an outdoor concert. And my son was playing and doing something. And this kind of real cool guy kind of walked in. Hey, man, how you doing?

I'm doing okay. And he kind of threw some stuff at me. And I was pretty naive about the music world. And he told me who he knew in this great worldwide band.

I'd run the sound for them and this and that. And I said, wow, that's really neat. And he kind of took me in, so he took me to the next level and told me this other set of stories. And then he told me Clint Eastwood had talked to him on the phone earlier that day. And they were going to be getting together for something later.

And I'm thinking, I'm not sure. And they said, see that guy up there playing the drums? And he said, yeah.

And he didn't know that I thought, well, I'm going to test this out. The drummer came to our church. I remember when he came to Christ. I remember when and why he decided to go back to Nashville to go back into music and what he was doing. And he said, yeah, that guy, he and I, man, we are like this, man.

I mean, we're like this. You know why he's going back to Nashville? And since I did know I thought I'd play dumb, I said, no, tell me.

He said, signed a $2 million contract to go back to Nashville to make music, man. And I just thought to myself, this dude is so out to lunch. He doesn't even know me. Why is he doing this? He's doing this for the same reason I have and you have.

He wants to impress me. Have you ever exaggerated about something? I mean, I don't want to be trite, but everything from your golf game to the size of a fish to how many people showed up at a Bible study.

I mean, isn't it silly sometimes? You know, you're leading the Bible study. How many people came? Oh, about 12 or 14. And there were eight. There were eight. I mean, does the person care whether there's 12 or 14 or eight?

No. So what is it in you and what is it in me that tells them? Oh, about 12 or 14.

You know, yeah, 12 or 14. And then if you're married to someone like I'm married, you get off the phone and they say, who was that? And you tell them. Well, what were they asking?

And you tell them. And my wife, loving, gentle Teresa, goes, so why'd you lie? I didn't lie. There was around that many. We counted at the end of the night. We only had eight glasses out. Yeah, we did.

That's right. Something in us wants to project something that's better than who we really are. We lie about how much we know. We lie about who we know. We lie about how successful we are. And we do it in very subtle ways out of our insecurity. We exaggerate and we distort.

The fourth reason we lie is for greed, selfish reasons. You know, people con you. Hey, this car was driven by one elderly lady only to church and back in the last 25 years. That's why it's a 1956 and only has 9,000 miles.

That and my mechanic in the back pulled back the odometer about 90,000 miles and this product, I mean, it's cutting edge. No one has ever seen, I mean, guaranteed, you are going to love this. I'm telling you, your company will, and people just lie. We just lie and we con for personal gain or greed. The fifth reason we lie is what I call misguided help or protection. This is the category of white lies. We want to protect others from the truth. As a pastor, you get a lot of this at times and families mean well.

Usually, these are people that have great motives, but how they go about doing life really is not wise or good or biblical. And so Uncle Bob has cancer and Uncle Bob's going to die. And so Uncle Bob's wife and one of Uncle Bob's kids and the doctor get together and they decide, you know what, we're not going to tell Uncle Bob. Uncle Bob, everything's going to be okay. We really think you're going to be, we want to protect Uncle Bob. It'll be too devastating. It'll be too hard for him to handle.

We treat adults like children instead of realizing God gives grace, people can bear truth. If you were Uncle Bob and you knew you had a few weeks or a few months, would you want to know? I would like the privilege to determine how I would live out my last days and what I want to do. And my mom, bless her heart, she was like the Wonder Woman of protection. And she always, I mean, no matter what happened, she died of a very rare blood disease.

And at one point, because the circulation went bad, she got gangrene and the amputated part of her foot and it got more and more and more severe. And you'd call her on the phone. She lived in Florida. Mom, how you doing?

Oh, I'm doing great, Chip. Everything is one, oh, you know, I'd call one of my sisters, call my dad, call a neighbor. And then, I mean, my mom's story about her was this and reality was about 180 degrees. You know, you can't care for people and you can't love people when they don't tell you the truth.

And, you know, we make white lies. My dad, earlier in his life, was an alcoholic. And our whole family system developed around hiding my dad's dysfunction and the dysfunction of our family. You know, stuff like, oh, no, he couldn't make it, he'd love to be here, be here, he's really tired.

Well, you know what, you are really tired when you're down about 36 to 40 beers on one Saturday. Or how about the one, some of us as adult kids, you know, my mom was one of the, she was the glue. She's gonna keep the family intact, everyone's gonna love each other. And if this kid doesn't know this kid, she's gonna play the triangle game and bring them together and everything's okay. Oh, everything's okay here and I talked to your sister. Why don't you call your sister?

You know, triangulating is not only stupid and unwise, it just doesn't work. And so I would get a phone call and she would say, oh, yeah, it's good to talk to you. Your dad is dying to talk to you.

He's like asleep on the couch. Yeah, hey, Chip, how you doing, everything going okay, you know? Except the problem was she didn't quite get, when we were visiting and we would call one of my sisters and my dad was kind of out of it, she would say, your dad is dying to talk to you. Here, come on, you know? And she was so badly wanting the relationship to work, what's she doing? She's lying. And you know what happened? That robbed me for a season of relationship with my dad. You know, if my dad didn't want to talk to me, then maybe I don't need to say, hey, dad, maybe there's something we need to get resolved.

I don't know what the issue is. But you know what, to have someone tell white lies to protect and create this pseudo atmosphere like everything is okay, that is like a Christian disease. And it happens in churches. How many times have you had, you know, a pastor falls to something immoral and the board, instead of coming clean, doing church discipline, letting him own his stuff, get before the church, humble himself, call what is what is, go through a healthy process, grieve, and pray that he can be restored if he's really repentant. You know what happens in the average church? He gets a call from God to go somewhere else. Often, they don't tell the next church what happened. And here's what I can guarantee, your sin will always find you out.

So then, three months later or three years later, some group in the church finds out what really happened, it always happens. Now guess who they're mad at? They're not mad at the pastor, are they? Who are they mad at?

They're mad at the board. Because you know what, number one, the board, often with the right motives, we wanted to protect the church from this disgrace of Christ and how bad it would look in our community. Sin is sin. The Bible's clear on how you deal with sin.

And when dealt with in a correct and good way, church discipline is healthy, purging, and purifying. But when people find out it wasn't the truth, guess what? Now they don't trust the leaders about the capital campaign. Now they don't trust the leaders about the next pastor they hire. Now you've done unbelievable damage because remember what's the issue?

The only commodity you have in a relationship is trust. So fear, payback or vengeance, insecurity, greed, misguided help. And one is just laziness. Have you ever had someone come up and say, hey, could you help us out with this? And you say, oh, I'd really, really love to but I just can't.

And it's just lazy. You don't want to go through the process of my schedule's full, I'm not passionate about that, you and I aren't very close, there's nothing about that project that motivates me, but what I do is I say, oh, I'd love to but I just can't. No, the answer, the truth is it doesn't align with what God wants me to do in my life and I don't want to do it. It's not that I can't, it's that I won't. It's that I want to let you know in a kind and loving, winsome way that there's boundaries because my gifts and my time and my energy and my resources aren't mine.

They're God's so I need to put them where he wants me to put them. And so we say little lies but little lies grow to big lies. Could you help us with this, this and this instead of I'd love to and I can't? You say, well, here's what I used to do, I'll call you back in 10 minutes. You know why? Because I kept lying. I kept saying stuff I didn't mean or signing up for stuff I didn't want to do. I'll call you back in 10 minutes and then I'd pray about it and then I'd get clear on it and then it got to where I got a reverse habit where people would ask me something and if I knew immediately, I'd say, you know something, that sounds like an awesome ministry that God might really want done. I don't feel called to that but I'm glad you are and I'm honored that you would invite me to join you.

That's not something I think God wants me to give my time to. Do you understand what can happen when we start speaking the truth and how much of this phoniness under the guise of being polite? You don't have to hurt people's feelings. You don't have to be ruthless with the truth but we got to start speaking the truth, speaking the truth in love.

The final reason, I think I said I'd give you six but this is sort of an outgrowth, is that the final reason number seven is habit. Once you start lying about little stuff, you know what, I have found myself, this is such an indictment, I've found myself talking on the phone with someone and they ask me a question and I hear something coming out of my mouth and I think to myself, what's that doing coming out of my mouth? That's not true.

That's not true. Wait a second. What are we going to do? I just think and it's immaterial and it doesn't matter but you know what, unless you declare war on deceit, that's what this message is about. We're going to declare war on deceit. We're going to be truth tellers. We're going to be truth receivers. We're going to be people that are true from the inside out. Unless you declare war, you will have little patterns of lying and you can get to it.

I mean it's not even willful. I had one son who became an expert. At one point in time, he could lie so convincingly, a couple days later, he was convinced of his own lie. And boy, we had a journey breaking that one.

How about you? I'm getting the sense that I'm among the brethren and sisters of the liarhood, right? You know, you do remember that the goal of these commands were not that anyone could ever keep them. The goal of these commands, never could you earn your salvation. The goal of these commands were to demonstrate the character of God in His heart and His holiness.

And they were to be boundaries for us for our benefit. And then we know from New Testament that they were to help us understand that no matter how hard you try, you will always fall short. And each of these boundaries helps you know that you need to cry out to God for mercy. And there will come a day where there will be a redeemer and a savior who will make up the distance between where you fall short. And it's the blood of Christ.

These ten commands are always to remind us that we're desperate in need. I can't be honest in my own power. I can't not steal in my own power. I can't not lust in my own power.

I can't have any other gods but God in my own power. So how are you doing in the area of lying? How are you doing? Well, let's talk now about what are the consequences? Why is it that lying damages relationships? And I'm going to give you three reasons here. First, it destroys our relationship with God. If you feel like for about the next 12, 13 minutes that I am actually trying to convince you like an attorney would try to convince a jury to stop lying right down to the little things, you will be very astute and very accurate, okay? I mean, I'm coming after you.

So if you don't want to stop lying, if you want to keep lying for a number of years, you kind of need to better get your spiritual safety belt down and you better harness then and just no matter what I say, I'm not going to listen to this, I'm not going to listen to this because I'm going to produce, I believe, a very convincing case that will make you want to tell the truth like never before. It destroys. It doesn't just damage. It destroys your relationship with God. Psalm 145, 18 says, The Lord is near to all who call upon Him, to all who call upon Him and circle the last word, truth. The Lord is near when people call and when they cry out. He is not near to you, He is not near to me when I don't call out in truth. Psalm 51, 5, David, after his sin with Bathsheba and after his murder, he says that what God wants in the innermost being is what?

Know what it is? Truthfulness. Psalm 51, 5. Jesus, when He's there with the woman at the well, John 4, 24, He says there's going to come a day, ma'am, that worship isn't about location or geography. There's going to come a day when the Father, the Word is actively pursues, is running after and seeking out and trying to find men and women and students who will be a special kind of worshiper, those who worship Him in spirit and in truth. You can't have a relationship with God unless you're honest. It will destroy your relationship with God. Jesus said, why?

The way, the truth, and the life. God hates lying. He detests it. He bristles at even white lies.

Why? Because He is truth, and truth is a prerequisite to trust, and lying destroys trust. He wants you to be honest because He wants you to experience intimacy with Him, power in your relationship with Him. And you know what this means? Don't translate this into I've got to be perfect. What it means is you have to be honest. You're not going to be perfect.

You're going to mess up. You know what it means is? Instead of spending all your energy trying to hide your mess up or rationalize your mess up or blaming your parents or your boss or your mate or your kids for your mess up, you get honest and you own your part of the mess up. And you come before God and say, I'm sorry, 1 John 1-9. I agree about my mess up and I confess it, and I'm asking you on the basis of the work of Jesus on the cross, will you again cleanse me and forgive me? And you know what God says? Yes. Why?

I love you. You think the biggest mess up in your life, I don't know what it is, you think God was surprised by that? You think that in all eternity the mess up or that big mistake or that big lie, you think God went, oh man, I didn't see that one coming. How many of your sins were future when Jesus died on the cross?

All of them. He wants you to be honest. The second reason, it destroys our relationship with ourself. Not only does the lack of honesty or truthfulness destroy our relationship with God, it destroys our relationship with ourself. Proverbs 10-9, the man of integrity walks securely, but he who takes a crooked path will be found out. One translation says, he who walks in integrity walks securely, but he who perverts his way. It's knowing what's right to do.

You come to a path and you ought to take the left fork instead of the right fork and you take the wrong one. He says when we do that, you will be found out. And it happens around religious stuff. Acts 5, isn't this interesting? The very first sin recorded in the church is what? It's lying. And the lying is to what? Promote hypocrisy.

The lack of authenticity. Ananias and Sapphira cut a deal in the back room. Barnabas, he seems real generous. He's getting a lot of strokes in the worship time. Yay, Barnabas, yay, Barnabas. He sold this big thing and gave it to the feet of the apostles and he's sharing. So Ananias and Sapphira says, we kind of like to get our cake and eat it too. Why don't we sell this piece of property, but we'll tell them we sold it for so much so we get all the accolades of people who hold this much back. And remember Ananias walks before Peter and he says, we've done this great noble thing, lie. And Peter says, wait a second. Ananias, is this what you actually paid for?

Yes, lie. He said, Ananias, before you sold it, who's what? It's yours. After you sold it, who's what?

It's yours. God doesn't make any demands for you to sell this property and give it. But what you've done, you have, remember the phrase? You have lied to the Holy Spirit.

And do you remember the dramatic judgment of God on the very first sin in the church for lying? Bang, he's dead. A few hours later, his wife comes in, admits to the same thing, and the men who picked up his body and took him out and buried him picked up her. It destroyed his relationship, the duplicity. It destroyed his relationship with his God, with others and himself. Dishonesty is the father of self-hatred.

And by the way, it's the root of a lot of depression. Dishonesty is the father of self-hatred. And peace is impossible when integrity is breached. That unsettled feeling, that lack of connection in prayer, that lack of the sense of peace.

Colossians 3, 15, remember what that says? Let the peace of Christ rule or literally act as an arbitrator or an umpire in your heart. See, when I lie and I move off the truth, I lose that sense of peace. When you lose that sense of connection and peace and it is well with your soul type sense, often it's because we've lied.

And you know what? God doesn't want you to live that way. He wants you to live with the it is well with my soul no matter what type experience. This is Living on the Edge with Chip Ingram. And you've been listening to part one of his message Declaring War on Deceit from our series God's Boundaries for Abundant Living.

Chip will be back shortly to share some helpful application for us to think about. If you've ever driven through mountains before, you know the roads can narrow and get close to the edge where you can see hundreds of feet down. In those moments, you're really grateful the guardrails are there to keep you safe. In this series, Chip highlights the helpful boundaries God's put in place for us called the Ten Commandments. As he breaks down each one, he'll help us see their importance and relevance for today.

Don't miss how these boundaries protect us in our journey through life. For more information about this series, visit livingontheedge.org or the Chip Ingram map. Well, before we go any further, Chip's joined me in studio now to share a quick word.

Chip? Thanks, Dave. I want to take a minute as we're learning about the Ten Commandments, God's boundaries for an abundant life. And I would tell you this. Listen very carefully. If your picture of God is one who is down on you, is angry, and you don't measure up, you will hear his commandments through a lens that feels like weight, that feels like I can never measure up.

I'm not good enough. But the God behind these commands is a God who is loving, compassionate, gracious. He's for you. And what I want you to know is right now, you can study the God behind the Ten Commandments. I wrote a book called The Real God, How He Longs for You to See Him, that gives you a high, accurate, clear picture.

I can tell you that studying the very attributes of God has changed my life more than any single thing I've ever done. We also have a resource that, as you read that book, you can share with your kids. I mean, down to four or five years old, up to your teenagers. It's called The Real God Family Devotional. It's super creative. It's about seven short, little—they're movies.

I mean, literally, the kind that, you know, your kids will watch, and then you'll have a discussion around them. And we've provided great questions and resources so that you can begin to talk together as a family about who is God, and what does it look like in my world, in my life, to walk with Him, to worship Him, and to share that love with my family. Dave, why don't you tell them how they can get these resources? Be glad to, Chip. To learn more about Chip's book or the Family Devotional, visit specialoffersatlivingontheedge.org or the Chip Ingram app. Through these tools, Chip explores seven core attributes of God revealed in Scripture. Discover how knowing who God really is gives us purpose, security, and true joy in our lives. So if you want to transform your view of God, check out Chip's book or the Family Devotional today by going to specialoffersatlivingontheedge.org or the Chip Ingram app.

Well, with that, let's get to Chip's application we've been talking about. In today's program, we talked about seven specific reasons why very good people... I'm going to go out on the limb and say very good people like you and me who really don't think of ourselves as liars often don't tell the truth. We talked about fear. We talked about when we're hurt. We talked about insecurity and pride, greed and selfishness, misguided help or protection, downright laziness, and then as we shared at the very end of the program, some of us have just gotten into the habit of lying.

Now, let me ask you, as you listen today, which one of those strikes a chord of identification with you? I think it's very important to ask yourself why do I lie when I lie? Because until you do, you're just going to be covering it up and in denial and the habit will continue. Have you got it? Why do you lie? Why do, as a general rule, when you don't tell the truth and even small things, why do you do it?

Have you got it? Now, the second thing I want to address is what is it going to look like for you today to declare war on deceit? In other words, why should you not just say, oh, wow, yeah, I know I do.

Everyone does. I wish I wasn't this way. And instead say, I refuse to be a liar anymore. I'm going to be a truth teller. I've got to tell the truth.

Let me give you two reasons. Number one, the source of lying. Do you remember what Jesus said? Who is the father of all lies? It's Satan. You know, I don't know about you, but if there's one person I do not want to be like, it is him. He's the source of lies. He's the author of lying.

And the second reason is this, and I'm going to develop this in our next broadcast, is that lying destroys relationships. I mean, it will destroy, you'll learn, your relationship with God, yourself, and others. So get quiet for a minute or two, will you right now? Find a place and get quiet and talk with God and say, Lord, today I draw a line in the sand. I declare war on deceit. I want to be a man. I want to be a woman of truth. And may God richly give you the grace to follow through.

Strong words for us to think about, Chip, thanks. Well, just before we close, I quickly want to thank those of you who regularly give to Living on the Edge. You're making a big difference in helping Christians live like Christians. But if you're benefiting from our ministry in some way and haven't started giving yet, let me encourage you to join the Living on the Edge team. Now, you can do that by setting up a recurring donation at livingontheedge.org or texting donate to 74141.

It's that easy. Text the word donate to 74141 or visit livingontheedge.org. App listeners tap donate, and thanks for doing whatever the Lord leads you to do. Well, join us next time as Chip continues his series, God's Boundaries for Abundant Living. Until then, this is Dave Druey saying thanks for listening to this Edition of Living on the Edge. .