(upbeat music) Garrett writes in from Louisville, Texas to say, "I've come to realize painfully that I'm a compulsive liar, "possibly pathological, mostly just to gain attention. "However, I hate that I do this, "especially now that I see that I do it. "It's such a bad habit, I can't break it on my own.

"I've been saved for a little while now "and I can see its toll on my walk and on my life. "What steps can I take to end my addiction to lying?" - Well, what I'm gonna fasten on, Garrett, is your statement that you say you do it mostly to gain attention.

Now, there are a lot of reasons why people lie. You've pointed out one. There may be others in you, but I think you're right that that's a huge, that's a huge reason why we exaggerate, which are untruths, and why we just flat out affirm things that aren't so, because if we deny them, then we're gonna look bad in other people's eyes.

So you put your finger on a deep cause of untruth and lying in people's lives. So let me go at that root. Why do you want, need, crave the attention, the approval, the admiration of other people so much? I think that's the question you should ask, and you should dig down to the root of that and expose that, and here, let me help you do that.

You, as a believer, have God's attention, God's adoption, God's delight, God's assistance and promise, God's commitment, and you will one day have his complete acceptance into a flawless heaven. You have that in Jesus Christ, and that is superior in its preciousness to any approval that man could give you.

Meditate long and hard on the fact that, compared to the attention and the approval and the assistance and the commitment and the praise of all the other people, God's is infinitely better. Romans 2:29, "A true Jew is one inwardly, "and circumcision is a matter of the heart, "by the spirit, not by the letter.

"His praise is not from man, but from God." Amazing. So to be born again is to have your heart changed so that you love the approval of God. It is thrilling to you that God, in his mercy, would find you worthy of his well-done or worthy of his approval.

Here's one of the ways that Paul tried to pull the plug on the craving for approval that the Corinthians had when they were lining up to brag behind their favorite teachers. They really were craving being somebody, looking like they were somebody, because they were associated with somebody who was somebody.

And here's what Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3, 21. "Let no one boast in men, for all things are yours, Garrett. "Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world "or life or death or the present or the future, "all are yours and you are Christ and Christ is God's." If you take every one of those and analyze them, they're just mind-boggling.

Apollos is yours, life is yours, death is yours, present is yours, future is yours. What more could you want than you have? And therefore he says, it's just crazy to boast about having some special teacher or some approval of man. I thought of this analogy. I suppose the president of the United States calls you on the phone and says, "I'd just like to have you come as my guest.

"You're very special to me "and I'd like to have dinner with you." (laughs) And you tell him, "What are you talking about?" And so you go and you meet with the president of the United States and you have dinner with him and he talks about your life. He doesn't let you get in a question otherwise.

He wants to know all about you and he's enjoying you and all the stories you're telling him. And you walk out of there and on your way home, one of your friends says something like, "Did you ever get invited out by the mayor of your town?" Now are you gonna lie and say, "Uh, uh, yeah, yeah, I did." You're not.

You're gonna say, "No, but I got invited "to have my president." (laughs) Now what's going on there? What's going on is that you've been set free from the need to get that praise. Oh, you're known by the mayor, whoa. And it's not true. And you've been set free because you've been loved by the president, you've been known by the president, you've been taken into his care.

That's how real God should be to you. Jesus goes after this problem of loving the praise of man in Matthew six and he goes after it in Matthew five and maybe that's a good place to end is just pointing out that, I mean, imagine yourself, Garrett, about to be slandered.

You're about to be reviled. Somebody's about to say something ugly about what you did or didn't do and you are so afraid of being reviled and slandered that you correct them and say, "I didn't do that." Or, "I did do that." Well, and that's not true because you didn't wanna be reviled even though it was a good thing that you did.

Here's what Jesus says, "Blessed are you "when others revile you and persecute you "and say all kinds of evil against you falsely. "Rejoice in that day and be glad for great "is your reward in heaven." Which means that if the president has welcomed you, if God has loved you, if God promises to give you all things with Christ, you have no need to fear the slander of men anymore.

You should be the freest of all people with your contentment in God. - Yes, thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Please email your questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. At desiringgod.org, you will find thousands of free books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)