The Power of Lies

Dannah Gresh: Picture a room of 7,000 women from all over the world. They’re different ages. With different backgrounds. They even live in different countries. But they have something in common. Each of them is fighting the same battle.

Alejandra Slemin: Oh, we are facing so many lies.

Erin Davis: Lies can enter our hearts through any number of ways.

Mary Kassian: Some of the lies that I have struggled with . . .

Erin Davis: . . . about myself, my identity, my own worth . . .

Mary Kassian: . . . are lies like: I need to be perfect.

Julie McGregor: . . . . that I must succeed.

LeAnn Yoder: . . . that I’m not pretty enough.

Mary Kassian: . . . that I need to do it all.

Julie McGregor: . . . that I can’t fail.

Mary Kassian: . . . that God needs me.

LeAnn Yoder: I believed all kinds of lies.

Dannah: Today we’ll talk about the lies that keep us from living in freedom.

Welcome to Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh.

I’ve believed lies. Haven’t you? Satan is so sneaky in how he brings deception into our lives.

No matter how strong we think we are, lies can often zap our strength to experience God’s truth which sets us free. Lies like . . . 

• “I’m worthless.” 
• “My sins are beyond forgiveness.”
• “God doesn’t really love me.” 

Sound familiar?

At True Woman ’18, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and some of her friends admitted the lies that have infiltrated their thinking. 

Nancy (at True Woman ’18): They are more powerful, more evil, and more destructive than we can even imagine . . . and we are all deeply affected by lies.

Mary Kassian: Satan is always telling us lies about the nature and character of God.

Carol Higgins: I believed that God wasn’t good. I believed that God existed, but I always believed that He was some guy in the sky who didn’t really care about anybody.

Mary Kassian: . . . not believing that God is big enough, not believing that He is really interested in me, not believing that He is going to get me through to the other side.

Nancy (at True Woman ’18): Our postmodern world says there is no such thing as absolute truth. “Truth” is subjective; it’s relative; it changes from one generation to the next. We have your truth, and we have my truth. You can determine your own truth. In fact, you’ll be better off if you do.

Sherrie Seidensticker: I know there was a time where I really struggled with God as my authority.

Jackie Hill Perry: My life was my own. I had the freedom to do whatever I wanted.

Kayla Berg: The lie that I shouldn’t live with unfulfilled longings.

Michelle Hall: . . . how I thought my marriage should be wasn’t what it was, so I was going to go find it somewhere else.

Jackie Hill Perry: I think I thought that this relationship . . . yeah, it’s sexually immoral; yeah, it’s wrong, but it feels good to me, so it must be good.

Nancy (at True Woman ’18): You see, it’s easier than we think for deception to get a toe-hold in our hearts, in our minds, in our lives, and in the lives of those we love.

Kari Windon: I think the lies I was believing about children was that they were a weight to me.

Kayla Berg: You know, the world looks at motherhood and being a wife and seeing that you are sacrificing your time and your life for your children, for your husband, and they see that as something that is a waste of time.

Nicole Furno: One of the lies that I’ve believed is that I’m not productive as a mom.

Kayla Berg: Out in the world it’s like, follow your heart, follow your dreams.

Kari Windon: That was definitely a lie.

Dannah: One lie after another . . . Each one has the power to derail our lives and take us down a path we never intended to go. 

Nancy Lincoln knows what that’s like. Growing up, she knew about God, but she didn’t really know Him. She started to get involved with the wrong people. She became part of the party crowd at work. She craved attention and wanted to feel like she belonged. She longed to be loved, so she told herself this lie: “This is just what everyone is doing.” 

One day, she found out she was pregnant, and nothing could have prepared her for her boyfriend’s reaction. The story you’re about to hear happened before Roe v. Wade was overturned, but it’s relevant today as we dialogue about the impact of abortion and the lies we as a culture believe about the value of life. Here’s Nancy Lincoln talking with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth.

Nancy Lincoln: So I told him, and the moment of truth came when he said, “Well, that’s not good.”

I said, “What do you mean?”

He said, “Well, I don’t want it. You’re going to have to make a choice, and it’s either going to be me, or that.”

He couldn’t even say “baby.” I was devastated. So off to a Planned Parenthood clinic I went to get some information. The woman there told me that what was going on was nothing more than a blob of tissue.

The test was positive, it was a blob of tissue, and it was nothing that couldn’t be done quickly and easily. The solution would be to have an abortion.

Of course, that’s exactly what I wanted to hear. My boyfriend just told me he didn’t want the baby, and she’s telling me it’s a blob of tissue. I’m thinking, “Well, it’s my body, my choice. I’m not going to lose my boyfriend over this pregnancy.” So I left there, Nancy, empowered to kill my child.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Now, at that point were you really thinking of that as a child or a baby?

Nancy Lincoln: I don’t think I’d thought about it much. I think I just thought, "I don’t want to lose my boyfriend. I don’t want my parents to find out. It’s my body. It’s my choice, and I want to go back to the party.

"I want to go back to the way it is. I don’t want this in my life right now. I like the way my life’s going. I’ve got this great guy; I’ve got this great life; I’ve got all these wonderful things going on in my life, and this is getting in the way. This is an inconvenient time for me. This is a burden."

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: So you never really thought ahead to that being a baby.

Nancy Lincoln: She said, “It’s not a baby.” And she’s the medical person at the Planned Parenthood clinic, and I had no reason not to believe her.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: But in your heart, was there some lack of certainty about that?

Nancy Lincoln: I think for a moment I might have thought, “I know it’s a baby, but I just need to do this.” I rationalized and made the decision just to do it right away, but I never thought about it more than a second, if I thought about it at all. I’m truly guessing.

The voice of deception was louder than the voice of truth. Nobody came and said, “It’s a baby, and you’ll regret that, and that will hurt you.” They never told me all of the consequences that might come from the fact that I was going to have a blind surgical procedure with instruments put inside of me and a machine turned on.

They didn’t tell me anything. They didn’t tell me about fetal development. They just said that it would be a quick and easy solution, and “you can get back to the party. You’re so young. You don’t want to be bogged down by a pregnancy now.”

That’s exactly what I wanted to hear. She empowered me to kill. That’s what she did. She empowered me to murder my child.

And that’s exactly what I wanted her to do. So, honestly, I’ve had to say to myself, “If somebody would have come and said at that time of my life, ‘It’s a baby; don’t have an abortion,’ I probably wouldn’t have listened.”

So I did go and have the abortion. My friends took me. My boyfriend didn’t even go with me.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: How did you know where to go?

Nancy Lincoln: Planned Parenthood gave me the number of a doctor who had performed abortions in the first trimester. I went there, and it was just like going to the doctor. There was really nothing unique about it.

I just went in and lay on the table, and the nurse held my hand, and they did a first trimester suction abortion, and it was . . .

Again, I’m in total crisis here in my heart, because I know I’m empowered to have the abortion. She’s just empowered me. I know it’s the right thing. All that stuff’s going on.

But in my soul, as they’re performing the abortion on me, I know that I’m killing a child. Even though I would never have that conversation, I just know.

I believe that God has written that on our hearts as women, that we are called to protect and preserve and nurture and love, and not to destroy and to kill our children.

Yet that machine went on, and that’s what I did. That’s exactly what I did. I said, “Do that to me. Take the child out of me. Take the blob of tissue out of me, and let me be free of this burden.” I let them do that.

And then it was over, and we left the clinic, we went to the bar and got drunk.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: So the moment of regret or soul searching passed as quickly as it came.

Nancy Lincoln: It was only there for a moment, and then I was back out in the car and we were heading to the bar. My friends were trying to help by taking me to the bar and getting me a couple of drinks.

What happened was, the moment I stepped off the table, the cycle began of numbing it and pushing it down and trying to deny what I had just done, because I didn’t know how to resolve it.

I didn’t know how to face what I had just done, because remember, our society’s saying, "It’s okay to do that. It’s your legal choice to do that. It’s your body."

The clinic is telling me it’s my choice. So now I’m in this conflict in my soul, I like to say: "I’m empowered to do it, I just did it," and now I’m like, “What did I just do?”

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: Now the battle is going on?

Nancy Lincoln: The battle is intensified because there’s a huge battle going on already just in my whole life. But that’s what I did. 

Dannah: What I'm thinking as I listen to that heartbreaking story is that no one is more pro-choice than the Devil when a woman's walking into an abortion clinic. And no one is more pro-life and condemning than the Devil when a woman walks out of one. That's just how deception works. It doesn't make sense. I'm happy to say that that's not the end of Nancy Lincoln’s story. God set her free from the lies that held her captive. Praise God, He is still setting us all free when we cry out to Him and lay our burdens down. 

Today, Nancy Lincoln spends time with as many young women as possible and shares the life-restoring message of truth. You can listen to her entire testimony at ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend. Look for today’s transcript, and we’ll have a link to her story.

Freedom is found only in Jesus Christ. 

When Jacque Chislea first came to know the Lord, she was stuck in bondage to a lot of sinful patterns and lies. Growing up, Jacque was well-acquainted with hurt and pain. Her father was absent, and she felt that loss. Then another man abused her at the tender age of nine. Can you imagine the lies that circled around in her head? Even as she married her husband, she felt resentment toward men. 

Here’s Carrie Gaul, talking with Jacque about how the Lord used Nancy’s book, Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free, to transform her life.

Jacque Chislea: I was such an angry, volatile, ugly human being, and I expected everybody to just deal with it. “Look, I have been hurt. I have been wronged. I have the right to lash out, so you all need to just deal with it.”

That was where I was coming from. I believed that. I believed I was a victim of circumstance, so I had a right to act this way, the right to be angry, the right to be bossy. "I am the way I am, and I can justify it."

I practiced that for years. Because I didn’t have a father, because I had been abused by a man at the age of nine, sexually, because of these things I don’t like men and I will not like men; therefore, I will love women.

So I had an affair with a woman while I was married to my husband. By God’s grace, my husband did not lash out; he did not retaliate. Do you know what he did? He poured the Word of the Lord over me. He prayed over me.

We went to our pastor and told our pastor. My pastor told me this was a sin, and I said, “Yes, I know.”

He said, “You need to stop.”

I said, “Yes, I know.”

Literally, the Lord severed that. This was early on in our relationship. This was months into our marriage. I think God that He used that to launch me into this other new world of understanding womanhood and manhood and how He created that to be sacred and to be a holy covenant to one another.

I think in our culture now, man, that seems to be acceptable. I think He’s using that experience in my life to help me teach other women that I know that are battling and that are tripping up over that lie.

They are tripping up over that lie that says, "I deserve this. I am this way because I am. I have my rights. I can do what I want to do. I’m supposed to be happy.”

Boy, those lies can circulate and become a monster. It’s not the way the Lord intended things to be. I avoided talking about it because it is so shameful. It was so hurtful to my husband. But by God’s grace, he has been an amazing man that I never knew before, and I praise God.

My husband and I have been together now twenty years. We’ve been married for sixteen years. The last ten have been amazing. We have three beautiful children that have all been adopted.

Carrie Gaul: Jacque, would you talk to the woman today who is struggling with same-sex attraction—maybe hiding behind that, being afraid. Would you share even the struggle with that.

Jacque: I know that for some women they think that the only person who will understand that is another women. They take comfort in the fact that a woman understands in a way that a man never could.

I’m here to tell you that you’re wrong. I’m here to tell you that Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. Once you realize that He loves you more that anyone could love you, that will start releasing the lie from your thought process.

I pray very faithfully for lesbian women because I think they are caught up in the most detrimental lives. We can’t procreate; we can’t love in a holy, covenant way if we are doing that. I wear this bracelet to remind me to pray for my sisters that are lost, that are broken, that are afflicted.

Carrie: And we want to say the God loves them.

Jacque: Amen! He loves the sinner.

Carrie: That’s all of us.

Dannah: It sure is! Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth jumped into the conversation with Carrie and Jacque.

Nancy: One of the lies that the devil makes us believe is, “I can’t be honest, or I can’t be open.” And that’s not to say that every issue you’ve ever struggled with should be “out there.” There’s discretion; there’s appropriate context.

Obviously, this was something you worked through with your husband. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be appropriate for you to be saying it here.

There may be somebody in this room or listening to this conversation who would say, “I could never say that out loud.” Because it does feel so shameful. "I have to stay in the darkness." It’s not just homosexual sin. It’s heterosexual sins; it’s any kind of sin.

I remember a woman came to me who years earlier had an affair with a man. This is decades later that she is telling me this. This is something she had determined that she would go to the grave with. Because of the shame and secrecy, she had never had a level of intimacy with her husband that she should have been able to have. Two committed Christians. He had no idea why. She knew why but didn’t say.

But she came me and said, “I’ve been hearing you about walking in the light, and God has shown me this is something I need to share with my husband.”

She wasn’t asking should she. She said, “I know I need to, will you help me know how to do this.”

We prayed and cried and wept, went to the cross. She went to her husband. It was really, really hard, but God had prepared her husband’s heart. God had been prepared her heart. The lie you keep believing is, “I would be better off living in the shadows with the secret. Even if it means that we are just going to exist in our marriage rather than coming out into the light. If you come out into the light you will be rejected; you will not be able to move forward; nobody will accept you.”

That woman and her husband will both tell you today, as I think you and your husband would, that as hard and painful as is it to walk into the light, it is so freeing when you do it in grace and when you get to Christ.

There’s nothing inherently virtuous about saying, “I messed up.” But when you are coming out of secrecy and hiding in shame . . . That’s what David says in Psalm 32: “When I kept silent about my sin, it ate me up day and night.” It says, “Your hand was heavy upon me” (see vv 3–4).

If God’s hand is heavy upon you, thank Him for it. We’ve all experienced that before. It’s called conviction of the Holy Spirit. If He’s making your life miserable because of something, it may not seem like something that massive to you, whatever it is, walk into the light. That’s where you find mercy.

He said, “When I confessed my sin; when I acknowledged my sin, you forgave me” (see v. 5).

I’m thinking of Proverbs 28:13 which says, “He who covers his sin will not prosper, but whoever confesses it and forsakes it will have mercy” (paraphrased).

Where’s the mercy? It was your husband’s grace. It was his forgiveness. But it was also the mercy of God to rescue you from your way of thinking of yourself as a woman, from a way of thinking about other women, from a way of thinking about men, all of those ways that seemed right to you that were going to lead to spiritual death.

God was merciful because you were willing to walk into the light with your husband and with the Lord. He was merciful to give you a whole new way of thinking and living. "I’m not going to let you think that something that is abnormal is normal. I’m going to let you know what is holy is good and is beautiful and is worth having."

When you are willing, not only back in in that moment . . . I’ve shared for eighteen years about women never told anyone they had an abortion or a secret struggle they had with pornography. There can be all kinds of struggles, not just sexual sins, there are other sins as well.

But when you are willing to step into the light and get God’s grace and His forgiveness, His transforming power in your life to having ordered affections rather than disordered affections, freedom from your idols, here’s something else that can happen, and you just illustrated it.

You can then become an instrument of God’s grace and His mercy in someone else’s life.

If you have this past experience with the Lord in your marriage, in your life, whatever, you’ve dealt with the Lord, but you are not free to let the walls down and share with somebody else who might need to hear that, then you are still not really free.

Jacque: When you don’t bring the sin into the light, there’s not power. There’s no power there. Also, with my experience with the Lord and how much He loves me and how much He said, “You know what? I’ve got you washed. I’ve got you clean now. You can start a fresh, new day with Me.” 

Dannah: Wow! That’s what freedom sounds like. No matter what lies you believe today, the power of Christ can set you free, just like He set Nancy Lincoln free, just like He did with Jacque . . . like He’s done with me. 

What area of your life is He calling you to bring into the light today? 

As Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth said, whatever it is, walk into the light. That’s where you find mercy.

We have a link on our website to more of Nancy’s teaching based on her book Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free. Go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and look in the transcript of this episode titled “The Power of Lies,” for a link to more from Nancy.

Song: “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)” by Chris Tomlin

We want to equip you to keep fighting lies with the pure truth of God’s Word. When you make a donation to the ministry of Revive Our Hearts this month, we’d love to send you Lies Women Believe and the Truth That Sets Them Free by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth. You’ll learn to recognize—and fight against—the lies of this world. 

Request your copy of Lies Women Believe by calling 1-800-569-5959, or go to ReviveOurHearts.com/weekend and click on today’s episode. 

Remember the wise man and foolish man? Next week we’ll talk about building our lives on the firm foundation of Jesus Christ.

Thanks for listening today. Thanks to our team: Phil Krause, CJ Raymond, Rebekah Krause, Justin Converse, Michelle Hill, Erin Davis, Katie Laitkep, and for Revive Our Hearts Weekend, I’m Dannah Gresh.

Revive Our Hearts is calling women to freedom, fullness and fruitfulness in Christ.

Song: “Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone),” Chris Tomlin, Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone) [Performance Tracks] - EP ℗ 2009 sixsteprecords/Sparrow Records

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