No Room for Liars

I confess it.  I’m not always honest.  That’s a euphemism.  Truth is? I’m a liar.  Not always.  Not in big ways…but frequently I’m less than accurate.  I will bend the truth a bit to make a story a bit funnier or more impressive.  I will hide the truth to keep people from being upset about something.  These I guess are “white lies” but in God’s eyes they are black lies…ranking right along with dishonest scales--robbing the poor.

I was shaken to my core recently.  I read in a list of evil doers those who would not be found in Heaven “All Liars.”  (Revelation 21:8) Not “only liars who deceive people for personal gain.” Not “liars who wrongly implicate innocent people in a crime they did not commit.”  Not “liars who defame their enemies and spread tales about them that are not true.”

For sure.  Those liars will “get theirs”…but ALL LIARS?? The ones who lie to keep people from being hurt?

Yup.

Liars like me.  Guess what? You cannot be a liar and also fear the Lord.  Liars do not fear the Lord.  In Psalm 34 it says “listen you children and I will teach you the fear of the Lord…Keep your tongues from evil and your lips from speaking deceit.”

Proverbs 6:16-19 (NIV)

¹⁶ There are six things the Lord hates,
    seven that are detestable to him:
¹⁷         haughty eyes,
        a lying tongue,
        hands that shed innocent blood,
¹⁸         a heart that devises wicked schemes,
        feet that are quick to rush into evil,
¹⁹         a false witness who pours out lies
        and a person who stirs up conflict in the community.

In the list of 7 things that God hates, liars are mentioned twice!!

This year –it is a part of my New Year’s list of things I need to work on—I’m going to stop being a liar. I want to have a place in God’s Kingdom.  I don’t want to be someone who does what God hates.  This is serious stuff folks.

Already I have seen a difference. I have asked God to help me to purify my lips…to honor truth and to seek never to mislead.  And he has helped me.  When I type something – something that is not true, he whispers to me… “Hey is that accurate? What you just wrote…Is it true?”  And I have had to go back and change my story and make it truth.  He has stopped me…lies in my mouth ready to release into the ears of my listeners…and I have changed my tune…and made it harmonize with his tune.  Once I missed the warning and I stretched truth into a lie and I didn’t catch it in time.  In that case I needed mercy and grace…and Jesus’ blood to cover my sin.

In that group of liars forming outside the gates of the New Jerusalem, wanting to be let in and finding out that their lips and tongues had disqualified them…because lying tongues have no place in the mouths of God’s children…I will not be there in that crowd.  Thank you Lord for warning me in time.  And now my friends…the onus is on you. You have read my words and now know the truth.  Question is: are you going to remain a liar? Or will you come to love Truth the way your Lord does?