The man that God honors is the man who deals in integrity and honesty of heart. People are deceitful in their heart because they refuse to open up and see what God is dealing with them about. It is easy for them to cover up. It is easy for us to make a good case for ourselves to others. It is even easier to deceive ourselves.
How many times the Scriptures say, “Be not deceived.” They also speak often of deceiving your own heart. In this walk, you can have every problem in the world and still make it—if you’re honest. Don’t cover up, regardless of what problem you have. Be honest before God and you can make it; but the minute you cover over, or refuse to admit the problem, or what you really need, you’ve cut off the lifeline.
On the night of that last Passover, the disciples were confronted with many things for the first time. It must have been an agonizing experience for them. The Lord said, “The one who is dipping his hand with me into the sop is going to betray me.” All the disciples except Judas said, “Lord, is it I?” That was an honest way of looking at it, but Judas could never say that. Something in his heart covered over.
We can have a lot of problems and still make it fine, provided we do one thing: just level with the Lord. That’s really what repentance is—an honesty of heart with God. As you are overwhelmed by the revelation of the need of your heart, you cry out to God. That need is there all the time; but how you dodge it, how you avoid and evade it, until that one day when God puts His finger on it and you wake up to it. That is the necessary ingredient of repentance.
We are praying for the days of Ananias and Sapphira to return. Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and anointed to ask the questions and when they lied to him, they were lying to the Holy Spirit. Before we’re through, we will come to the place where an individual, who is asked a question by a servant of God, will shake in his boots before he will lie or answer evasively.
The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but the thing that makes it is that humility before God. Honesty is an integral part of humility. We really want to walk with God. We can’t be phonies; there’s no place for it. The Lord says in the end time, “Depart from Me, ye workers of iniquity,” and He casts their portion with the hypocrites. The word “Hypocrite” means “two-faced.” It goes back to the Greek word for actor, for every actor had two masks: comedy and tragedy, which they wore when acting out their parts in the Greek dramas. Let’s have no faces—just an open heart.
The grace of God is not a cover up. The grace of God requires above everything else, an honesty of heart, while almost all forms of legalism lead to deceit. In the New Testament the Pharisees were usually the ones identified by Christ as hypocrites, and the more legalistic and self-righteous they were, the more deceitful they were in covering up.
What makes people lose the freshness in this walk until things go sour, and they end up going through the motions or laboring at it? It may be because they are not submissive and rebellion is in their heart. The answer to it is confession of the rebellion, which is really submission in action. Rebellion becomes possible because you just let it be there. Everyone seems to be rebellious at times in their reactions, but rebellion is not rebellion if you make an act of submission. Most of the time our troubles come because we are covering something up in our heart and in our spirit. We put up a facade to the rest of the Body as though the problem did not exist and the very wall we put up to screen out people’s observation of us screens out their blessing to us also. Unless we are transparent and see one another’s need in all humility and open confession, we do not receive the blessing that is to flow from one member to another.
The person who really makes it is the one who comes right up and says, “Pray for me. I’ve had rebellion and criticism in my heart. Will you forgive me and pray for me?” He makes it, because that very act is submission in itself. He is submitting himself honestly with the rebellion, before you and before the Lord. That turns the trick on Satan, who wants above everything else, for you to fail to confess it and just hide it because then it works in your heart.
I Samuel 15:23 says, Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft—because it throws something on you and others. It has the same quality that witches use to pronounce curses and cast spells. When rebellion exists within a family, invariably the one who is the most rebellious will emanate that quality to come against the others in the family. Rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft—these are the words of Samuel, the prophet, who had a clearer understanding of witchcraft than probably any of the prophets in the Old Testament. During his time, the land of Palestine was overrun with witchcraft, and under his guidance, it became filled with schools of prophets and witchcraft was annihilated.
If you are rebellious, the first thing to do is confess it. The best thing for a wife to do is not smolder in rebellion against her husband, but go to him and say, “I’ve been rebellious toward you. Forgive me. Will you pray for me and minister to me to get rid of it?” The male ego is such that it’s hard for a man to admit that he’s wrong. The three most difficult words in the English language for the human male to pronounce are, “I am sorry.” Deception comes in when we cover up and go right on, and in every instance that will hurt this walk with God which requires that we be quite open. Repentance must be a state of heart that we maintain perpetually. We must keep a tenderness toward God and be ready at all times to repent and humble ourselves before the Lord.
We read in Mark 7:21–23—For from within, out of the heart of men, evil thoughts proceed, fornications, thefts, murders, adulteries, covetings, wickednesses, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, railing, pride, foolishness: all these evil things proceed from within, and defile the man. It’s out of the heart that this deceitfulness comes.
Jeremiah 17:9, 10 says, The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt: who can know it? I, the Lord, search the mind, I try the heart, even to give every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings.
While men often in many ways are very stubborn, the fact remains that a woman can be very deceitful too. Generally, women are more skillful liars than men, because they are more creatures of instinct. By intuition they can sense what will get them by a situation, and they can easily fall into a lie and deceitfulness. However, a man has his own way of being deceitful and stubborn, and that stubbornness is classified with rebellion.
If your progress is being held up a little, and you would like to be more honest with God and break through to a new level, the first thing to do is to be honest before the Lord. It will be a common necessity for Christians to pray, “Lord, give me a sensitive conscience.” According to the Scriptures, the days will be so evil that men will have their conscience seared with a hot iron (I Timothy 4:2). Everything suddenly becomes covered over.
In II Timothy 3:1, 5–7, Paul gives the picture of conditions in the end time. But know this, that in the last days grievous times shall come. People will be holding a form of godliness, but having denied the power thereof: from these also turn away. For of these are they that creep into houses, and take captive silly women laden with sins, led away by divers lusts, ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth. There will be this type of deception because woman was the one who was deceived at the beginning. Women are usually more virtuous than men, for a number of reasons. The consequences of not being virtuous are far greater for a woman than for a man. They can be deceived more readily. Men who are good husband material are usually basically honest. You can mark an evil man by the fact that he is a deceiver. And even as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also withstand the truth; men corrupted in mind, reprobate concerning the faith. But they shall proceed no further: for their folly shall be evident unto all men, as theirs also came to be. Verses 8, 9.
John prophesied, For many deceivers are gone forth into the world.… II John, verse 7. The characteristic of the antichrist and the whole end time is one of deception. In Revelation 12:9 Satan is called “the deceiver of the whole world.” In the end time there will be deception, false prophets, false Christs and miracles, that if it were possible, Satan would deceive the very elect. No man can be deceived unless he has deceit in his heart.
The further we go into this walk, the more we will depend on the grace of God, and the less we will be shocked, or judge, or hold it against any individual when he stands up in a congregation and says, “I’m having a difficult time because I have this and that problem in my life. Pray for me.” He will do it, not out of a morbid sense of confession, but because he desires to be transparent and honest before God. James 5:16 tells us, Confess therefore your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The thing that will bring health, healing, and vitality to the whole Body is that humbling of ourselves before the Lord.
It’s not wrong for a leader to get up and bare his soul before the people, telling them areas where he has failed, where he has a need, and asking them to pray for him. He should not set himself up and say, “I’m the superman and you are the sheep.” Let God exalt him if he is to be exalted in a place of honor and authority, but let him walk humbly before the Lord.
The Bible tells of only one man whom God backed up as a leader to the extent that the earth opened and swallowed those who rebelled against him; and that man, Moses, was called “the meekest man on the face of the earth.” In the humility that will be required of us, you will refuse to exalt yourself, not wanting to make yourself look good, but just doing the best you can to be honest and open, and bless your brother and sister.
One of the reasons the young people who come into this walk do so well is because there is a frankness and honesty about them. Our generation knew more hypocrisy than this younger generation knows. It is not the sin or the amount of sins, it is how you come and level with God in an open and honest heart. It is difficult for some of the older generation to reason that way—though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool. Isaiah 1:18. It isn’t the depth or extent of your sin, but the depth and extent of your faith in the grace of God that cleanses and redeems. If we begin that way, that’s the way we will go on.
There needs to be a new dedication to honesty of heart. If we walk with God, it will be because we are honest in our hearts with Him. Peter had that quality in him. The Bible doesn’t pull any punches, but don’t get the idea because Peter stumbled around and made those mistakes that are plainly revealed in the Scriptures, that he was not a giant before the face of God. He was the kind of man who could repent and weep bitterly over his sin and pray that God would forgive him. Soon after, he would be walking down the street, healing people right and left. His shadow was so filled with the power of God that when if fell upon the sick, they were healed. The book of Acts tells how he raised the dead, just like Christ had done. He took a woman by the hand and said, “Arise.” Immediately she opened her eyes, sat up and rose off that death bed. The cold corpse became alive, warm and sensitive again.
You don’t walk into that kind of power by putting on a front. You walk into that kind of power when there’s an honesty and openness before God. This is what the grace of God is all about. That is why the further we get into the grace of God in this church, the more we find ourselves transparent and open to one another. Do you see the transparency in the Body? Can you look at one another and see what Christ is bringing forth? Even if you see what the human flesh is doing, you pray and believe for God to crucify it. You don’t criticize and judge; you just pray for one another. What a tragedy it is to find some phony going through the motions and saying when we minister to him, “It’s all right,” and you know he’s not telling you the truth. Nothing is more effective in bringing judgment to a person than letting him deceive his own heart.
There’s a beautiful passage in Hosea about the judgment of the Lord. Their heart is divided; now shall they be found guilty: he will smite their altars, he will destroy their pillars. Surely now shall they say, We have no king: for we fear not the Lord; and the king, what can he do for us? They speak vain words, swearing falsely in making covenants; therefore judgment springeth up as hemlock in the furrows of the field. Hosea 10:2–4. The quickest way to bring judgment on your life is to swear falsely to God.
One of the worst things you could do is pass over this lightly—“Oh hallelujah! I repented.” Have you really repented and gone right down to the basic thing of your spirit for the Lord to deal with? You can change when you are really honest before God and you want to change. If you honestly want to change, down basically in your spirit, it will happen. You must face a lot of things. Sometimes you enjoy feeling sorry for yourself. You would rather limp along with an excuse than put your shoulders back, face the situation, and walk through it. It is easier to whine, to back off and excuse it.
God’s love covers over the things you are really sincere and honest about. However, He makes the things you are not honest about stand out like sore thumbs and everyone sees them. You can’t cover them up. You’re only deceiving yourself.
If you’ve fallen short, if you don’t have what it takes, lay it right before God with a right spirit, instead of covering it over with a lot of excuses. Say, “Lord, I need help.” The Lord will give grace to the weak to confound the mighty. “Lord, I need help. I’m stupid.” He will give you wisdom and upbraid you not. God is not going to condemn you because you are stupid, because you are weak, or have a lot of problems. God would never do that. All He is saying is just come before Him honestly.
Lord, let the Spirit of truth come to convict us of what we need. Forgive us of anything that is deceitful. The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Lord, deal with that.
How many blessings have we lost? How many rich things have You promised us that we couldn’t appropriate because we lost that eagerness to be humble and honest, that desperation of heart that hungers and thirsts after righteousness? Lord, revive that spirit in us. Keep in our hearts the hunger after Thee that would make us repent of everything which would degrade us. We pray that You will uncover everything, until there will not be one relationship, one ministry, or one member added to the Body that is not honest and open before God and before one another.
Thank You Lord, for the honesty and sincerity that is in the Body, but we all know we need something more. We cry out that you will condemn this deceitfulness of the heart that is desperately wicked, and who can know it? You can know it better than we. We can deceive ourselves without even knowing what we are doing, but You can give us the revelation by the Spirit of truth. Make us to see what is in ourselves with an honesty born of the Spirit.
Lord, we could also walk in self-condemnation, which would be as big a lie as self-justification. We want the Holy Spirit to lead us into that which is right. We don’t want to stand condemning ourselves out of a blessing. We want to be children of God without rebuke, holding forth the word of life to a perverse and dark generation. We want to shine as lights in the world. Forgive us, Lord. Break once and for all the spirit of deception. We want to speak as oracles of God. We want our spirit to be right toward every man. Amen.