Lies We Tell Ourselves

The most terrible lies we tell are those we tell ourselves, for by these, tyrants rule the world. "It's a conspiracy theory." "People would never do that." "That many people can't keep a secret." "If it was real, I would know about it." "There's nothing I can do about it." "Somebody else will deal with it."

-WHOA! That's a really good point, Russ!

-'Perspective, Success'....

-'A moment of conscious triumph makes one feel that after this nothing will really matter; a moment of realized disaster makes one feel that this is the end of everythng. But neither feeling is realistic, for neither event is really what it is felt to be.'

--J.I.Packer

-UNSEEN DANGER~

--James 1:13-25
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"Each one is tempted
when he is drawn
away by his own
desires and enticed."
--James 1:14 -
---
-WHEN I was a young child, our family escaped near tragedy. Most of the main appliances in the house, as well as the furnace, were fueled by natural gas, but a small leak in one of the gas lines put our lives at risk. As the gas poured into our little house, our family was overcome by the lethal fumes and we lost consciousness. Had we not been discovered by a neighbor who happened to stop by for a visit, we all could have been killed by this dangerous, unseen enemy.

As followers of Christ, we can also find ourselves surrounded by unseen dangers. The toxic realities of our own human failty can endanger our lives and relationships. Unlike the natural gas in my childhood home, however, these unseen dangers do not come from outside of us--they reside within us. James wrote, "Each one is tempted when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed." (James 1:14).

Our natural tendency to sin, compounded by blind spots that prevent us from seeing our own weaknesses, can lead to toxic choices that ruin us. It is only by submitting to God as He shows us our hearts in His Word (vv.23-25) that we can live a life that pleases the Master.
----
-The unseen Spirit of God is the greatest protection
against sin's unseen dangers.

--ODB/BC

--Conscience, Deception --

'Once we assuage our conscience by calling something a "necessary evil," it begins to look more and more necessary and less and less evil.'

--Sydney J. Harris
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'Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.'

--Blaise Pascal
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'When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that is still left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less.'

--C. S. Lewis
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'All men are ordinary men; the extraordinary men are those who know it.'

--G.K. Chesterton -
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'What was so bad about [the Pharisees'] hypocrisy?...They were using God and the things of God as a means to some other end. "They do all their deeds to be noticed by men" (Matt. 23:5)...Better to ignore God altogether than to exploit Him as a means to something else you value more highly.'

--John Boykin
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'The search for self-fulfillment is endless, and endlessly frustrating.'

--James Hitchcock
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'The smallest package I ever saw was a man wrapped up wholly in himself.'

--Billy Graham ~~

--HELL
----
--'The one principle of Hell is "I am my own!"

--George MacDonald
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--'The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heav'n of Hell, a Hell of Heav'n.'

--John Milton