Fear Is A Lying Liar From Liarsville

If you don't think you're going to be tested and tried in this life, try teaching a Sunday school lesson in the morning and then living it out that truth the rest of the day. It will make an even more of a believer out of you.

Our youth have been studying through a Faith Baptist Bible College devotional for the past few weeks, and yesterday's lesson was on breaking free of the tyrant of fear. It used 1 Samuel 21 and Psalm 34 to show that even in the scariest, darkest of situations, God and His power are just a prayer away. 

It's our job then to differentiate between truth and lies. The only way to do that is to know the truth so well (God's word) that the lie (anything the devil and the world try to slip in there) sounds weird and foreign and it jumps out as just plain wrong.

I wrote them an activity to show what this could look like in real life. For each verse of Psalm 34, I gave them a lie that objected to that verse and a simple truth to combat it. But they were all on separate pieces of paper, and they had to go through and match them up based on what they knew to be true and false. It took a little trial and error to get them all, but isn't that the way with life, too?

So that's where it should end, right? A good lesson with a great message and a fun game?

Nope.

When we got home from church in the evening, Diesel was acting strange. He was moving a little slow and shaking his head like he was trying to free the cobwebs. He's had some brown gunk in his ears for a few weeks, but I thought I had cleaned it all out. Well, I hadn't, and he now has an ear infection that we'll have to go to the vet for. Doctor Google Vet says some medicine and some cleaning and he should be good as new.

But after losing two dogs in two months, I wasn't ready to have my big, strong Diesel dog sick, too. Having two hospice dogs in the house all this year has been an emotional, heart-breaking experience, and having them gone within just a few weeks of each other doubled the pain. 

The truth is that I know Diesel is going to be ok. He's going to go to the vet, get the care he needs, and come through it with flying colors. But in the moment, fear was a lying liar from Liarsville and convinced me that I was the worst dog mom ever. How could I have known that he had an ear problem and not gotten it taken care of? How could I have let him suffer? Was I just not paying attention? Did I really care?

That's how fear works. That's how the lies of the enemy work. That's the battle plan against believers. Tap into fear and let it dig down until the truth gets buried in a bunch of trash.

I had to confess my fear - repeatedly - to the Lord and to Danny. They both helped me see the lies for what they were. I was believing the lies and beating myself up over something instead of looking at it rationally. He's not going to die from this like the big dogs died. He's not in that much pain, but I don't want to see him suffer. The enemy used my soft heart against me because he knows it's where I tend to be weak.

But as I listened to Diesel snoring contentedly after we went to bed, the morning's Sunday school lesson came back in waves. I had written all these truths from God's word for the teens, and now I was being asked to live them out in a very tangible way. The choice was now mine: was I going to follow and obey what I know to be the truth, or was I going to let the lies sink in and take over what little bit of rational thought I have left in this brain of mine?

I chose obedience. I confessed my fear, turned it over to the Lord, and went to sleep. Prayer didn't make the problem go away - we still have to go to the vet. Obedience didn't do any miracles - I still feel bad that Diesel is sick. But what it did do is replace the lies with truth, which led to peace. It let God do a work in my heart so that this experience will always remind me to take care of what and who I love to the best of my ability.

Fear is a no good, rotten, dirty liar. My prayer for you this week is that you fight the lies you'll face with the truth of God's word. He is bigger than anything you're going to face in the days to come, so I encourage you to cling to Him and reject anything that doesn't sound like His truth. That's how we're going to fight the good fight of faith and be obedient in all we do.

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