Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies That Sabotage Your Peace

by John Mark Comer

When you read church history, you notice a trend: in times of chaos, the church moved toward order.

a crew of over seventy people in our church put on a monthly Foster Parents’ Night Out, where they throw a killer party for the kids and give the foster parents a night to go out on the town or just catch their breath.

People can’t live without meaning, purpose, and community. The secular world can’t seem to offer that; Jesus can and does. What if the church were to come back to her call as a community radiant with the love of God?

Part 3 step sheet Definitions: The world—a system of ideas, values, morals, practices, and social norms that are integrated into the mainstream and institutionalized in a culture corrupted by the twin sins of rebellion against God and the redefinition of good and evil Pre-Christian culture—a culture of gods and goddesses Christianized culture—a cultural moment where the societal norms push you toward a vision that is a mix of Jesus and pagan or secular ideas Post-Christian culture—a reaction against Christianized culture that attempts to hold on to some core elements of Jesus’s vision, while rejecting others, and attempts to bring about the kingdom of God without the King. Utopian trending dystopian. Hard power—coercive force, such as legal or military force Soft power—the attempt to control or influence behavior by appealing to people’s sensual desires Creative minority—a small group operating on the margins of society who live together in a thick web of relationships and, through their lives and work, bless the host culture with healing and renewal Key texts to meditate on: John 17 and 1 John 2v15–17 Working theory of the devil’s strategy: deceitful ideas that play to disordered desires that are normalized in a sinful society Key practice for fighting the world: gathering with your church In summary: The devil’s deceptive ideas get as far as they do because they appeal to our flesh’s animal cravings. But these in turn find a home in our bodies through the echo chamber of...

And instead of shedding blood, he went to the cross to give his own blood, for the very people jeering him from the crowd.

This is why it is absolutely crucial for us to recapture the idea of spiritual war; because as long as we deny the reality of demonic evil, we will demonize people—the very people we are called to love and serve. Instead of fighting Satan, we will turn people or even entire groups of people into Satan. As a result, instead of fighting back the hate and violence and darkness of the three enemies, we will just add even more hate and violence and darkness to a culture in desperate need of healing.

So what exactly is Jesus calling us to deny? The best way I can frame it is to say this: we’re to deny our self, not ourselves. The self in Jesus’s call isn’t our inner essence or personality type or Enneagram number. Under our rubric of the world, the flesh, and the devil, the self is akin to our flesh, the axis point of the three enemies’ assault on our souls. It’s where the devil’s deceptive ideas on one side and a sinful society’s normalized behaviors on the other meet and direct their attack against the fulcrum point of our disordered desires.

the refusal to deny self is the entry point of the devil into our own minikingdoms. When we reject the cross, we open our souls to enemy infiltration.

We look back on the Crusades as a low point in the history of the church (though historians tell a much more complex story than that of popular imagination). Legend has it that before going into battle, the Knights Templar were baptized, but they would hold their swords above their heads as they went under the water. As if to say, “Jesus, you can have all of me except this. Not my violence. Not my quest for glory.” Legend or history, the imagery is piercing. We all do this. We might not hold up a sword; for us it could be a debit card, a relationship, a sexual ethic, a wound, an entertainment habit, a political or even a theological position. It could be anything. But how often do we say, if not in word, then by our actions, Not this, Jesus. Not this.

I’m not remotely questioning the doctrine of substitutionary atonement: that Jesus died for our sins is central to the gospel. But think about it: we still die. Jesus didn’t die so we don’t have to; he died to teach us how to die—how to follow him through death and into life.

The Cost of Discipleship was one of the great books of the twentieth century. But to push just a little on his language, yes, we need to weigh the cost of discipleship. But we also have to calculate the cost of nondiscipleship.

To “believe the good news” is to trust, to commit to, to live in unswerving fidelity to Jesus. To enter his kingdom, we have to trust that Jesus’s mental maps are the accurate and true guide to the life we seek.

Until we come to the place where we genuinely trust Jesus’s mental maps over our own intuition or feelings, and trust that God is a loving and wise Father with good intentions for our joy, death to self will remain an unwinnable war of attrition between the torn factions of our fragmented souls.

Jesus is not calling you to live by faith. You’re already doing that. We all live by faith; we all trust someone or something to lead us to the life we ache for, whether our faith is in a politician or professor or scientist or subculture or ideology or just our own inner compass of desire. The question isn’t “Do you live by faith?” but “Who or what do you put your faith in?” Jesus is calling you to live by faith in him.

Remember Ignatius’s definition of sin? “Unwillingness to trust that what God wants for me is only my deepest happiness.”

Until we come to a place of deep trust that what God wants for us is only our deepest happiness and that what we actually want—the desire beneath all the other desires—is God himself, we will fight to control our lives. We will continue to think that we know better than God what will lead to our happiness. And we will chase the wind and reap the whirlwind.

here’s the good news, and it really is the best of news: we already have all we need to live a happy, free, beautiful life—access to life with the Father, through Jesus, by the Spirit.

A monastic handbook for combating demons

In box 1, write out an obsessive thought that keeps coming to mind, a lie that you just can’t shake, a toxic feeling (like shame or worry), or a sensation in your body (like tightness of chest, shallow breathing, or a sense of dread).

In box 2, see if you can articulate the lie behind the thought, feeling, or sensation. If you’re feeling scared and your chest is tight, it could be a lie like I’m not safe if people criticize me. If so, what’s the attachment under the anxiety? Could it be an attachment to living a suffering-free life where all people speak well of you? Safety isn’t bad, but the need to be constantly safe can become a prison that holds us in fear and out of love.

In box 3, write out a scripture or word from the Spirit that counters the lie. Then turn your mind to this truth whenever the lie reappears in your mind stream.

What’s the thought, feeling, and/or sensation? What’s the lie beneath the thought, feeling, and/or sensation that reveals your attachment? What’s the truth?