Help! I’m Addicted to Lying
00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)
00:00:02.580 | Garrett writes in from Louisville, Texas to say,
00:00:08.500 | "I've come to realize painfully that I'm a compulsive liar,
00:00:11.320 | "possibly pathological, mostly just to gain attention.
00:00:14.460 | "However, I hate that I do this,
00:00:15.840 | "especially now that I see that I do it.
00:00:17.740 | "It's such a bad habit, I can't break it on my own.
00:00:20.700 | "I've been saved for a little while now
00:00:22.160 | "and I can see its toll on my walk and on my life.
00:00:25.340 | "What steps can I take to end my addiction to lying?"
00:00:30.420 | - Well, what I'm gonna fasten on, Garrett,
00:00:34.220 | is your statement that you say you do it mostly
00:00:38.060 | to gain attention.
00:00:41.600 | Now, there are a lot of reasons why people lie.
00:00:45.160 | You've pointed out one.
00:00:46.620 | There may be others in you, but I think you're right
00:00:49.620 | that that's a huge, that's a huge reason
00:00:53.160 | why we exaggerate, which are untruths,
00:00:56.700 | and why we just flat out affirm things that aren't so,
00:01:00.100 | because if we deny them, then we're gonna look bad
00:01:03.140 | in other people's eyes.
00:01:04.140 | So you put your finger on a deep cause of untruth
00:01:08.140 | and lying in people's lives.
00:01:10.980 | So let me go at that root.
00:01:13.720 | Why do you want, need, crave the attention, the approval,
00:01:18.380 | the admiration of other people so much?
00:01:25.380 | I think that's the question you should ask,
00:01:26.940 | and you should dig down to the root of that
00:01:29.260 | and expose that, and here, let me help you do that.
00:01:32.860 | You, as a believer, have God's attention,
00:01:36.280 | God's adoption, God's delight,
00:01:41.380 | God's assistance and promise, God's commitment,
00:01:45.540 | and you will one day have his complete acceptance
00:01:50.220 | into a flawless heaven.
00:01:52.660 | You have that in Jesus Christ,
00:01:55.300 | and that is superior in its preciousness
00:01:58.820 | to any approval that man could give you.
00:02:00.860 | Meditate long and hard on the fact that,
00:02:05.660 | compared to the attention and the approval
00:02:08.900 | and the assistance and the commitment
00:02:10.540 | and the praise of all the other people,
00:02:12.940 | God's is infinitely better.
00:02:16.720 | Romans 2:29, "A true Jew is one inwardly,
00:02:22.720 | "and circumcision is a matter of the heart,
00:02:25.300 | "by the spirit, not by the letter.
00:02:27.780 | "His praise is not from man, but from God."
00:02:32.780 | Amazing.
00:02:34.020 | So to be born again is to have your heart changed
00:02:36.760 | so that you love the approval of God.
00:02:39.720 | It is thrilling to you that God, in his mercy,
00:02:43.760 | would find you worthy of his well-done
00:02:47.480 | or worthy of his approval.
00:02:51.160 | Here's one of the ways that Paul tried to pull the plug
00:02:56.160 | on the craving for approval that the Corinthians had
00:03:01.520 | when they were lining up to brag
00:03:05.640 | behind their favorite teachers.
00:03:07.400 | They really were craving being somebody,
00:03:12.100 | looking like they were somebody,
00:03:13.600 | because they were associated with somebody who was somebody.
00:03:16.240 | And here's what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3, 21.
00:03:21.240 | "Let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, Garrett.
00:03:27.240 | "Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world
00:03:33.500 | "or life or death or the present or the future,
00:03:36.480 | "all are yours and you are Christ and Christ is God's."
00:03:39.520 | If you take every one of those and analyze them,
00:03:42.920 | they're just mind-boggling.
00:03:45.240 | Apollos is yours, life is yours, death is yours,
00:03:48.960 | present is yours, future is yours.
00:03:52.040 | What more could you want than you have?
00:03:54.120 | And therefore he says, it's just crazy to boast
00:03:58.760 | about having some special teacher or some approval of man.
00:04:03.760 | I thought of this analogy.
00:04:05.840 | I suppose the president of the United States
00:04:08.080 | calls you on the phone and says,
00:04:10.420 | "I'd just like to have you come as my guest.
00:04:14.140 | "You're very special to me
00:04:15.760 | "and I'd like to have dinner with you."
00:04:17.760 | (laughs)
00:04:18.600 | And you tell him, "What are you talking about?"
00:04:20.760 | And so you go and you meet with the president
00:04:23.160 | of the United States and you have dinner with him
00:04:25.640 | and he talks about your life.
00:04:26.960 | He doesn't let you get in a question otherwise.
00:04:28.720 | He wants to know all about you and he's enjoying you
00:04:31.160 | and all the stories you're telling him.
00:04:32.400 | And you walk out of there and on your way home,
00:04:35.720 | one of your friends says something like,
00:04:39.200 | "Did you ever get invited out by the mayor of your town?"
00:04:44.460 | Now are you gonna lie and say, "Uh, uh, yeah, yeah, I did."
00:04:49.460 | You're not.
00:04:52.620 | You're gonna say, "No, but I got invited
00:04:55.820 | "to have my president."
00:04:56.940 | (laughs)
00:04:58.820 | Now what's going on there?
00:05:00.780 | What's going on is that you've been set free
00:05:04.220 | from the need to get that praise.
00:05:09.220 | Oh, you're known by the mayor, whoa.
00:05:12.740 | And it's not true.
00:05:14.640 | And you've been set free because you've been loved
00:05:16.720 | by the president, you've been known by the president,
00:05:18.520 | you've been taken into his care.
00:05:20.600 | That's how real God should be to you.
00:05:23.840 | Jesus goes after this problem of loving the praise of man
00:05:26.960 | in Matthew six and he goes after it in Matthew five
00:05:30.200 | and maybe that's a good place to end
00:05:33.240 | is just pointing out that, I mean, imagine yourself,
00:05:37.160 | Garrett, about to be slandered.
00:05:41.120 | You're about to be reviled.
00:05:42.780 | Somebody's about to say something ugly
00:05:47.000 | about what you did or didn't do
00:05:50.360 | and you are so afraid of being reviled and slandered
00:05:53.720 | that you correct them and say, "I didn't do that."
00:05:56.380 | Or, "I did do that."
00:05:59.620 | Well, and that's not true because you didn't wanna
00:06:01.640 | be reviled even though it was a good thing that you did.
00:06:04.540 | Here's what Jesus says, "Blessed are you
00:06:07.920 | "when others revile you and persecute you
00:06:10.440 | "and say all kinds of evil against you falsely.
00:06:15.320 | "Rejoice in that day and be glad for great
00:06:18.580 | "is your reward in heaven."
00:06:20.360 | Which means that if the president has welcomed you,
00:06:24.360 | if God has loved you, if God promises to give you
00:06:27.520 | all things with Christ, you have no need to fear
00:06:32.160 | the slander of men anymore.
00:06:35.180 | You should be the freest of all people
00:06:37.720 | with your contentment in God.
00:06:40.920 | - Yes, thank you, Pastor John,
00:06:43.360 | and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:06:45.000 | Please email your questions to us
00:06:46.480 | at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:06:49.160 | At desiringgod.org, you will find thousands
00:06:51.120 | of free books, articles, sermons,
00:06:52.680 | and other resources from John Piper.
00:06:54.760 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:06:55.760 | Thanks for listening.
00:06:56.800 | (upbeat music)
00:06:59.380 | (upbeat music)
00:07:01.960 | [BLANK_AUDIO]