Good Christian Bad Habits Part 2: Self Deception

Hey, this is Tim Pratt Jr. and I want to welcome you to the Student of Life podcast. Listen, we're going to get into so many transferable truths throughout the content of these episodes that I believe God is going to use to help you apply, because he's going to reveal what's already been there the entire time.

Enjoy.

What's up? So this is season 4, episode 2, and this is part 2 of our Good Christian Bad Habits series, and it's called self- deception. Self-deception, part 2 of the Good Christian Bad Habits season, season 4. And I want to jump straight into this one because I understand that a lot of us think that self-deception doesn't exist. And I'm going to prove to you through the power of God, through scripture, that it is. It is a very much thing, and it's very common because we live in a fallen world. And the reason why this one was on my heart, because I remember a few— well, not a few, actually some years ago when I was in seminary school I was working on my bachelor's in biblical counseling, and one of my instructors, Dr. Virginia, she stated that self-deception— she believes self-deception is the worst deception because you don't know that you're living a lie or that you're deceived, in other words. And I believe that is very true. And the pride we have as humans, that our hearts are basically— the pride that we have as humans, if we don't humble ourselves it truly blinds us, man, to the truth. So we continue to live a lie, we continue to live in deception because we're not humbling ourselves and saying, I need a Savior, I need the Holy Spirit to empower me to live this thing out. And so therefore, we have to truly embrace God. We have to embrace him. We have to cry out like Paul did in Romans 7, and when he talked about that wretched man I am, you know, paraphrasing, who will save me? And he instantly came into the things of God, the Spirit of God. And so in this one right here, I just kind of want to unpack that on why we have to overcome self-deception, you know, some practical things of how we will do it, and then why it's important that we have to be liberated. We cannot walk in self-deception and think we're going to please God or spend eternity with him. And why, why is that? So let's go to our foundational text right here. 1 John 1:5-8. 1 John 1:5-8. And I'll be reading this one from the New King James Version. It says, this is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you, that God is light, and in him there— and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, We have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. I want to focus on the part, if we say we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we are lying and not practicing truth. If we say that we walk with him and our lifestyle walks in darkness, we are lying. We are living self-deception. We are practicing self-deception because we aren't practicing truth. But if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. That is very important to understand because we live in a day and culture today that we think just because we acknowledge God, because we say he's at the center, because he's first, that God is fine with that. Why gave God his? But we have a lifestyle that truly contradicts him, a lifestyle that truly goes against everything that God stands for. If we believe this, we are just becoming great lip service. We are denying the power of God. We have a form of godliness, but we're denying the power. And this, yes, it's preachers, it's everyday life people, people that have been in the local church their whole life, around ministry, just in general. Like, this is so common in culture today that I can do whatever I want to do. But look at the scripture, it's saying if we say we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we are lying and not practicing the truth. We have to have a lifestyle to support it. Now, I'm not saying that we're not going to make mistakes or mess up, so just flat out bad decisions. We have an advocate. You don't have to keep starting all over, but it is what you habitually practice. That's why, through the power of God, I want to start with the mind in the last episode. What you habitually practice, that is what you are, that is what you're doing. But you can still be free from it through the power of God. And so we have to make that distinction that we cannot just serve God with our mouth. We have to serve him with our life. It's— we have to obey him. You know, I put up a status the other day, worship is not who we sing to, it's who we obey. So who are you obeying? Who are you obeying just day in and day out? You can't turn God on and off. You can't just turn him on when you go fellowship at the local church or at Bible study or around people when they're talking godly, then turn them off when you're on your secular job or you're in day-to-day life, things outside of the context of the local church. So we have to truly serve him with our lives. We have to sacrifice. And we're going to get into that part of this Good Christian Bad Habits with the denying the self. I'm not gonna go too deep there right now, but we have to die to self, and it's basically crucifying our selfish desires, putting God first, being led by the Spirit of God. I really want to like stay here, man, because it's in my spirit that like This is what's causing a lot of us to walk in self-deception. We are self-deceived because we are blinded by the fact that we can do whatever we want to do. We choose our wisdom over God's wisdom. We choose what God calls good over what we call good. We choose this world over God. We planted too deep here, as one of our deacons said. A while ago. So what does your lifestyle look like? What does your lifestyle look like? I want you to just really think about that. And if we go to James 1:22, you know, he talked about, do not merely listen to the word and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. So in other words, what he was saying is that we should have the right response to truth because it is meant to change us. Too many of us go to church Time after time, we listen to message after message, podcast after podcast, we read verse after verse, we pray, pray, pray, only to stay the same. And if we never allow the word of God to change us, we are self-deceived. We cannot just sit up here and listen to the word of God, read the word of God. We have to practice it. We have to do what it says. Because one of the examples that— and you know, James talks about this with the mirror— but it's like, if you get up in the morning and you look into the mirror and you walk out the house based off what you've seen every day, how do you think you will look after looking in the mirror but you didn't make no changes? But instead, when you look in the mirror, it leads you to apply what's needed in certain areas. So you might say, I need to brush my hair, I need to, you know, of course brush my teeth, wash my face, uh, put on some, some good clothes. It's some hygiene things I need to do there. But, and you know, men might say, well, I can just wash my face, brush my teeth, whatever, and brush my— okay. And women might say styling. But I guarantee you that most of us, probably if not all, if we have access to one, are looking in the mirror before we leave and we go out into the world to see those things we need to fine-tune and stuff like that, things we need to apply correction to, get in order before we go out here into the world. But when it comes to God, you know, it's like I'm reading his word, I'm listening to it, I'm hearing it, and so on and so on, but I don't want to do what it says.

I forgot it.

I can't demonstrate. I can't live it. It's the same thing. So if you can see that in a more secular example with— if you look in the mirror, you're going to correct some things. That's the same way you got to be with God's word. You have to do what it says. You have to apply to your life because you don't want to just walk away from it and not absolutely do anything. That's self-deception. That's just a person— no matter if you, uh, become the next great theologian or you just whatever, historian, biblical historian, you're just reading it just to read it. Whatever, whatever the motives is, if you are not seeking to apply it, I don't care if you the greatest evangelist known to mankind out here right now, you're walking in self-deception. And so how easy is it to ignore the message and continue to live a sinful life? Let me ask you that again. How easy is it to ignore the message, the gospel, the word of God, and continue to live a sinful life? Well, it's pretty easy when, like I say, you look at culture because we live in a world that truly embraces that. But in your heart, do you really love God? And do your actions support your words? Does your lifestyle support your words? Why am I asking? Matthew 7:22-23, it says, many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in your name, cast out demons in your name, and done many wonders in your name? And then I will declare to them, I never knew you. Depart from me, you, you practice of lawlessness, or iniquities, as some translations say. In other words, what this verse is saying is that people were giving an appearance of following God, but they were self-deceived and they were more in love with their selfish desires than they were with God. They were more in love with their selfish desires than they were with God. Because deception conceals and it leads to condemnation, but Jesus, he reveals and it leads to liberation. We have to humble ourselves and embrace what Jesus has done for us and know that we cannot please God in the flesh or outside of Christ. And through his word and the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus himself chose to do this. God, God chose to do this for us. He became man. God in the flesh, Jesus Christ. He became man. And not only did God love us so much that he came to just give up his life for us, to reconcile us, but he loved us so much to also leave us his word. He not only left us just his word, but he said, I'm going to leave you an advocate because I know it will not be a fair fight if you don't have the Holy Spirit to help propel you and help you have victory over the things that I have basically died for, chose to give up my life, crushed the enemy, and rose with all power, all power over everything. It's not that the devil had ever had power over God, but when we go back to the text, Adam relinquished the authority that was delegated over mankind. And so Jesus restored that. He took it back. It had to be. So like I say, just that distinction, because I never— I don't never want you to think, well, all power— the devil must have had some power. No, he never had authority over God, but Adam relinquished it. He released— relinquished it to the enemy. And so Jesus, when he came, and some referred to as the second Adam, and you know, the scripture in the text, he took that authority back when he chose to demonstrate that with his life. So we don't want to be like those people, man. We don't want to be people that were giving off the appearance of following God but truly never, never walked in the light. Our lifestyle continued to walk in darkness. When we are self-deceived, we are basically living a distorted truth, and a distorted truth is a lie, it's deception. And James warned us of this deception. James warned us. Matter of fact, in my notes it said James warned us that deception comes from our own desires, so we need God to give us a desire for him that can only come through the power of the Holy Spirit. So how do we apply? How do we break this self-deception, self-deception, uh, thing? Or how do we stay on guard not to be self-deceived? Well, one is that we have to study and meditate on God's word. We have to remember it. We have to. Jesus himself, the living word of God, when he was led into the wilderness through the Spirit, he was Spirit-filled. He, like I said, he was God. He was the living word of God. He could have done anything he wanted to banish the enemy and deal with him, but he chose to stand on the written authority of the word of God. So we have to know the scriptures, we have to study, we have to meditate on it, but we can't stay there. We have to apply it because we go back to 1 John, uh, and 1, we can't just remember it, we just can't study it and quote it, we have to live it. We have to apply the word of God to our lives, demonstrate it privately and publicly. But most importantly, your private life. Because personally, I don't want to be just another person out here that's advertising the gospel. I want to be proof that the gospel is real. I want to be proof of it, in other words, proof that it is real, proof that my Lord and Savior is real, proof that the Holy Spirit is real, proof that God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are one in the name of Jesus Christ. I don't want to, like I say, just be another marketing person that's just saying all the right things. I want my life to speak for it. I want my life to demonstrate it. And thirdly, and not last, it's a continuation. We have to continually feed our spirit with the word of God and rely on the Holy Spirit. This is how we break through self-deception, or basically make sure that we're not self-deceived. We have to stay in these three areas by embracing truth, the true word of God, Yes, love, grace, and mercy is all true, but without truth, without truth, we don't stand a chance. And it's difficult sometimes, it's difficult to accept, but if we accept it and we embrace it, the true word of God and the ones that's teaching it or giving it or whatever, we are doing it in love, grace, and truth, motivated by love. I believe in my heart that we can bring change if it's God's will. It's the will of God. And so, and I believe it is his will, and you can get into selection and all that type of stuff, but unless God tell me otherwise when I'm dealing— like, I understand he chose us, I understand all of that, but my heart, my heart is to truly go after every soul that God desires me to go after. And that's where I stand. And so this next one, like I said, we'll probably get a little bit into distractions or the non-self. 4-part series of Good Christian Bad Habits. But the number— the number 2, part 2. Like I said, part 1 was renewing the mind. Part 2, we're dealing with self-deception. And I believe self-deception is another bad habit that keeps us from being productive Christians, productive Christians from God, good Christians. So listen, I hope you're enjoying this so much, man. I really do. I really hope you're enjoying this. I hope it's blessing you. Of course I'm gonna have an outro, but once again, if you are touched or impacted by this in any kind of way, please share with somebody, with just one person that you may know. Because like I say, I'm not— I just, I want to do God's will. I kind of said this on the last one, but God really laid this on my heart. He laid this series on my heart, Good Christian Bad Habits, because I believe a lot of us, man, we just— we come into the faith and we accept, and it's like, why am I still struggling, like, to live a life that's pleasing to God? And so as I unpack this through the power of God, I just pray that it touch you. I pray that it brings forth change and correction and just liberates you to truly live for God. Be blessed, man. I love you all. Hey, what's up?

So I want to thank you for taking the time to listen to the Student of Light podcast today. If this content has impacted you in any kind of way, please take some time to share it on your social media feeds. And also, if you want to connect with me or just learn more about me, go over to www.timothypratt.org. Once again, thanks.