Lies That Could Cost You Your Promised Land
Did you know you have a silent deciding factor behind all the choices you make? And you might not even know what it is?
It’s amazing how one moment—one story—we tell ourselves can silently shape everything.
Sometimes, it's not the big events themselves that define us, but the meaning we attach to them. The subtle lies we absorb.
The whispered thoughts we never challenge yet they shape our entire identity.
Let me introduce you to a woman named AJ. Her story is both heartbreaking and hope-filled. And if you’ve ever questioned your worth, wondered if God skipped over you, or compared your life to someone else’s “bigger” miracle—her story might sound strangely familiar.
A few days after her 7th birthday her entire family was involved in a devastating 13-car pile-up. Her dad was able to pull her from the wreckage completely unharmed.
Both of her brothers were pronounced dead on the scene yet were airlifted to the hospital to try and save them.
Her 10-year-old brother was revived on the way to the hospital. The right side of his face was completely crushed. Her 5-year-old brother suffered a terrible brain injury and stayed in a coma for months. His chance of survival was 10% and a 0% chance of being normal again if he ever woke up.
For reasons the doctors can't explain, her older brother's face started to heal and reconstruct itself. Her family of course knew that this was the power of God since her mother had started a huge prayer chain!
As for her younger brother, they were told he would never wake up. He would never talk, walk or feed himself if he did miraculously wake up. 3 months into the coma he woke up and immediately started asking for cereal!
Her brothers’ miraculous recoveries got the attention of the Children's Miracle Network. Her family ended up being part of that organization for years. But she wasn't. Only her brothers.
With her brothers getting so much attention, she believed she was far less important than them. Definitely nothing special. That God saved them because they had an important calling on their lives.
AJ admits that no one told her she wasn't important, these were things that she just told herself.
But that underlying identity of not being special led her to make some less-than-wise choices from middle school till halfway through college.
Then at a banquet, a college friend begged AJ to tell her mom, who was a doctor, her story. She knew exactly what "story" she meant.
So AJ proceeded to tell of her brother's miraculous recoveries while glossing over her part of the story.
Her friend's mom was astounded. and said excitedly “AJ, my goodness, you're the miracle in this story!!!”
AJ couldn't believe what she had just heard. She corrected her, saying that her brothers were the miracle.
She said, “No! I heard you. You said you escaped a 13-car pile-up with no injuries? Not a scratch on you? Do you know how unbelievable that is? You are a true miracle!!”
She realized she had been telling herself the story all wrong. God had saved her too, for a miraculous purpose. It took her 13 years and someone willing to speak life over her to figure it out.
Notice how not one detail of the accident had changed.
Only her perspective about it.
What stories are you telling yourself?
The “I can’t” stories?
The “I'm nothing” stories?
The “if only” stories?
Who told you these stories?
Did you unconsciously tell them to yourself?
Or are they stories you believed from someone telling you in the past?
Either way, they hold you back, and you need to break free from them in Jesus’ name.
There is nothing that Satan wants more than for you to shrink away from being God's beautiful, bold, chosen and empowered daughter. So he weaves shameful stories into our psyche to get us to think we are less than we are created to be.
Because he knows it's far easier to get us to make ourselves “feel” small than for him to have to work on us every day. That way we keep OURSELVES from God's purposes. Satan may start the lie, but we finish it when we embellish it, keep it, and let it inform our decisions!!
When Moses sent 12 Scouts to the promised land, 10 came back completely afraid.
They reported that the land God had prepared for them was indeed amazing! But they were afraid of the Giants in the land. They said we felt like grasshoppers next to them, we must have seen that way to them too.
Look at the story they were telling themselves.
They're grasshoppers.
Really? How could they forget what God just did for them at the Red Sea? God buried the entire Egyptian Army in water!
He completely annihilated their enemies; they're former captors in one fell swoop. Surely he could take care of a couple of giants.
But only Joshua and Caleb thought that. They said the Israelites should attack immediately and take over the land. But because the majority of the 12 were scared and wouldn't go, God ruled that every single adult Israelite outside of Joshua and Caleb died in the wilderness and never saw the Promised Land.
What stories are keeping you out of your promised land?
What beliefs have you developed because of little lies told to you in your youth?
Are you more “grasshopper” or “I've got this because God's Got Me!” in your thinking?
If there is anything I’ve learned because of chronic illness, it’s that we CHOOSE our perspective. God commands us to choose a LIFE GIVING perspective over our circumstances.
Deuteronomy 30: 11-16
For this commandment I give you today is not too difficult for you or beyond your reach. It is not in heaven, that you should need to ask, ‘Who will ascend into heaven to get it for us and proclaim it, that we may obey it?’ And it is not beyond the sea, that you should need to ask, ‘Who will cross the sea to get it for us and proclaim it, that we may obey it?’ But the word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you may obey it.
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, as well as death and disaster. For I am commanding you today to love the LORD your God, to walk in His ways, and to keep His commandments, statutes, and ordinances, so that you may live and increase, and the LORD your God may bless you in the land that you are entering to possess.
Through Moses, God flat out states that it is not too difficult for us to choose a life giving perspective over our circumstances.
So I invite you to look at your stories. Don’t let lies cost you your Promised Land because you die in the wilderness.
Take 5 minutes today to ask yourself:
What story have I been telling myself that God never wrote?
Then invite Him to rewrite it with truth.
What moments in your life have you minimized? What if they were miracles too?
Ask the Holy Spirit to show you the truth behind your story.
In passionate purpose,
Dorothy