God Helps Those Who Help Themselves - and Other Lies I've Come to Believe

One of the verses that came alive in my spiritual journey is found in John 8:32

“and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” ESV 

“For if you embrace the truth, it will release true freedom into your lives.” TPT 

“Then Jesus turned to the Jews who had claimed to believe in him. “If you stick with this, living out what I tell you, you are my disciples for sure. Then you will experience for yourselves the truth, and the truth will free you.” The Message 

And that led me to ask, “If I am not free, then what are the lies that keep me bound?”

The funny thing about believing a lie is that the truth, when you first hear it, sounds like a lie. It’s comfortable to believe lies, especially the ones that run deep and support a bevy of other lies. We often construct systems around us to soften the effects of our internal lies until we live the children’s poem, “There was a crooked man, who built a crooked house…”.

So, enter, the hope of John 14:15-17.  The Holy Spirit. 

“If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.”  ~ESV 

“If you love me, show it by doing what I’ve told you. I will talk to the Father, and he’ll provide you another Friend so that you will always have someone with you. This Friend is the Spirit of Truth. The godless world can’t take him in because it doesn’t have eyes to see him, doesn’t know what to look for. But you know him already because he has been staying with you, and will even be in you!  ~The Message 

“Loving me empowers you to obey my commands.  And I will ask the Father and he will give you another Savior, the Holy Spirit of Truth, who will be to you a friend just like me—and he will never leave you. The world won’t receive him because they can’t see him or know him. But you know him intimately because he remains with you and will live inside you.  ~TPT

So, grandma’s truth, culture’s truth, the church’s (little “c” means: what we call church instead of the real Church), and even the “truths” I bolted together to help me survive, must all come under the Lordship of Christ through the Holy Spirit.

He alone is the Spirit of Truth, and I receive Him as such. However, sometimes His forays into correcting the lies I have believed and baked into my life, sound, themselves, like lies. I guess it just feels easier to keep motoring along with the perspectives that I’ve welcomed, from all over the place, rather than invite truth brought by the Spirit of Truth.

Imagine that! An ability to live a life of freedom by learning what is truly true. All of it provided by our good and perfect Savior, the Father of all truth, and the one who comes alongside us to lead us firmly and gently away from the lies that have warped our perceptions and keep us bound.

In a sense, if I could extract any truth from the lie that, “God helps those who help themselves,” it might be this, helping myself is realizing that helping myself will never take me to the freedom where sweet abandon to His truth in the Holy Spirit will ultimately take me.

So, I will lay down the lies I’ve been told and have been reinforcing in myself whenever and wherever the Holy Spirit speaks by following His voice into all truth. He’ll always take a willing heart to the freedom afforded by the truth. That’s the ticket. I’ll help myself to it.

*Please be advised that this blog represents the views, opinions and beliefs of the writer and does not necessarily reflect those of our church leadership or denominational affiliation.