You Can’t Lie Your Way Into a New Life

What if the thing you keep asking God to remove isn’t the problem?

“Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts:

And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”

Psalm 139:23–24, KJV 

Maybe it’s not a communication issue. Maybe it’s a heart issue.

An alignment issue.

A desire issue.

Search my heart, O Lord, and tell me, what do you see?

What do I want?

What is good in there?

What is evil?
What is greedy?
What is true?
What is just?

What is righteous and wrong and giving and loving and true and real and raw?

What is me?

Lord, can you remove what is not supposed to be?

Will you take from me what I don’t want, but think I do?

Will you take from me what I am chasing, lusting, desiring, but in the wrong ways? 

Deceitful ways, but disguised as doing good. 

O Lord, search my heart and remove.

Take it all away.

Leave only what is mine.
What is yours.
What is right.
What is real.

Take the rest.

Do the surgery.

God, get into the places in me I can’t see clearly myself. 

Show me what is off, then lead me right.

People aren’t strong enough to pray this prayer.

It’s dangerous.

It strips you of you.

It strips you of your worldly desires.

It surrenders.

It sacrifices.

It ceases to let you want what you want.

I teach all day long: you’re allowed to want what you want.

And you are.

Except when wanting turns to chasing, and chasing turns to a blur of WTF has been happening for the last month, year, two years, three years, or four years of your life.

And you ask…where did time go?

Summer is over.

Kids go back to school tomorrow.

It’s a clean slate.

It’s a Monday.

A new week.

A new day.

We get these chances….these do-overs…all the time.

Yet people take them for granted.

They hide in them.
Hide from them.
Run from them.
Don’t take them seriously.
Are too egotistical to accept them.
Receive them.

Wipe the whiteboard clean and start over.

Or better yet, admit:

Hey, OMG, I was wrong. I don’t want this.

I’m fighting myself.

Or I do want this and I’m not going all in.

Or I need to fish on the right side of the boat instead of the left.

Or the left instead of the right.

Or the front or the back.

Or fuck, maybe I need a new boat.

We stay.

We wait.

We hope.

Hope is not a plan.

Then we cheapen ourselves.

We try to help.

We serve.

We put ourselves in positions that deny our power.

Our potential.

We go backwards.

We get pissed off.

We see our future.

We get scared.

We retreat.

We see glimpses of our past.

And we get disgusted.

I saw that recently and I got pissed.

Disgusted.

Mad.

Furious.

Then sad.

Then upset because I felt like I was judging others.

Then judging myself.

Then I felt like I would get punished by God for judging others.

When it’s not them.

It’s me.

It’s not my message or marketing or misalignment.

Or position.

It’s my heart.

It’s my deep, deep desire.

Of what I really want.

Of what I really believe about myself.

Knowing who I really am.

And sticking with it.

I know my heart is good, and wanting what I want is not evil or greedy or bad.

It’s true and just and real and raw and right.

Thinking otherwise is what is getting me to fight myself.

Where are you doing this?

Lying to yourself.

Going backwards.

Staying still.

Not stuck.

Still.

Judging yourself for judging others.

Saying one thing but believing another.

You can’t lie your way into a new life.

But you can get a new life by asking where in this life...does my truth hide?

That allows you to stop chasing.

Clear the blur.

And only then can you see pretty fucking far and free from there.

Author Robyn Lynn Tanner

Author of The Machete Mentality