Tinted Lenses
I had these really cool rose tinted glasses that I loved to wear. They seemed to make the world around me warmer as I gazed through them.
There is a saying that “She sees everything through rose-colored glasses.” It is the idea that we see life optimistically. In a positive light.
But there is another type of tinted lens that we look through. The tinted lens of lies. Satan loves to tell us lies. He whispers them in our ears even at a very young age, and as a result we begin to see the world around us through those tinted lenses instead of through God’s lens of Truth.
According to Marcus Warner (Understanding the Wounded Heart), we become wounded in childhood whether through traumas of omission or commission. My blog Seen Vs. Unseen talks about the differences.
When we are young, are brains are not fully developed and capable of processing the tragic things that happen to us nor making rational conclusions about what we perceive happened to us or did not happen to us. As children process the wound(s), they react with feelings to this event or series of events. It is during this time that Satan attacks. He takes the opportunity of a very vulnerable moment and twists the truth.
Satan attacks in two areas according to Marcus Warner, 1) our view of ourselves and 2) our view of God. These two are so intertwined that if one is affected it ultimately affects the other. With one good lie, Satan can affect both our emotional and spiritual health.
The Enemy knows that without emotional or spiritual health, we will be crippled in our effectiveness for the kingdom of God. Charles H. Kraft, Deep Wounds, Deep Healing
There were various events in my life that wounded me as a child. I remember sitting on a huge boulder at my grandparents home while my siblings and cousins were off somewhere hanging out with each other. There was the older group and the younger group, and I felt like I didn’t belong to either one.
As I was sitting there, I remember feeling like I didn’t matter. All those past wounding events were a perfect storm for Satan to come into my life and whisper, “You don’t matter.” Because I was a young believer in Christ, I wasn’t fully standing on God’s truth. So I believed the lie.
As a result, I became very independent and almost too mature for my age. I dove into school, sports and our church youth group to prove that I did matter. I began to perform my way into mattering. But no matter how well I performed, that lie continued to haunt me.
As I got older it became really important to me that my family or friends would ask me questions about what was going on in my life. It became a gauge to see if I mattered to them. And with my husband it became almost like a test. Because we are imperfect humans, I was bound to have this lie reinforced over and over.
“The danger of toxic thinking is it produces an alternate reality, one in which distorted reasoning actually seems to make sense.” Jennie Allen, Get Out of Your Head – Stopping the Spiral of Toxic Thoughts
Do my friends, family and husband love me? Yes.
Do I matter to them? Yes.
But my reality was skewed by the lie. I was looking through my tinted glasses instead of God’s lens of Truth. And as a result, I began to build a self-preservation wall around my heart because I believed that those who were supposed to love me…didn’t. And that included God (see my blog “Our Fathers”).
Those tinted glasses we wear, that were formed by Satan’s whispers into our lives, are like tinted windows. We can see out but others can’t see in. The wall we form becomes so thick, that we stop letting people see the real person inside.
And when we hide who God made us to be, we cripple “our effectiveness for the Kingdom of God.”
Jennie Allen believes that all lies fall into three categories:
I’m helpless.
I’m worthless.
I’m unlovable.
Which one do you resonate with?
And what do you do with it?
Awareness of the lie is the first step. It enables us to finally bring the lie into the light. And when we expose Satan’s lie to others, it further brings light into our dark places and diminishes Satan’s power over us.
2. Then we need to immerse ourselves in God’s Truth, which we find in His Word, and believe it. So many of us read the Word and know it in our heads, but have we allowed it to transform our hearts and identities?
3. Marcus Warner in his book, Understanding the Wounded Heart, recommends asking God for word pictures when it comes to life situations or the lies Satan tries to get people to believe. He used an example of a woman who caught her husband watching porn. She was angry and understandable upset. Marcus said to her, “Why don’t you ask God to show you what lies Satan is telling you about your husband right now?” She envisioned fangs. Which to her meant that her husband was a monster.
“Does that feel true to you?” Marcus asked her.
She said yes and gave reasons why.
Marcus replied, “Would you be willing to renounce the lie that your husband is a monster, and ask God for words or pictures that would show you the truth He wants you to believe?”
She did. And God gave her a picture of a little boy who stood in front of a father who was never happy with him.
As a result, she was given compassion for the little boy and knew he wasn’t really a monster, but someone who needed help.
“be transformed by the renewing of your mind.” Romans 12:2b
It’s time to take off the tinted glasses.
To be seen and known.
To absorb God’s Truth into our hearts.
To believe it.
To live it.
Because God has plans for us.
“For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” Jeremiah 29:11
Photo by John-Mark Smith on Pexels.com
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