Be True to yourself and to the other people around you.  If you wanted to build something that would stand and last the first thing that you would need after the plans are drawn up, is a solid foundation!  You have to have a solid foundation one that will stand against everything.  Being true to yourself is the starting point of that foundation.  Others might say being true to God would be the first point, but to me I believe that they are the same.  When we are true to who we are to ourselves we are being true to God as well, because we are comfortable with who He made us to be.   

What does being true to yourself have to do with honesty?  Well let me tell you that when you are true to yourself you really don’t have a need to lie, or deceive people.  Another way to look at it is this.  When you aren’t true to yourself and you say one thing but do another you are living the life of a hypocrite.  For some sad reason this word has been used to identify christians, because we tend to say one thing and then do another.  Now we could argue that we do the best we can and our relationship with God goes beyond our failures and that the world just doesn’t understand.  But we aren’t going there.  Here is where we are going.  Do you live out Jesus’s Faith, each and every day that you

 live?  Just had lunch with a very wise man and he summed it up this way.  When we accept Jesus as Savior we are living out of our faith.  But the next step is to live life with the faith of Jesus.  This is the difference between someone who says one thing and then does something else.  To the person who does exactly what they say.  When we live out Jesus’s faith, we follow up what we say we believe with our actions.  We must not say one thing and then do something else.  We have back our words with real actions, and a life of being true to ourselves.  Jesus put it this way in Matt. 7:3-53 “Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4 How can you say to your brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5 You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.  Living life to follow Jesus we have to live out His faith, and follow through with actions to our words, we have to be honest with who we are and in that be so ever thankful for the love that God gives us each day.  Live out your faith, knowing who you are and being honest with yourself and others as you go your way.

Have you ever cheated?…Have you ever cheated?  I mean on anything?  A test, a quiz, book report?  Today cheating well it is not looked so down upon.  Why ‘cause everyone seems to be finding ways to do it.  People are sharing test questions and answers.  People are allowing others to copy their work, and well just looking for ways to get around the system.  Whoa, doesn’t sound so bad when you put it that way, just getting around the system.  It’s just like when someone gives you music or movies that you have not payed for and you rip them into your computer.  It’s cheating but others just like to call it file sharing.  We all cheat, cause we have all lied. Cheating is just another way to lie, it is not the truth, it is hiding something, it is going around the right way of doing something.  So let’s talk about cheating and what we are to do about it in our own lives.  

So when was the last time that you cheated?  What did you cheat on?  You don’t have to shout it out you need only to think about it and ask yourself this question, do you have a cheating problem?  If you do, don’t get discouraged cause there is help to get you out of the cheating cycle.  So here is the question that we need to process, Why do you cheat?  You may have never ever cheated it might not be a problem for you.  But the question that we need to answer is why?  Why do people cheat?  Think about it hard and process this.  Do you think people cheat because they are just not happy with what they have, and who they are?  I mean if you did not study for a test, and then you were tempted to cheat, you might say that it has nothing to do with who you are and what you have.  Really think about it.  Other people studied because they have self disciple, and they follow through with what they were suppose to do.  Others well they are just smart and they don’t need to study.  Then the person who is thinking about cheating wants what the others have.  Either more self disciple or the ability  to just be smart and not have to study.  When we don’t like who we are and we want to be someone else we spend more time chasing things that will never happen instead of working on us.  We nee to be who we are and do what it takes for us to succeed in life.  Take a look at Leviticus 19:1 ‘Do not steal. Do not lie. Do not deceive one another. We have to stop stealing and lying and deceiving ourselves. We all know that cheating does not pay off cause you will one day get caught.  We have to work on character, and know what we need to do so that we will not be put in a place where we will be tempted to cheat.  

Who's Fooling Who?

So Many Lies
Tell the Truth Always…
Do you tell the truth, always tell the truth?

That is a tough question for some people because of the word always.   Always defines character and character defines who we are when we know that we won’t get caught.  Character has also been defined like this.  It is the person you are when you know that no one is looking.  Which is true, but I think there is more truth in the statement it is who we are when we know we will not get caught.  

What do people lie about? Well that is easy everything, people lie about everything!  But what about you?  What do you lie about?  

After you answer that question the next thing to process is why do you lie about that?  

Here are the the top 10 Reasons people lie:

1. To please people
2. To Save Your Own Face
3. To Avoid Helping Someone
4. To Avoid Long Conversations
5. To Boast (Look Good)
6. To Get Benefits
7. To Get out of trouble
8. To fit in
9. To prove a point
10. To change the mind of another person.

Do any of these sound filmier to you?  Have you lied today?  Was the lie filling in one of the points?  Telling the truth is well lets be honest one of the easiest things to do.  Or is it?  The Bible says this about lying. Proverbs12:22 The Lord detests lying lips,

but he delights in men who are truthful.  God really, really has a problem with lies.  So what is it about lies or lying that attracts us to lie?  I think when you look to the very root of a lie, it has a lot to do with how we feel about ourselves.  It also has a lot to say about our relationship with God.  We lie to change things or cover up things that we don’t like about ourselves.  So the root is how do we see ourselves.  How do you see yourself?  Think about everything that you do, why do you do you do those things?  What drives you to do them?   It sounds complicated but really it is all rooted in how do you feel about yourself.  If you were to define yourself what would you say about you?  Would you lie in your definition, or could you define yourself with only the truth.  Lying is a problem and if you have ever been lied to then you know first hand that it is not a good thing.  So then why do we do it, and why do others do it.  There is the top 10 list, but I think that it is a problem with how well do we like ourselves and how well do we like others for who they are.  God delights in men who are truthful!  God delights in people who know who they are happy with who they are.  These people don’t need to lie.