4 Steps to Silencing the Lies That Steal Your Confidence

You can’t win a battle unless you know who you’re fighting. So, who is the real enemy? 

Jesus called him “father of lies” (John 8:44). John called him “the devil” (12:9) and “the accuser” (12:10). No matter what you call him, the enemy is the one who tells us that we’re not good enough and never will be…and it’s not true. But the truth is, because of the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross and His Spirit in you, you are enough.

The devil can’t take away the promises of God. He can’t change the truth of who you are and what you have in Christ. But he can put a question mark at the end of those promises to cause you to question if His Word is true for you. 

We’ve got to know who the Enemy is and understand how he works. He does the very same with you and me that he did with Adam and Eve in the Garden. He takes the promises of God, such as, I am holy and dearly loved, and twists it around in your mind to become, am holy and dearly loved? Can I do all things through Christ who gives me strength? Am I free of condemnation?

When you sense you’re putting a question mark at the end of God’s promises, grab it with both hands and yank it into an exclamation mark!

I am holy and dearly loved!

I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength!

I am free from condemnation!

"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." - 2 Corinthians 10:5 NIV

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The Bible says, “We are not ignorant of [Satan’s] schemes” (2 Corinthians 2:11 nasb). His schemes include a step-by-step progressive plan of one lie that leads to another lie that leads to another lie. The lies begin small with seemingly insignificant consequences and gradually grow large with more destructive repercussions. Lies such as: 

I’m so stupid.
I can’t do anything right.
I’ll never change.

The only way to recognize the lie is to know the truth. We must know the truth, so when a counterfeit comes along, we recognize its lack of authenticity.

D. L. Moody once said, “The best way to show that a stick is crooked is not to argue about it or to spend time denouncing it, but to lay a straight stick alongside it” (Telling Yourself the Truth, pg. 3). God’s Word is the only straight stick—the only measuring stick that matters.

If Satan came to you in a little red suit with a pitchfork and announced himself as the devil, you wouldn’t believe a word he said. But he is cunning and disguises himself as an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). When he deceived Eve, he even quoted Scripture—albeit twisted and distorted.

He has a collection of old tapes from your past, and he pushes rewind and play, rewind and play. Oh yes, he knows which buttons to push. He also uses personal pronouns like “I” instead of “you.” The thoughts sound something like this: I am a failure. I am a loser. I can’t do anything right. I’m ugly. The thoughts sound like you, feel like you, and before you know it, you think they are you. That’s the reason it’s so difficult to detect the lies. They sound just like us.

When it comes to the enemy, we don’t have to outfight him; we just have to out-truth him. But first, we have to recognize the lies we’ve been telling ourselves.

Jesus said, “You will know the truth and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32). It’s knowing God’s truth that will help us recognize the lies we’re telling ourselves about ourselves.

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Once you recognize the lies, the next step is to reject them. Stop and say, “That’s not true!”

Many of the lies that rumble and tumble about in our minds have been there for a long time. We might not even know when or how they started. These pervasive and persistent thoughts can become what are called “strongholds.” The Greek word for stronghold is echo, meaning “to hold fast.” It looks like our English word echo and has a similar connotation: to echo again and again in someone’s mind. 

A derivation of that same word, echuroma, means “a stronghold, fortification, fortress.” A stronghold is a thought pattern that forms a fortress around the mind, holding it prisoner to faulty thinking. It’s formed brick by brick with repetitive faulty thinking or all at once by a one-time traumatic event. 

These thought patterns have the potential to grab hold of a mind and rule a life. Many strongholds are built for protection but inevitably become prisons. 

When we talk about strongholds, we’re not talking about random thoughts or occasional sins. A stronghold is a thought pattern or habitual sin. It’s a fortress built with the bricks of thoughts and held together by the mortar of emotions. Strongholds become our perception of reality.

A stronghold might be a thought such as:

I’m no good.
Nobody loves me.
I'm just a loser.

The Enemy locks you up in hopes you’ll never reach for the key within your reach—only a belief away. But the Bible says, “We have divine power to demolish strongholds.” The word demolish implies a kind of destruction requiring tremendous power—divine power. We cannot destroy strongholds with our own strength, even on our best days. The Holy Spirit can destroy strongholds with His power, even on our worst days. It begins with recognizing the lie, and then declaring, “That’s not true!”

For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 2 Corinthians 10:3-4 NIV

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After Jesus was baptized by his cousin, John, the clouds parted, a dove descended, and God spoke: “You are my Son, whom I love; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). 

Immediately, Jesus was led into the desert and came face-to-face with His nemesis—the devil He came to destroy. In Matthew 4, we read, 

After fasting forty days and forty nights, he was hungry. The tempter came to him and said, “If you are the Son of God, tell these stones to become bread.” Jesus answered, “It is written: ‘Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God’” (4:2-4).

Wait a minute. What does he mean, “If you are the Son of God…”? Didn’t God just say, “You are my Son; whom I love…” Yes, He did. Friend, the deceiver will do the same to you. When you begin to take hold of the truth of your true identity in Christ and the powerful promises of God, the devil will say to you, If you were a child of God…

Then He would answer your prayer.
Then He would give you what you want.
Then He would make you happy.
Then He would make you successful.
Then He would…

The devil knows exactly who you are and what you have as a child of God. His goal is to cause you to doubt and question the truth.

How did Jesus defeat the devil? He pulled out the sword of the Spirit—the Word of God—and plunged it into Satan’s lie. He recognized the lie, rejected the lie, and replaced the lie with truth. 

With each of the devil’s temptations in the wilderness, Jesus fought back with the words, “It is written.” He rejected the lies and replaced the lies with the truth (4:6, 4:7).

Defeated, Satan tucked his tail and slunk away to wait for an opportune time (Luke 4:13). 

The devil does the same thing with us today. It is up to us to follow Jesus’ example: recognize the lie, reject the lies, and replace the lie with truth. Then the enemy has no other choice but to turn and walk away.

“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12 NIV)

So the next time you hear the thoughts in your head telling you anything less than who you are, what you have, and where you are in Christ. Realize the enemy’s true identity. Recognize the lie. Reject the lie. Replace the lie with truth.

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