This episode is supported in part by the Christian Standard Bible, a translation designed to be faithful to the original text and clear for everyday readers. We're grateful for their partnership in helping bring gospel-centered content to families like yours. To learn more about the CSB, visit csbible.com. What do you think was the greatest lie that I believed growing up? Oh, I know what it was.
Automatically. Probably because we've been married so long, you've dealt with it this way. I'm going to tell you what it was, and even if you disagree, I'm right and you're wrong.
Okay, I'm kidding. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Ann Wilson. And I'm Dave Wilson, and you can find us at FamilyLifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today.
I would say at least. What I heard it especially when we first got married was you did not think you were pretty. Oh, you think that was the number one? I had so many. That's that it?
I just didn't think I was worthy. And we talked about that a little bit yesterday just because of abuse. But no, I totally believed that. Yeah, I mean, those two are connected for sure, but I remember I would get so frustrated because I'd say, you're so pretty, you're so beautiful, and no, I'm not. And I just thought it was a little bit more.
I used to laugh, like, whatever. And then it hit me. It was years. I'm like. Oh my goodness.
She doesn't believe that. She doesn't know. And you really believed a lie. I didn't even like you. I did not believe it was possible.
I didn't even like you saying it. I know. It's like, just be quiet. Don't even say that.
So, why are we bringing this up? Because today we're going to talk again with Dana Gresh. Dana, welcome to Family Life Today. I am so glad to be back, and you are gorgeous. Knock dead.
No kidding. Gorgeous. It's so hilarious to me. How Just Obvious, Satan's lies are to other people. It's always the beautiful women that think they're ugly.
It's always the smart guys who think they're stupid. You know what I'm saying? Have you not noticed that? Yes, for sure. But we can't see our own deception.
And I do believe that Satan has a piece of wanting us to shut down. And he's whispering, just like in the garden, he's whispering lies to even as he whispered to Adam and Eve. Yeah. Did God really say that kind of lie in Genesis?
Well, let me say too, Dana is back with us in the studio. Yesterday, we talked about her book called Lies Girls Believe. It's a workbook, really. It's called Lies Girls Believe and the Truth. That sets them free.
Hey, I want to know this, Dan. Have you ever struggled with the same lie? Terror. I could not look in the mirror through to this day. I can put my mascara on without looking in the mirror because that's how I learned to do it in high school.
Because I hated what I saw. If I saw myself in the mirror, I would be in the fetal position. But Yeah. You're so pretty. I did that.
I did oh, it was terrible. And you know when it changed? Yeah, I wanna know. In college I started reading my Bible every day. And I didn't like it.
It's a much better mirror. It's a much better mirror. Yes, exactly. And I didn't do it because I felt ugly. I did it because I felt drawn to the word.
But one day I walked past the mirror and I was like Oh. I just looked at myself. And I didn't melt down.
Now, I didn't look at myself and be like, hey, hottie, but I was able to look at myself and. As the weeks went on, I thought, it's not that I'm not hating what I see, it's that I actually see good. In what I see, the word changed that lie. Not by me specifically reading something about my beauty, but just by me reading the word. I've gotten into a new habit now of when I discover, oh, look at this lie I'm believing.
I'll ask God, like, God, will you show me the first time I started believing that lie? Yeah, and he'll answer in a lot of different ways through his word. Maybe a memory will pop up. But that one was an easy one. I think our listeners have heard me say it, but I was 15 getting ready to have pictures taken for cheerleading and for the program.
I'm so mad about this moment. You know, I'm super insecure at 15. But anyway, we were all getting ready in the house. And We all went out to have the pictures taken, but I forgot something in the house. And when I had walked in the house earlier the day, my friend's mom saw me.
She said, oh, Ann, you look so cute. I'm like, oh, thanks. But then when I went back in the house and everyone was gone except my friend's mom and her sister, and I could hear them talking. They didn't know I was in the house. And I heard the sister say, why would you tell Anne she's cute when she's so ugly?
And her mom said, I know, but she tries hard. And then I went out to have my picture taken. And ever since then, I thought I'm ugly. And if people tell me I'm not ugly, they're lying. I want to go back there and just, I just want to tear down that house.
Even right now, when I hear that, I'm so mad. Because I've lived with her and she's, she's lived through that lie. But I remember I was walking with my best friend and one time she said, you know, Ann, I think that what we need to do as women is we need to gaze at God's word and glance at ourselves in the mirror. I love it. End up doing is we gaze at ourselves in the mirror and we just glance sometimes at God's Word, if we're even in the word.
And if we're going to do that, then we're not going to hear the truth of who God says we are. Yep. There's a 1 Peter, is it 3, 3, and 4 says that our beauty shouldn't be of braided hair and gold jewels and fine clothes, but that of a gentle and quiet spirit. And a challenge I give seven to 12-year-old girls sometimes is: did you spend more time today in God's Word, grooming your heart, making it gentle and quiet? Or did you spend more time today in front of the mirror making your hair braided or putting on cute clothes?
And that's something that we never really outgrow, is it? No. Um because if we're more obsessed with what we see in the mirror than what we read in the word, the feeling of lack of beauty is this something all girls are struggling with even now in our culture. Hey, I just hate to tell you, you need to talk about girls, but men This one, even here, I think is more prevalent today for men and boys than it was 20 years ago. When I was coaching middle school basketball a few years ago, back in my day, if you went ahead of a little scrimmage, you go, Hey, you guys be shirts, you guys be skins.
I realized like 10 years ago, I'm coaching middle school boys, and I'm like, Hey, you guys go skins. There's no way I'm taking a shirt off. Yeah. And I've parents like, that's abuse. You cannot ask middle school boys taking their shirt off because they see Muscle Fitness Magazine now, and there's much more concern for a boy now about his body than it was 34 years ago.
I'm not saying it's bad or good, but they believe the same lies that I think women do about beauty. Being external.
Well, what we dwell on is what we believe.
Okay.
So there are now magazines and fitness pictures of men, bodybuilders.
So that was true for us growing up. For years. And you know, but think about this. You and I only had to compare to like 10 supermodels. Yes.
And now we're on Instagram and social media. And now we have to compete with everybody. Millions. And it's not real. It's filtered as perfected.
And I think at the end of the day, it's a fist fight. Between our Creator, who Psalm 139 says, I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And then think about this: the psalmist says, I know it full well. That's what the Lord wants for us. He wants us to see our fearfulness and our wonderfulness and know it full well.
And Satan looks at us and says, I don't want them to know they're fearfully and wonderfully made. I want them not to know they're made in the image of God. I want them to have amnesia and forget. And so for women, especially, he strikes at the heart. of our sense of our beauty.
So girls are believing this lie that they're not beautiful? Oh, yeah. Maybe even their believing their worth comes from their outward image. When I was writing lies, young women believe for teenage girls We did focus groups across the country and Beautiful or not beautiful, girls believed. I will have more worth if I'm physically beautiful.
Yeah. And That is a lie because our beauty fades. Was it 1st or 2 Corinthians that says, outwardly I'm wasting away. We all were doing the same thing. We're being renewed.
We're being renewed. Day by day. Like, if we could just grasp onto that, whatever stage of life you're in, that yes, you are becoming less physically. But this physical body is not who you really are. Who you really are is your spirit and your soul.
And as that is becoming stronger and built up, even if this is fading away, you can feel your worth. I mean, how do moms do that? You two are moms when you have daughters. And you just said, I mean, in this culture, they're comparing themselves every second. I'm exaggerating, but it's almost every anytime they open a phone and pull up an Instagram, any image, and yet I'm listening to two women who, when you start to quote a Bible verse about beauty, you both are saying it simultaneously, which means you've memorized it, you've meditated on it, it's very important to you.
And I'm thinking, would guys be able to do that?
So you have daughters and you're trying to raise them in this culture. They're fighting it like crazy. How does a mom help guide a young woman? a girl to stop believing the lies. Obviously Yeah.
Replace it with scripture, but how do you do that like practically? I tell girls. In the book, Jesus wants to be the boss of your thoughts. Mm. And that's biblical, right?
Because we're supposed to take every thought captive to be obedient to the voice of Christ. And when we are letting ourselves feed on that Twitter feed or that TikTok feed or that Instagram feed, and we're mindlessly scrolling and comparing ourselves every single time and Not just 13-year-old girls, but 33-year-old moms are doing this, right? We are letting. that medium be the boss of our thoughts. Being discipled by it.
Yeah, you're being discipled by it, totally. And so um, when Satan lied to Eve, there was one mouthpiece he used for lies, and that was a snake. But today, Satan has many mouthpieces and many means of introducing lies to us. And if we aren't introducing our daughters to the discipline of meditating on the Word of God, When I wrote Lies Girls Believe, I asked moms and daughters, I did focus groups, I did surveys with girls. And 70% of these girls were not reading their Bibles, 8 to 12-year-old girls.
30% of them were. I'm surprised that 30% are reading their Bibles. I'm glad that I thought it was lower. I thought it was lower.
Well, but here's the thing: like, we learn habits when we're young, right? We learn to brush our teeth, to say thank you, to make our bed, to meet deadlines, do our homework, all that stuff, because habits. make us we carry them into adulthood. Is there any more important habit than opening our Bible every day and exposing our mind to truth in a world that's saturated with lies? And you're telling this to moms.
I'm telling this to moms. Yeah. And the moms are like, ah, but there's nothing out there.
Well, when I wrote Lies Girls Believe, there wasn't really a lot out there for 8 to 12 year old girls. Since then, my ministry, True Girl, has developed daily Devos every day. And it's written for 8 to 12-year-old girls. I don't care if they use my Devos. I don't care what they use.
Get your daughter and your son into the Word of God. It's the most important habit that you're going to teach them. It's really a spiritual discipline, but it's a habit. How would you do that? If you haven't done it before, how would a mom go about doing that?
Well, that's why we created like we started writing Bible studies right after I wrote Lies Girls Believe, I started writing Bible studies that are written for that age group, 8 to 12, to study the whole book of Ruth, to study the whole life of Miriam, the whole life of Mary. And Teaching her that, and you know how cool it is when you start studying the Word of God and you're like, ah, I get it. I see something I didn't understand before. You get kind of drawn to it when you start to experience the power of it. I want little girls to feel that.
So we started the Devos, we started the Bible studies, and those tools are available at mytruegirl.com. But, you know, you can look online and there's lots of different tools you can use. I do think you need tools. I mean, it's hard for me as a, well, let's not say my age, but at my age, it's hard for me to just take my Bible sometimes. There are times when the Lord has me just in the Word.
That's it. But generally, I'm using a prayer journal or I'm using a Bible study. I'm using some kind of tool.
So tool your daughter up. Give her the tools she needs. Yep. Even if it's just a little diary, and you're like, instead of writing about yourself, like most girls do, you know, when they write in a diary, just write, Dear God, today I read this Bible verse. Here's what I think it means.
And just start there. It's that simple. My mom did that for me when I was eight years old. And I look back and I think, what a gift. What a gift.
And she just handed me, it was a children's daily bread. And she said, you're supposed to read this every day because you're a Christian. And I was like, I am?
Okay.
And I did. And I still have that pattern habit in my life. It's a lifeline in a world full of lies. For 50 years, God has been using family life to strengthen homes, restore marriages, and help families flourish. And every single story of hope we celebrate today began the same way, with someone choosing to give generously so that another family could be reached.
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So, would you consider becoming a monthly Family Life partner? If so, just go to familylifetoday.com or you can call us at 1-800-FL Today. Let's talk about The lies that moms believe. Because I'm wondering, as moms, we get so busy. We've got kids going on, we've got work, we've got activities for our kids.
And a mom's thinking, I don't even have time to read my Bible. And now a husband chasing around the house. And now you want me to get my kids to read the Bible too? I feel all this weight. Encourage her.
Well, here's what my encouragement would be: you cannot. Disciple your daughter to live in truth if you are not living in truth. When I wrote Lies Girls Believe, I did focus groups in 11 cities. We just gathered 100 moms or so in each city, and we had these little clickers so that they could. Like, respond to me anonymously when I would ask a question, and I could measure what percentage of moms were answering which way.
And I identified the fact that moms were believing lies about being a mom. And one of the biggest lies about being a mom was. I am not worthy to disciple my daughter. In fill in the blank, whatever your teenage sin or trauma was. For me, it would be sexual sin.
I am not worthy of teaching my children to live in sexual integrity because I didn't when I was a teenager. For other moms, it was: I am not worthy to disciple my daughter in having a healthy body image issue because I had an eating disorder. I am not adequate to disciple my daughter in. Substance abuse or porn or whatever, because I struggled with that thing. And that lie, that shame was still strangling her from discipling her daughter in truth.
If you don't operate in truth. And if you don't overcome that shame for you. You're just gonna pass it on to your daughter. A lot of times they think if I don't talk to her about porn. If I don't talk to her about Boy craziness, the thing that I struggled with, then there won't be an opportunity for lies to present themselves.
Well, really, how do you know if you don't talk to your daughter about something? How do you know what she does or doesn't believe? And so I would just challenge you to get into God's word. If you're feeling inadequate, Insecure, insufficient, all the ends, really, as a mom. Then that means that you're believing lies about yourself and you need your heart to be set free.
You can get into the word. Nancy DeMoss Walgamuth, we mentioned this yesterday, has a book called Lies Women Believe. It really teaches you as an adult woman how to process through the lies. I wrote a mom's guide to lies girls believe that I did identify the top three lies moms believe. What are they?
Well, one of them was, or I can or can't control what my daughter believes about blank. And that's that, you ever had those yo-yo days as a mom where at the beginning of the day, you deserved mom of the year award, but at the end of the day, you were the worst mom ever? Yes. Most days were like that when our kids were little. Yeah.
So you get this like paralysis that I can control it. Or I can't control it. I guess the paralysis is when you can't control it. You get this pride of I am in control of my daughter's belief system. And then in the same day, you might also get the paralysis of Ah, I got nothing to contribute here.
So, that yo-yo feeling that we have as a mom was one of the lies. I'm not capable of discipling her in fill-in-the-blank because I have sin in that area of my life. Or here's one of the scary ones. I think this is the scariest. My daughter is not struggling like other girls.
When I asked moms, are you concerned about lies, girls believing lies today? 80% of them said, oh, yes. And then I said, is your daughter falling prey to the lies of the culture? 80% of them said no. Oh.
And I was like, well that That Not possible.
So then I started asking them questions about like submission. Does your daughter obey you? And your husband. And stories would come out about them being disobedient at school. Treating dad like a brother instead of a father figure.
And a lot of those moms were saying, I think she's repeating the. Behavior they're seeing in me in the way they treat their dad, and they were falling under some conviction. But. There was just this overall sense that their daughter wasn't Sinning. Their daughter wasn't believing the lies.
And yet, when we started talking about a specific area like submission, 53% of them now said, Oh, yeah, my daughter is really struggling with lies, and I need to do something about it.
So, we need to be objective as moms. I think that is interesting too, because as a mom of boys, I can remember being with groups of women when my boys got older, and we were talking about pornography. And so, I'm with moms that have boys between the ages of 14 and 19. And I remember asking, Have you guys like, what's the discussion like about pornography in your home? And the majority of the moms said, oh, my son doesn't struggle.
He never has struggled. And I remember telling Dave that, and he's like, eh. And I remember saying, can I say what I think about it? Yeah. Exactly.
And so I said, you know, I'm just going to say statistically speaking, almost every boy that age has in this time of life in the culture that we're living in. But I was amazed, like, what? Like, you don't think that the world is... Is it denial? Is it almost, I don't want to know, because then I don't have to deal with it.
I think there is an element of denial. Here's the thing.
So Adam and Eve are in this perfect garden, right? Where there's never been sin. And God doesn't say to them, let me tell you how ugly and gory death is, but he does say, don't eat of that tree, or you will surely die.
So he's not afraid to talk about the danger, right? Just not with detail. And what we fear as parents is: if I'm going to talk to my kids about porn, they're going to have pictures in their head of what porn is. No, they're not, because you can say something like, Hey, the internet has good pictures and bad pictures. And I want to know if you ever see a picture that you feel like is a bad picture.
Well, how will I know it's a bad picture?
Well, you might think, Am I supposed to be seeing this? Or you might think, I don't think. that I would wanna w wash this. Or see this if mom was here or if dad was here. And this is a discussion for boys and girls.
Oh, yeah. There's easy ways to talk to them about warning them about that without robbing them of their innocence. That's what God models for us in the Garden of Eden, right? And so we have to be objective enough to know this child lives in this world which is full of lies. And the Bible says All of us are sinners.
This child's gonna fall. This child's gonna fail. I have to do everything I can to plant truth in them so that that's as infrequent as possible and there's as little brokenness as there can be. But I also have to be objective and realize that just like Adam and Eve fell when they had a perfect father in a perfect garden, my child is going to fail. When we lose the objectivity, we're not there.
We don't read the telltale signs when there are sticky emotions that are leading them towards acting out on a lie. And we're not ready to run in with the grace and the warm fur garments to comfort them the way that God did in the Garden of Eden. As I'm listening, I'm just thinking. You probably feel this too, Dan. Like, I want to call all moms to step into this.
We're living in a day and age, and we always have, but I just feel like at alarming rates, our girls are falling to anxiety and depression. And we as moms, I think the place we start is on our knees. Start praying for your daughters and let them know your story of this is something I believe growing up. How are you doing with this lie? And be in God's word.
I love your admonition of like, be in the word. You know, there's a lot of great tools out that can help us get in the word, but also help get our kids in the word too.
Well, that was an incredible couple days with Dana Gresh.
Well, you know, we're talking about lies girls believe. And I'm telling you, they're the lies women believe too. And that's what the book is called: Lies Girls Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free. And go to FamilyLifeToday.com right now and get your copy. You can just click on the link in the show notes and get a copy or get a few copies.
Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry, 50 years of helping you pursue the relationships that matter most. Yeah.
