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20 Lies Addicts Say to Justify their Addiction

SOURCE:  Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC

Angel came into counseling knowing that something was wrong but not knowing what it was. After being married for seven years, he noticed his wife became more secretive and distant. Money from their savings account was missing and unaccounted for, his wife would disappear frustrated and return weirdly happy, and she seemed to get angry very easily over insignificant matters.

At first, he thought she was having an affair. But after looking at her phone and locations, he ruled that out. So he sought the advice of a therapist. Oftentimes when a spouse is hiding the severity of an addiction, the only evidence of it is the way they talk about it. An addict lies to themselves and others in order to justify continuing in their addiction. Here are some examples of addict speak.

  1. “It’s not that bad.” At the first sign of confrontation, an addict will minimize their addiction by claiming it isn’t that bad. They might even say they were far worse in the past.
  2. “I only use it occasionally.” Instead of flatly denying the abuse of a substance, an addict will admit to far less than what they are doing. The rule of thumb is that an addict admits to less than half of their actual usage.
  3. “I can’t deal with my problems without it.” The irony of this statement is that the addict begins to look for reasons to use their drug of choice. They might even create unnecessary problems to support it.
  4. “I can stop whenever I want to.” To keep from thinking they are addicted, an addict will deceive themselves into believing that they can stop at any time. They might even go for a short period of time to prove it but it is only temporary.
  5. “I’m not like … he/she is worse.” By comparing themselves to others, the addict can minimize the effects of the addiction while highlighting the severity of another person.
  6. “I’m different than …” Again, the addict picks another addict that is strongly disliked and says they are not like them. This comparison might even be accurate but it doesn’t diminish the reality of the addiction.
  7. “Everyone else does it.” This is a larger comparison where the addict claims that everyone they know does the exact same thing and therefore, they can’t have an addiction. It is a type of group think.
  8. “This is my thing, not yours.” Addicts tend to become weirdly possessive of their drug of choice. It is an affair of sorts where they are uniquely connected to the substance.
  9. “Life without it is boring.” This statement is further evidence of a substance affair. The addict sees life a dull and meaningless without the use of the substance.
  10. “I just like how it feels.” True addicts develop a personal relationship with their substance and assign properties to it as if it was a human. The substance can generate feelings within the addict.
  11. “I can’t be social without it.”A common belief is that the addict is unable to engage in society or with family and friends without the use of the substance. The more they use, the worse this becomes.
  12. “If everyone is, I have to too.”The addict will claim that everyone else does it and therefore they have to too as if there were no other options. This is especially true in work environments where substance usage is encouraged.
  13. “I need it to be creative.”This lie actually gives the substance credit for the addict’s creativity instead of the person doing the task.
  14. “I need it to relax.” Instead of dealing with stress and anxiety, the addict covers it up with their substance usage. But the problem that brought on the stress still remains after the substance wears off.
  15. “You are trying to take away my fun.” As soon as the addict receives some resistant from others for using, they resort to believing that everyone is trying to keep them from enjoying life.
  16. “It makes me a better person.” To justify their usage, addicts will say that without the substance they are more angry, frustrated, anxious, depressed, and/or bitter.
  17. “It hasn’t changed me.” The contrast to the previous statement is that the substance doesn’t have any effect on the abuser. In reality, the worse the addiction, the more dramatic the personality changes.
  18. “I’m not hurting you.” After being confronted, an addict will minimize the effects of their addiction by claiming that they are not doing any harm to others.
  19. “I’m still working, so it’s not that ” To prove they are not addicted, an addict will use their ability to continue with work as justification. Many addicts are functioning addicts meaning that they are able to function during the day.
  20. “The kids don’t know, so it’s okay.” Another common lie is the belief that kids won’t notice the addiction. Unfortunately, many kids are sneaks and very observant.

After reviewing this list, Angel realized that his wife frequently said all of these statements. So he staged an intervention to confront his wife and get her the help she needed for recovery.

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When Is Porn Use a Problem?

“We have a distorted view of our fantasies … because we don’t talk about them enough.” —Sxxxx Gxxx, actor and former porn performer

Pornography is becoming ubiquitous and ever more sophisticated. Long gone are the days of erotic wood carvings. Gone are the days of XXX cinemas in seedy neighborhoods with furtive and lurid shapes in the fog. Gone are the days of print magazines and pin-up girls. Pornography plus the internet equals a “sexplosion” of erotica — prerecorded, real-time, virtual reality, and more — confronting flesh-and-blood interpersonal relationships with compelling alternatives, which for some prove more desirable, ultimately superior, and equally, if not more, clandestine. I predict that by the end of the 21st century, sex will finally come out of the closet — and fundamentally change what being a human being means.

In their recently published work, Daspe, Vaillancourt-Morel, Lussier, Sabourin, and Ferron (2018) investigate important questions regarding pornography use, which is going up in frequency and plays an increasingly significant and pervasive role in society. Setting aside questions of morality and direct and indirect harm, pornography use is seen by many relationship experts as being potentially healthy or potentially destructive to individuals and couples.

How Do Relationship Circumstances Shape Pornography’s Impact?

However, up until now the research on pornography has not looked at how overall relationship and sexual satisfaction affects the frequency of pornography use, or the extent to which pornography users experience distress associated with pornography use. More abusive and violent pornography also shapes attitudes about gender and sexuality, and can negatively affect relationships and contribute to harm, though men reporting both positive and negative effects from pornography attribute greater positive effects overall, and young men greater negative effects than older men (Miller et al., 2017). Studies have also shown that pornography use may mis-wire reward circuits, causing sexual dysfunction and reinforcing dependence on porn (Park et al., 2016).

Daspe and colleagues note many points which are now common knowledge. Pornography use is on the rise and diversifying. When it becomes destructive, it leads to distress and loss of control, and negatively impacts relationships. For some, internet pornography use becomes persistent. According to researchers, 17 percent of pornography users are compulsive (Cooper, Delmonico & Berg, 2000), leading to distress and dysfunction. In other work (Grubbs et al., 2015; Blais-Lecours et al., 2016), feeling out of control is only partly due to a higher frequency of use, with correlations between the two ranging from weak to strong.

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But we don’t know why that is, or what factors connect frequency and perceived loss of control. It’s easy to understand why someone who uses porn more than they want to, or who feels conflict about it or fears consequences, would perceive losing control even with relatively low levels of porn use. On the other hand, someone who doesn’t have any problem with pornography may be a frequent user and be as happy as can be. In the research review here, the role of relationship and sexual satisfaction for couples is examined as a factor in determining how frequency of use and perceived lack of control connect.

Zoom in on Pornography, and Relationship and Sexual Satisfaction

To better understand how these factors interact, Daspe and colleagues (2018) recruited people in relationships to complete an online survey about pornography use, relationship and sexual satisfaction, and other factors. They surveyed 1,036 people, about 50 percent women, mainly between the ages of 18 and 35. Most had been in a relationship over a year; 30 percent were going out, but did not live together; 54 percent lived together; and 15.6 percent were married. A third had children, and the majority were male-female couples.

They completed measures including: internet pornography use; frequency of use; type of pornography used; perceived lack of control over pornography use; relationship satisfaction; and sexual satisfaction. The data were analyzed first to look for significant correlations, and then in more detail to understand the complex moderating effects among factors of interest.

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In terms of basic results, they found that 73 percent of women and 98 percent of men reported internet porn use in the last six months, for a total of 85 percent of respondents. For porn use within the last week, the numbers were lower: 80 percent of men and 26 percent of women. Prerecorded videos were the most common type of online porn used. For both men and women, those who reported using porn more often noted a greater perceived lack of control.

For men, lower sexual satisfaction correlated with greater frequency of porn use, and perceived lack of control was associated with both lower relationship and sexual satisfaction. There were interesting correlations for relationship duration — for women, longer relationships were associated with less porn use. For men and women, longer relationships were associated with decreased relationship and sexual satisfaction. Importantly, men reported higher frequency of use, higher perceived lack of control, and lower relationship and sexual satisfaction. People who cohabited said they experienced both lower relationship and sexual satisfaction. Finally, people with kids also reported lower relationship and sexual satisfaction, but having children did not affect the relationship between frequency of porn use and feeling out of control.

When they dug into the data more deeply, there were several useful insights. In the presence of lower relationship satisfaction, frequency of use was more highly correlated with perceived lack of control. This suggests that using porn to compensate for relationship issues as a maladaptive coping strategy is more likely to become distressing. For men only, having no children enhanced perceived lack of control in the presence of both lower relationship and sexual satisfaction. This suggests that having children “protects” against excessive porn use, as accessing porn is usually more difficult with children in the household.

Good relationship satisfaction, for both men and women, reduced the connection between perceived lack of control and frequency of use, suggesting that porn use is not as likely to be destructive for satisfying relationships. Lower sexual satisfaction predicted more frequent porn use, as well as greater perceived lack of control.

Working with Pornography in Relationships

What can we do with research findings to improve relationship quality and sexual satisfaction and limit the damaging effects of pornography, while enhancing arguably constructive pornography use? When pornography use is problematic, it can damage relationship and sexual enjoyment for both partners, worsening problems already present. For both partners in a less satisfying relationship, pornography use is more likely to feel out of control, suggesting major relationship issues are being avoided. When children come into the picture, women may find satisfaction in providing care, as women are still more often the primary caregivers, and the couple’s relationship may suffer if additional steps are not taken to prevent that from happening. For many couples, children draw partners closer.

Women may end up having fewer resources available for the couple, expending more time and energy with children. Men may turn to pornography, further widening the intimacy gap and potentially causing sexual dysfunction (Park et al., 2016). Pornography may also stabilize unhappy relationships by providing an alternative to infidelity. Porn use tends to be kept secret, a source of fear and shame (perhaps echoing childhood attitudes about self-stimulation), making it even harder to talk about relationship and sexual issues. In addition to sexual frustration, pornography may also be used to cope with other stressors in life, both within and outside of intimate relationships.

When couples decide to work on their relationship issues, pornography needs to be approached thoughtfully. Couples need to understand each other’s beliefs and attitudes. If there are major gaps in how they view pornography, it is going to be difficult to discuss sexuality and the relationship in general without coming to some consensus about those conflicts; if there is an absolute moral prohibition, it may even be a non-starter. Partners may also differ in whether they see porn use as infidelity. One person may see themselves as being innocent of any transgression, while the other feels betrayed. That betrayal then becomes the main issue, especially if it is already a theme in the relationship or part of the either partner’s past (e.g., a personal history of cheating, or being cheated on, and/or a parental infidelity history).

Partners may also hold different views on the morality of pornography. One person, for instance, may believe that pornography actors are generally abused and coerced vulnerable young people who are possibly fleeing problematic home situations; women being taken advantage of in a male-dominated industry. The other may argue that porn actors are aware of their choices and able to give full informed consent. It varies from person to person, and people who make porn vary in how they select actors. The meaning of being viewed as complicit in abuseby virtue of pornography consumption is a recurring theme for many couples, a discussion which often doesn’t go well.

Being clear about what constitutes infidelity and betrayal is also at the heart of the conversation. To complicate matters, people may be unaware of how they really feel about something until it happens. We could agree in principle, for example, that it’s OK to use porn, and that it isn’t cheating — only to find out we feel very differently when we catch our partner with it. This can lead to confusion and conflict, as each sees the other as culpable in different ways.

Getting clear with one another about porn is part of a larger effort to improve relationship and sexual satisfaction. Talking through sexual issues improves both sexual and relationship quality, and can include a detailed discussion of partners’ sexual wishes, which is shown to enhance women’s pleasure. It can also help to include close other couples in relationship conversations as well. Individual factors, such as attachment style and sexual self-concept, are additional important factors to consider. When couples are avoidant and/or don’t have the tools, they should strongly consider whether they are ready to make a serious commitment to dealing with their issues and seek appropriate assistance.

References

Blais-Lecours, S., Vaillancourt-Morel, M.-P., Sabourin, S., & Godbout, N. (2016). Cyberpornography: Time use, perceived addiction, sexual functioning, and sexual satisfaction. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and SocialNetworking, 19(11), 649–655. doi:10.1089/cyber.2016.0364

Cooper, A.,Delmonico,D. L., & Burg, R. (2000). Cybersex users, abusers, and compulsives:New findings and implications. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, 7(1–2), 5–29. doi:10.1080/10720160008400205

Daspe M, Vaillancourt-Morel M, Lussier Y, Sabourin S & Ferron A (2017): When Pornography Use Feels Out of Control: The Moderation Effect of Relationship and Sexual Satisfaction, Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy, DOI: 10.1080/0092623X.2017.1405301

Grubbs, J. B., Stauner, N., Exline, J. J., Pargament, K. I., & Lindberg, M. J. (2015). Perceived addiction to Internet pornography and psychological distress: Examining relationships concurrently and over time. Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, 29(4), 1056–1067. doi:10.1037/adb0000114

Miller D, Hald, J, Martin & Kidd G. (2017). Self-perceived effects of pornography consumption among heterosexual men. Psychology of Men & Masculinity. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, May 8. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/men0000112

Park BY, Wilson G & Doan AP. (2016). Is Internet Pornography Causing Sexual Dysfunctions? A Review with Clinical Reports. Behavioral Sciences, 2016 Sep; 6(3): 17.

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Does Faith Reduce Divorce Risk?

Originally posted at: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/03/20935/

Religious belief and activity—particularly prayer—matter in important ways. They make a deeply practical difference in how husband and wife interact with each other in daily life.

Many Christians believe that the divorce rate among believers is on a par with that of the unbelieving world. That’s simply not true—particularly for those who take their faith seriously in both belief and practice. The best research from sociology’s leading scholars has established this fact time and again over the last few decades.

Most recently, research conducted at Harvard’s School of Public Health reveals that regularly attending church services together reduces a couple’s risk of divorce by a remarkable 47 percent. Many studies, they report, have similar results ranging from 30 to 50 percent reduction in divorce risk. Happily, this holds largely true for white, black, Asian and Latino couples.

Research conducted at Bowling Green State University, a major center for ground-breaking family-formation research, affirms this conclusion. A leader in this field, Professor Annette Mahoney of Bowling Green’s Spirituality and Psychology Research Team, reports from her decades-long research that a couple’s spiritual intimacy and church participation is “very, very important and undeniably a construct that matters” greatly in boosting marital happiness and longevity. Additional research conducted by Mahoney and her team demonstrates that marriages are stronger and happier when the husband and wife understand the deeper spiritual significance of marriage. These findings have remained consistent over many decades and across socio-economic differences. The Bowling Green team notes:

Three recent longitudinal studies tied higher religious attendance, particularly by couples who attend the same denomination together, to decreased rates of future divorce. These results imply that great depth of integration in a spiritual community can help prevent divorce.

This is because religious belief and activity matter in important ways, making a deeply practical difference in how husband and wife interact with each other in daily life. It helps them manage their conflicts in kinder, more forgiving, and collaborative ways.

Adding to this research, scholars from the School of Family Life at Brigham Young University found that how often a couple attends church together has a strong impact on marital stability. The more often they attend, the stronger their marriage. The researchers report, “When both spouses attend church regularly, the couple has the lowest risk of divorce.” Moreover, couples holding more conservative Christian beliefs had a markedly lower risk than those with no or more liberal theological beliefs. Couples who marry in a religious service show a modestly lower risk of marital separation or dissolution than those who marry in a non-religious ceremony.

Unequally yoked couples—in which one spouse is a Christian while the other is not—are especially prone to divorce, affirming the biblical charge against it. However, when the husband is the regularly church-attending, strong believer, the marriage is much more durable and happier than when the wife is the sole believer. Similarly, in equally yoked couples, there is a demonstrable marital benefit when the husband is the spiritual leader. This speaks strongly to the importance of the man’s spiritual leadership in the home, as a wife is generally more likely to follow and appreciate the husband’s leadership in religious matters than vice versa.

The faith benefit is strong even for couples facing serious difficulties in their marriage. Mahoney and her team explain, “Couples who belonged to the same denomination at the time of their wedding were twice as likely to reconcile as couples in religiously [different] marriages. Couples where either partner had converted to the partner’s denomination prior to marriage were four times more likely to reconcile” than those with no or dissimilar faith (emphasis added). That is a tremendously powerful marriage-strengthening dynamic for a relatively simple relational component.

Church attendance and shared belief are not the only protective faith factors. A couple’s shared prayer life is extremely powerful. A 2015 study discovered that husbands and wives praying together for each other individually and offering forgiveness for personal offenses has “significant positive” effects on marriage overall. It helps them deal with the troubles that naturally arise in marriage, making them both accountable to God, who tells us not to hang onto past hurts and to sacrificially love and forgive others.

The University of Virginia’s W. Bradford Wilcox boldly explains in his book Soul Mates that “shared prayer completely accounts for the association between church attendance and a happy relationship.” This means that prayer as a regular part of a couple’s relationship, according to this research, is the most important spiritual practice in relational success. This is equally true for Latino, Asian, black, and white couples. Prayer not only invites God into the relationship at times of unhappiness and struggle, but also helps the couple become more intimate and concerned with one another. Regularly sharing one’s thoughts with God in the presence of another is extremely intimate, perhaps rivaled only by physical intimacy. It binds people together. They both require great transparency and trust, enhancing the marital relationship.

Church attendance doesn’t merely increase marital happiness and relational health. It is also associated with the likelihood of being married in the first place; church attenders get married at markedly higher rates. Professor Wilcox explains that “For men and women of all races and ethnicities, attending church regularly increases the odds of marriage by at least two-thirds.” African-American men and women are 46 to 51 percent more likely to be married if they attend church regularly. The same measure for Latino men is 62 percent more likely and 58 percent for white men.

Clearly, it is proven by many measures that marriage and church attendance go together in profoundly important ways. For couples who desire happy, fulfilling and enduring marriages, vibrant faith participation is as positively consequential as nearly all other beneficial factors.

While it is not fully understood why faith practice affects marriage so positively, the author of the Harvard study offers a nice round-up of some of the most widely held possibilities. Namely, regular church attendance and religious practice can:

– Reinforce a couple’s understanding that marriage is a sacred thing, larger than the couple and must ideally last for a lifetime.

– Reinforce biblical teachings against divorce, pornography, and marital infidelity.

– Reinforce the nature and importance of marital love, sacrifice, and attending to your spouse’s needs.

– Put couples in contact with numerous resources – encouraging friends/peers and marital education – that help them prepare for and strengthen marriage as well as resolve inevitable conflict. (Wilcox found that encouragement and advice from church friends accounts for more than half of the marital benefit of church attendance.)

– Increase many other important measures of personal health and well-being as well as a deeper sense of meaning in life, all things generally associated with greater marital happiness and protection against divorce.

Faith does matter. It makes a difference in all areas of life, including marriage. It is important that leaders and members of every church know this, as well as all marriage counselors. It’s one of the most powerful secret weapons in marital happiness and longevity—and this should no longer be a secret to anyone.

Glenn T. Stanton is the director of global family formation studies at Focus on the Family and the author of eight books on various aspects of the family, including The Ring Makes All the Difference: The Hidden Consequences of Cohabitation and the Strong Benefits of Marriage and Loving My LGBT Neighbor: Being Friends in Grace and Truth.

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Studies Referenced

  • Tyler J. VanderWeele, “Religion and Health: A Synthesis,” concluding chapter in Michael Balboni and John Peteet, (eds.) Spirituality and Religion With the Culture of Medicine: From Evidence to Practice (Oxford University Press, 2017).
  • Mohammed K. Fard, et al., “Religiosity and Marital Satisfaction,” Social and Behavioral Sciences 82 (2013): 307-311.
  • Vaugh R. A. Call and Tim B. Heaton, “Religious Influence on Marital Stability,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36 (1997): 382-392.
  • Jonathan R. Olson, et al., “Shared Religious Beliefs, Prayer, and Forgiveness as Predictors of Marital Satisfaction,” Family Relations 64 (2015): 519-533.
  • Annette Mahoney, et al., “Religion in the Home in the 1980s and 1990s: A Meta-Analytic Review and Conceptual Analysis of Links Between Religion, Marriage and Parenting,” Journal of Family Psychology 15 (2001): 559-596.
  • Prabu David and Laura Stafford, “A Relational Approach to Religion and Spirituality in Marriage: The Role of Couple’s Religious Communication in Marital Satisfaction,” Journal of Family Issues 36 (2013): 232-249.
  • Barbara H. Fiese and Thomas J. Tomcho, “Finding Meaning in Religious Practices: The Relation between Religious Holiday Rituals and Marital Satisfaction,” Journal of Family Psychology 15 (2001): 597-609.
  • Joe D. Wilmoth, et al., “Marital Satisfaction, Negative Interaction, and Religiosity: A Comparison of Three Age Groups,” Journal of Religion, Spirituality & Aging 27 (2015): 222-240.
  • Evelyn L. Lehrer and Carmel U. Chiswick, “Religion as a Determinant of Marital Stability,” Demography 30 (1993): 385-404.
  • Bradford Wilcox and Nicholas H. Wolfinger, Soul Mates: Religion, Sex, Love and Marriage Among African Americans and Latinos (Oxford University Press, 2016).

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30 Reasons Why People Lie

SOURCE:  Christine Hammond, MS, LMHC/PsychCentral

Rebecca is a middle school English teacher. Previously she worked in a local public school but was frustrated by the number of daily lies from her students. Thinking the private school environment would be better, she switched. But what she found was even more creative lies that her students would tell her.

One day she decided to count the number of deceptions she heard. Much to her surprise, it wasn’t just the students who were deceitful but the administration, other teachers and parents as well. In all, she counted over 50 lies in one day. This lead to generating a list of the different types of deceit. Here is her list of reasons why people lie.

  1. Defensive: The most common reason for lying is to self-protect. There might be a real consequence or a perceived one that a person is trying to defend themselves against.
  2. Vindictive: Some people lie intentionally to cause harm to others because they feel harmed by that person. It is a way of getting back at another person.
  3. Disappointment: In order to avoid disappointing another person or even themselves, a lie might be told. The uncomfortable feeling of disappointment justifies the deception.
  4. Manipulate: An abusive person constantly lies in order to continue their manipulation. If the truth came out, the abused might leave.
  5. Intimidated: Sometimes a lie is done because the person feels intimidated by others. Again, this feeling of inferiority is so uncomfortable that they lie to cover it up.
  6. Attention-seeking: Unfortunately, there are people who lie just to get the attention of other people. The irony is that most of them don’t know what to do with the attention when they do get it.
  7. Curiosity: This is a very childlike behavior that some adults don’t grow out of. Instead, they lie just to see what will happen regardless of the harm it might cause others.
  8. Superior: For those with a larger than life ego and in order to maintain their superiority, they lie to make themselves look better than others.
  9. Avoid: Some lies are done to get out of trouble or avoid any consequences. This is especially true with children.
  10. Cover: Some people wear a mask and pretend to be something they are not. To maintain their appearances, they lie to cover up any attempt at revealing the real person.
  11. Control: Sadly, sometimes it all comes down to control. In an effort to control another person’s behavior, a lie is told.
  12. Procrastinate: Passive-aggressively avoiding responsibilities is procrastination. This lie is more subtle in that the person knows they should be doing something but is intentionally putting it off.
  13. Bored: Some people like drama in their lives. So they lie to stir it up and watch the reactions of other people.
  14. Protect: There are some lies that are done to protect others. In some cases, a lie is told to take on responsibility for things they are not responsible for in an effort to help someone else.
  15. Habit: After a period of time and done constantly enough, bad habits can form. This is true for some lies that are said over and over.
  16. Fun: Some people lie as their form of private entertainment. For them, lying is fun because they like to watch how others respond.
  17. Desire: A person who wants a lie to be the truth has a deep desire to believe their misperception.
  18. Harm: People who want to harm others undecided, lie about who they are and what they are doing. This is a common tactic during the abduction of others.
  19. Sympathy: Similar to attention-seeking, a person is trying to get empathy from others by lying about a past or current event.
  20. Lazy: On occasion, a lie boils down to a person being lazy and not wanting to do the work, so they lie about it.
  21. Indifference: If a point or issue doesn’t matter to a person, they might lie about it and not see anything wrong with their deception.
  22. Perception: Some people believe their own lie. Their perception of reality is not accurate so in their eyes, it’s not a lie.
  23. Elevate: A person might want to elevate themselves to another person’s level high morality, strong work ethic, or perfectionistic standards, so they lie to lift themselves up.
  24. Impress: As a way of trying to impress others and cause a better impression, a person might lie about who they are, what they have done, or where they are going.
  25. Covet: When a person wants what other have, they covet the item or person and lie about their jealousy.
  26. Minimize: As a way of reducing the damage, harm, or consequences that might otherwise occur, a person minimizes the truth in their lie.
  27. Maximize: On the opposite end, a person might exaggerate their lie and make things worse than what it really is.
  28. Suppress: In an effort to cover up a problem, a person might suppress the truth. This lie is intentional.
  29. Deny: Not every person who doesn’t want something to exist by denying the reality, is lying intentionally. Sometimes this is an unintentional.
  30. Hide: A person might hide themselves, others, or things and lie about doing so as a way to avoid accountability. This is commonly done in conjunction with addictive behavior.

For Rebecca, understanding why a person lies helped her to identify the behavior and more accurately address the underlying issues. She took her frustration of experiencing the lies and turned it into a greater awareness of knowledge and discernment.

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How Can I Become a Child of God?

Originally posted at:

How can I become a child of God?

The world needs to know that it is not to late to become a child of God…. Yet, the end cometh !

Becoming a child of God requires faith in Jesus Christ. “To all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12).

“You must be born again”

When visited by the religious leader Nicodemus, Jesus did not immediately assure him of heaven. Instead, Christ told him he had to become a child of God, saying, “I tell you the truth, no one can see the kingdom of God unless he is born again” (John 3:3).

The first time a person is born, he inherits the sin nature that stems from Adam’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden. No one has to teach a child how to sin. He naturally follows his own wrong desires, leading to such sins as lying, stealing, and hating. Rather than being a child of God, he is a child of disobedience and wrath (Ephesians 2:1–3).

As children of wrath, we deserve to be separated from God in hell. Thankfully, Ephesians 2:4–5 says, “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions—it is by grace you have been saved.” How are we made alive with Christ / born again / made a child of God? We must receive Jesus by faith!

Receive Jesus

“To all who have received him—those who believe in his name—he has given the right to become God’s children” (John 1:12, NET). This verse clearly explains how to become a child of God. We must receive Jesus by believing in Him. What must we believe about Jesus?

First, the child of God recognizes that Jesus is the eternal Son of God who became man. Born of a virgin through the power of the Holy Spirit, Jesus did not inherit Adam’s sin nature. Therefore, Jesus is called the second Adam (1 Corinthians 15:22). While Adam’s disobedience brought the curse of sin on the world, Christ’s perfect obedience brings a blessing. Our response must be to repent (turn from sin) and seek forgiveness in Christ.

Second, the child of God has faith in Jesus as Savior. God’s plan was to sacrifice His perfect Son on the cross to pay the punishment we deserve for our sin: death. Christ’s death frees those who receive Him from the penalty and power of sin. His resurrection justifies us (Romans 4:25).

Finally, the child of God follows Jesus as Lord. After raising up Christ as the Victor over sin and death, God gave Him all authority (Ephesians 1:20–23). Jesus leads all who receive Him; He will judge all who reject Him (Acts 10:42). By God’s grace, we’re born again to new life as God’s child. Only those who receive Jesus—not merely knowing about Him but relying on Him for salvation, submitting to Him as Master, and loving Him as the supreme treasure—become children of God.

Become a child of God

Just as we had no part in our natural birth, we cannot cause ourselves to be born into God’s family by doing good deeds or conjuring up faith of our own. God is the one who “gave the right” to become a child of God according to His gracious will. “How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God!” (1 John 3:1). Thus, the child of God has nothing to be proud about; his only boast is in the Lord (Ephesians 2:8–9).

A child grows up to look like his parents. Similarly, God wants His children to become more and more like Jesus Christ. Although only in heaven will we be perfect, a child of God will not habitually, unrepentantly sin. “Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work. No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God. This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother” (1 John 3:7–10).

Make no mistake—a child of God cannot be “disowned” by sinning. But someone who consistently engages in and enjoys sin without heeding Christ and His Word reveals that he was never born again. Jesus told such people, “You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desire” (John 8:44). The child of God, on the other hand, no longer craves the gratification of sin but desires to know, love, and glorify his or her Father.

The rewards of being a child of God are immeasurable. As God’s child, we are a part of His family (the church), promised a home in heaven, and given the right to approach God in prayer (Ephesians 2:19; 1 Peter 1:3–6; Romans 8:15). Respond to God’s call to repent of sin and believe in Christ. Become a child of God today!