Lies We Believe About God Quotes

“Instead of a list of priorities, Jesus introduced us to something completely different: a moving, dynamic, living relationship in which God is not first, but central. This is not a flowchart, but rather a mobile where everything is moving and changing as our choices and participation are woven inside the activity of the Holy Spirit. Lists are about control and performance; God is about adventure and trust. If God is at the center of our lives, then so is love and relationship, since God is profoundly both.”
― William Paul Young, Lies We Believe About God

“From now on we no longer judge any person according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 5:16). We don’t judge anyone by how he or she is stuck or broken or lost, but see each person for who he or she is—the one the Holy Spirit finds and celebrates, the one Jesus leaves the ninety-nine to go find, the one the Father waits to welcome home.”
― William Paul Young, Lies We Believe About God

“What if there is no “plan” for your life but rather a relationship in which God constantly invites us to co-create, respectfully submitting to the choices we bring to the table?”
― William Paul Young, Lies We Believe About God

“embedded in real life, real loss. Disappointment largely revolves around expectations and imagination. I expect you to act a certain way, or I expect a specific outcome, or I expected to have achieved (fill in the blank) by now, or I expected that my life would be different or that I would be working in a field that I actually like. Fueled by media images, expectations are mostly disappointments waiting to happen and almost entirely built on imagination or illusion. Now, I understand the positive power of visualization and the neurological benefits of meditation, but that is not what I am talking about. I’m talking about imagining outcomes that can’t or don’t materialize. This is precisely why God is never disappointed in you. God has no such imaginations or illusions. God knows you, completely, fully, and with unrelenting affection. You don’t surprise God. God delights in you, as you delight in your own children; God also grieves for and with you when you act inside your lies and darkness—but not because God expected more of you. God is a fully engaged participant, present in the deepest and most profound activities happening inside the highest of all creation—you. God knows you for who you truly are and grieves for the distance between that truth and what you believe about yourself. It is from that gap of darkness and lies that we project God’s disappointment and abandonment. God is never disillusioned by you; God never had any illusions about you in the first place. God is never disappointed in you; God has no expectations. Do you remember the verses halfway through Psalm 22? That’s the psalm that begins with “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” This was the cry of Jesus when He experientially entered all of humanity’s lies and darkness, when He plunged into the shadow depths in which we projected a turned-away face of God. We believe that we are abandoned and unworthy to be face-to-face with God, and it is in that delusion that Jesus finds us. Halfway through this psalm, which Jesus knew by heart, are these words: You do not despise the afflictions of the afflicted one, Nor will you turn your face from him, And when he cries, you will hear. This God does not do abandonment. We will never be powerful enough to make God’s face turn from us. Because God knows us utterly and is with us always—you are never a disappointment.”
― William Paul Young, Lies We Believe About God

“I may have convinced myself or been convinced by others that I deserve to be separated from God. Such lies will bring with them a shadow in which I experience a sense of separation, feelings that seem to validate the illusion that God is not connected and in relationship with me or that God has stopped loving me or has given up on me. Many of us on the planet live in this illusion now.”
― Wm. Paul Young, Lies We Believe About God

“real life, even in its suffering, is much more deeply rewarding than imagined life.”
― William Paul Young, Lies We Believe About God