LESSON FIVE

LESSON FIVE

You will never get onto the Highway to Heaven until you stop lying.

Let me just tell you again that human power is useless against lies. If you are sitting there imagining that you can stop lying by your own power and succeed, my friend, am sorry to tell you that that is a lie. If you cannot see that that is a lie, don’t worry, soon enough, you will come to that realization. 

For me to stop lying, I first had to go through an extremely painful process. It was so painful that I cried for at least a whole month non-stop. Have you ever been able to do that? It is not by choice. I just woke up crying, got dressed for work crying, then paused for as long as it took to get out of my room and get into the car and drive out the gate. Then I would cry all the way to wherever I was going. If I was going to the office or to court or to a meeting I would stop crying for long enough to compose myself, then go and do whatever it was I needed to do and then as soon as I got back in the car I would start crying until I got to wherever and continue the cycle.

Then at the end of the day I would cry all the way home and then stop crying, get into the house and cook and sit and eat with the kids and get them into bed and then I would sit in my room crying until my husband came home and then I would get out of the room and go serve his food and then go sit with him as he ate and talked and then I would wait until I was sure that he was happy with what I had done and then I would retire to bed and cry myself to sleep. I did all this on my 9^th month of pregnancy with our 3^rd child.

And my husband felt nothing. He chose to be completely oblivious to my pain.

He told me that he was not happy because I did not do those things even though he knew that I was already doing more than enough. When I started doing them, on top of everything else, he then told me that he never told me to do them. He was just helping me to know that it was my role to do them. And if I chose to do them, I should not assume that he would do anything in return. That was when I picked up point numbers 7 and 8 in lesson two on forgiveness.

I sincerely believed that what I was doing would save our marriage for the sake of our 3 lovely children. And I kid you not, no one but Jesus could have convinced me that I was in actual fact being destroyed by a stronghold that had taken root in my mind as it had done to my mother. I had every argument, defence, explanation, justification, excuse, debate point, discussion point, reason, whatever, to convince me that I was doing the right thing. Extracting that stronghold out of my mind was a job for Jesus.

When He came into my life, He eventually showed me that I was, for all intents and purposes, a battered wife. I may not have had the physical wounds to show it but my husband’s words and actions stabbed me so deep, I could literally feel them cutting into me like a knife, hence the uncontrollable crying.  The pain was invisible, but to me, it was real. I don’t know how to explain it. All I can say is that whoever coined the phrase ‘back-stabbing’ would know what I mean. No matter what I tried to do, I could not get myself to stop crying. I could not see what was happening to me but I felt it and it hurt so bad yet it did not make sense!

Only those who knew what was going on with me knew what I was going through. The rest of the world thought I looked so beautiful pregnant and wondered at how I didn’t put on weight during pregnancy and I just smiled and said it was by the grace of God. And that, my friends, is the truth. It was only by the grace of God that I made it out of that furnace. Gosh it was hot like hell!! I laugh now when I imagine that that was me.

When I went to the labour ward to have my baby, as I lay there alone waiting for each contraction, I refused to cry. I refused to feel the pain. I told Jesus that if He could go through what He went through at the cross, then I could do this. I can confidently say that out of my 3 children, the birth of my third born was the easiest.

So it is not that I am being dramatic saying that lies are that powerful. I know exactly what it took me to stop. And by human standards, I was a good girl people. Everyone who knows me can tell you that by their own standards, I am good. Good in every way; by human standards. God has blessed me with a kind, generous heart and I love people. The me I used to be once wrote a blog titled ‘mind boggling’. That blog gives a good enough picture of who I used to be. If that was me, and I had to endure all that for refusing to stop lying, I hate to imagine what the rest of the world has to endure. I mean, if what I went through was not hell……………what do people go through in hell? I don’t want to know and that is why I am writing this blog. I will obey God even if it kills me because I know that only He has the power to raise the dead.

The reason I had to go through all that pain to stop lying is because I just could not believe that the lies I and my ancestors had told and the ones that had been told to me and my ancestors were the ones that were threatening to destroy my life. Are you finding it hard to believe this awesome truth? Well then you do know what I am telling you.

I used to think that I did not have to stop lying. It sounded too bizarre and ridiculous for the Holy Spirit, I mean the Holy Spirit, to come and tell me that if I just stopped lying I would be fine. Something like the way you could tell a lame man to get up and walk. What do you mean, get up and walk?! Is it really truly that easy and I’ve been limping around like this for years?

The irony here is that what I was thinking was too easy to be the solution was in actual fact more difficult than what I thought was difficult and which I was therefore willing to do. God’s wisdom truly is foolishness to the world.

I do not wish the pain I went through on anyone and so I beseech you please, take precaution; life is not a rehearsal; I got off easy because, like Job, I was already a good person who knew God before He sent satan after me. From this moment on, purpose to stop lying and ask God to help you.

You need God’s help because you do not even know what or where the lies are in your life. I have discovered so many lies around me that I never saw before. They are so many because they are lies which were told from before I was born. On the Highway to Heaven I began to discover who my parents and ancestors really were. All the questions I had about what happened to my mother and my father and whatever else I did not understand about my heritage started to get answered. The lies surrounded me. Everyone who was ever entrusted with my upbringing and welfare had at some point lied to me and some even betrayed me.

There is no human being, not even yourself, who can tell you who you are or show you what to do in this world to be genuinely happy. There is no one like Jesus. None. I have searched and searched and searched and I have found genuine happiness only in what Jesus tells me to do. It is the story of the Potter and the clay. No clay can mould itself and no clay can be moulded by other clay. There is only one Potter people; only one Potter.

I thought my search for God had ended when I met my husband. He presented to me a picture of a God-fearing man. One who knew God and served God. I thought to myself at the time that from him, I would get to really know where this God I had been searching for all my days in Sunday school, church-hopping and youth group and philosophy and atheism could be found. Obviously that was God telling me the role of that guy standing next to me (lying, and saying I do) in my life because the truth is that I did in fact get to find my God through him; just not in the way I imagined at the time.

I was very naïve then and I still am naïve but I take that as a compliment. I do not ever want to fit into this world and be satisfied with what it has to offer. My happiness comes from being a child of the Most High God and from telling the truth in obedience to Him even if it hurts. I know that the truth cannot kill me. No. The truth sets me free. My future is in God’s hands. His plans for me are to prosper me and to give me hope and a future. I am assured of that.

Summary for This Lesson:-

Destroy the lies before they destroy you

Tip for this lesson:-

Stop lying; be still and let the truth take over.