Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
—Psalm 119:105
I remember when my mom quit doing my laundry. I was in the eighth grade. She quit because I wouldn’t put my clothes in the dirty clothes hamper and then take the basket down the stairs to the laundry room.
I often wonder: How long would she have washed and dried my clothes had I just followed that one simple instruction? Would my mother STILL be doing my laundry? Maybe. (But probably not, since, you know, I live in a different city than she does now.)
Once I was in charge of my own clean clothes situation, I decided to label my closet. Sure, I was the only one using said closet, but I found it important to add labels. I sat at my little white desk and cut printer paper into strips, and using markers, I wrote “dresses,” “skirts,” “khakis,” etc. There were about eight different categories, and I taped the labels in my closet. Believe me when I say I was militant about putting things under the exact right label. I’m a fan of labels.
When I taught elementary school, every drawer and cubby and shared space had a label. Paper clips here, books there, tissues here, homework over there.
Labels are all around us. In restaurants, in stores, in schools. And even on people.
When I think about myself, a few labels that come to mind.
Daughter.
Sister.
Girl.
Small Group Leader.
Author.
Mentor.
Friend.
But those aren’t the only labels we believe. As if you haven’t figured this out yet, I am a big believer in the power of words—the words that other people say about you, the words that you think about yourself, and the words that God says about you—and the power they carry.
If we want to use our words well to speak love to other people, we have to choose to believe true labels about ourselves first.
And I haven’t always done that. When I was in high school, I used other labels too.
Ugly.
Fat.
Unloved.
Annoying.
Too much.
And when I believed those labels, I acted them out. A favorite pastor of mine, Mark Fritchman, taught us this saying when I was in college:
Watch your thoughts; they become words.
Watch your words; they become actions.
Watch your actions; they become habits.
Watch your habits; they become your character.
Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.
You see, what enters your mind—the labels you believe—becomes who you are, and the labels affect the words you use.
So whether it is labels that the outside world puts on you or labels that are whispered into your head, learn to identify which ones are lies and meant to hurt you and which ones are truth.
Here’s a beautiful thing: Jesus changes our labels. Jesus used His words throughout the Bible to counter the lies people believed, to look at the old labels and change them.
In Luke 19, we meet a guy called Zacchaeus. (I know, you gals who grew up in children’s church are already singing the song: “Zacchaeus was a wee little man …”) He’s a tax collector, a short little guy who is not too well liked by his neighbors. In fact, in Luke 19:7, all the people start whispering about Zacchaeus and calling him a sinner.
He’s labeled. Sinner. Bad guy. Less than.
But Jesus? Jesus sees Zacchaeus, perched up in a tree, and invites Himself over to Zac’s house. The amazing thing is what happens next.
All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a ‘sinner.’”
But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost.”
Do you see it? Jesus changed Zacchaeus’s label, and it changed the words Zacchaeus said. No longer was he the bad guy or the crook, because Jesus called him something new. And something true.
Remember our boy Peter from the beginning on the book? Well, in Matthew 16, his name is Simon.
When Jesus arrived in the villages of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “What are people saying about who the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some think he is John the Baptizer, some say Elijah, some Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”
He pressed them, “And how about you? Who do you say I am?”
Simon Peter said, “You’re the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus came back, “God bless you, Simon, son of Jonah! You didn’t get that answer out of books or from teachers. My Father in heaven, God himself, let you in on this secret of who I really am. And now I’m going to tell you who you are, really are. You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out.
His name is Simon, but Jesus calls him Peter and says he is a “rock.” And although Peter messed up with his words (haven’t we all?), you can follow him through the New Testament and see how God used him to build the church—that same church you are a part of now.
Jesus changed Peter’s name, his label. And Peter used his words to change the world.
So you see, even people in the Bible had labels that were wrong until Jesus spoke and changed their identities to something true. There are many more examples, like in John 8 when a woman was caught in adultery and Jesus set her free and told her to sin no more. She was caught, but He let her go. That’s a new label. A new word.
To believe Truth, to speak in love and truth, we have to recognize that every label we believe about ourselves isn’t necessarily true. And we have to listen to Jesus, to His words, and let HIM define us.
Satan is a liar. I know you know that, but I want to say it again. He is a liar. He wants to define you, label you, and stop you from using your words to change the world.
When he lies to you (for instance, “You are ugly”), you begin to swirl that thought around in your head: “I guess I am ugly, she is prettier than me, I’m definitely the ugliest girl in our class.” Soon ugly words to yourself lead to ugly words about others (“Did you see her outfit today? Woof.”) only because you are hurting and insecure.
You hear a lie, you treat it like truth, it becomes a label, and then you act out of that label.
It’s a vicious cycle that can only be treated by a heaping dose of Truth—the real stuff. That’s why I love the Bible. In the Bible, God has already given you all the labels you need, and that’s how we learn how to treat ourselves and each other.
When I was in high school, one of the older women in our church came to our small group one night to teach on “standards.” I know, I know. Roll your eyes like I did, because I was so tired of hearing how I was supposed to dress and what I was supposed to look like as a Christian. But she did a very interesting thing—she took us to twelve verses in the Bible and said, “Look, here is what God says is your standard for how you are to live.”
It was like it was all laid out right there for me. How were we supposed to dress? 1 Peter 3 says that our beauty shouldn’t come from what is on the outside, but what is on the inside. At each verse, she’d say, “Write here, beside the verse, that this is your standard for clothing.” And I did. That same Bible goes with me everywhere, fifteen years later, so I can still see the words “standard of clothing” written in blue pen beside those underlined verses.
I was glad that she came to our group that night. I learned that I didn’t have to decide for myself how I was supposed to live and I also didn’t necessarily have to listen to the people who I felt were being bossy about my life. I just had to look to the Bible to decide how to be.
When I struggle with labels—and listen, I still STRUGGLE with labels and choosing to believe what the Bible says about me instead of what I hear in my head—I turn to the Bible.
Sounds like the cheesy Christian answer, right? Well, let me prove that while you may think it’s cheesy, it is also totally true and awesome. Listen, the Bible is THE authority on who we are and how we are to live. It is our guide.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
God’s Word is meant to light up the dark places, to invade those corners full of lies and shine beams of truth. When light enters, darkness flees. And the only way we can shine light into the world is if the light lives in us.
This is the same reason that I’ve encouraged you to memorize a verse every single chapter. Because we should have God’s Word stored up deep in our hearts, so that when we hear the lies and they try to suck us back into the darkness, we can combat them. Immediately.
Sister, you have to fight the lies. I know it is hard. I know. I KNOW.
If you knew how many times I said ugly things to myself on a daily basis and then had to take them back and say, “No, Annie. That is not true. You are loved and cared for, and God is on your side and He made you on purpose.”
Sometimes, even if you are being tortured, it is easier to relax into the pain than to fight it. But you have to fight it. You were meant to change the world with your words, and the enemy wants to do all he can to steal, kill, and destroy you into silence. Don’t. Be. Silent.
A girl believing lies but trying to share the truth is like a flashlight in need of batteries.
Let’s get some batteries.
This is the process that I’ve found to believing Truth. (In Perfectly Unique, I talk about Lie/Truth cards, and this is that same idea, only with the added step of thinking through how believing the truth can affect the words you say. So check out the Mind chapter of Perfectly Unique if you want to dig deeper into this.) And you’ll see, in the examples below, why it is important to know Scripture to get to be the kind of woman you want to be.
Lie: You hear that you are ugly.
Truth: God says you are beautiful. (Song of Solomon 4:7)
Result: If you choose to believe Him, you grow to love yourself and the way that God made you and then you are able to love other people with more of your heart.
Lie: You see someone being bullied and you think, “I can’t do anything because I don’t want to fight this battle by myself.” You hear that you are alone.
Truth: God says He fights for us. (Exodus 14:14)
Result: If you choose to believe Him, you stand up for your friend, knowing that God fights on your side and that you are not alone.
Lie: You hear that you have no future. That because of your upbringing or your neighborhood or your family situation or your lot in life, God doesn’t have good plans for you.
Truth: God says He does. God says that He has great plans for you. (Jeremiah 29:11)
Result: If you choose to believe Him, you live with hope and look to the future with excitement and can encourage others to do the same, no matter what has happened in their history.
Lie: You hear that no one loves you.
Truth: God says He does. (Jeremiah 31:3)
Result: If you choose to believe Him, you live like someone who is loved. You speak with kindness and a lightness because you know that no matter what, you are deeply loved.
Lie: You hear that you are a sinner, you have screwed up too much.
Truth: God says He knew that you would screw up, and He loved you anyway. (Romans 5:8)
Result: If you choose to believe Him, you can live openly and honestly, without guilt or shame, and use your words to show others about God’s forgiveness.
Lie: You hear that you don’t matter to anyone.
Truth: God says He bought you. You cost Him something of great worth—His Son. He thinks you have great value. (1 Corinthians 6:20)
Result: If you choose to believe Him, when your friend says she wants to commit suicide because she doesn’t matter to anyone, you can tell her with assurance that she matters a great deal to you and to God.
We could keep going and going. The Bible is full of the amazing things God says about you.
The challenge isn’t finding the verses—thanks to the Internet and websites like BibleGateway.com, all you have to do is search “verses about how God feels about me” and for the next thirty minutes you can be reading them.
The challenge? The challenge is believing them.
It’s way easier to believe you are ugly when you see what “beauty” is according to our culture or when you don’t love the way your clothes fit. The old labels are tough to lose, I know. The battle to believe truth is a daily one in which some days will feel simple and others will be heartbreakingly hard.
Listen, you think I don’t feel alone in this battle to speak love to you so that you will speak it to others? The lies I hear EVERY DAY tell me that I am alone in this, the only soldier in an army fighting to free you from lies and set you free to speak truth to the people in your world. Sometimes I feel like all I want to do is throw my computer into the street and crawl into bed.
But God reminds me. He fights for me. He is with me. I am not alone.
I choose to believe Him because I know He is right. So I keep fighting, even when the battle is just words on a page. And when I believe Him, I use my words to say so. See how that works?
So how do you beat the lies?
Whether it is your small group friends, your parents or another adult, your leaders at church, or an older girl in your life, you’ve got to have some other people helping you identify lies.
Anytime I say something negative about myself out loud, one of my best friends, Nichole, will say, “Um, please don’t talk about my friend that way.” The first few times, it confused me. And then I realized—Nichole wouldn’t let me talk about any of our other friends that way, so she wasn’t going to let me talk about myself that way either.
Your people can help you identify the lies and replace them with the truth.
The Bible, sister. You need to know it. You need to know the truth so that you can identify it up against a lie. If you hear anything in your head that doesn’t agree with the Word of God, it is a lie. Plain and simple.
A lie I used to struggle with was that God loved other people more than He loved me. When I shared this with a friend in college, she showed me these verses.
Then Peter began to speak: “I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.”
So I called on my team to help me know the Truth so that I didn’t live under that lie of a label.
The Bible is full of words that speak straight to our hearts like this, and stories that show us examples of other humans who have dealt with some of the same stuff we are facing.
(Sometimes it is hard to know where to start. Check the appendix for a few other resources that I’ve found helpful when trying to live in Truth.)
The Bible says that when you know the Truth, it will set you free (see John 8:32). The better you know the Truth, the freer you are. Yes and amen. So read it, memorize it, go over it and over it again. Write important verses on note cards and hang them on your bathroom mirror. The verse I’m working on memorizing right now? (I’m gonna try to do it without looking. I’ll let you know how it goes …)
Sow for yourselves righteousness, reap the fruit of unfailing love, and break up your unplowed ground; for it is time to seek the Lord, until He comes and showers righteousness on you.
(I did it, by the way, except I missed some punctuation. So I’d say 97 percent correct.)
Especially as you identify labels that you have lived under, you need to find and memorize and repeat those verses that remind you what is true.
For example, when I hear in my head that I am too much or not enough (both tend to come into my brain on a fairly regular basis), I’ve learned enough of Psalm 139 that I can say it to myself. I am fearfully and wonderfully made. And that’s the truth.
The best way to understand anything is to get involved! As a college student, I taught my church’s high school Sunday school class with my friend Kevin. While it was a real season of growth for me spiritually, I would say that the lessons that are still with me today are the ones that I taught to those students every other week, (assuming I didn’t accidentally oversleep. It happened).
So how do you do that? Well, it could be as simple as sharing what you are learning with your siblings or your friends at lunch. A few weeks ago, Sonnie and Betsy and I got coffee on a Sunday afternoon. We weren’t planning on talking about anything serious, we just wanted to catch up. As the afternoon wore on, we went from telling simple funny stories to discussing profound things that we were learning from God and other people. We didn’t set out to “teach” each other per se, but that just happens sometimes. When you talk about what God is doing for you, other people learn from it. (Remember—that’s why we share our stories first.)
But there are also real opportunities to teach that you should look into. Does your school have an FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) group? Maybe you could teach that one week. Or Young Life or youth group or your small group. It’ll take you having a little courage and a little umph to get a chance to teach what you are learning, but go for it!
Another option? ONLINE, SISTER! Blog what you are learning, tweet the verses you are memorizing, or write a Facebook post about new truths in your heart. Remember, you never know how many people are going to be impacted by what you share online. (It’s beautiful and a bit terrifying, yes?)
Share the truth as it hides in your heart. Never be ashamed of what you are learning, even if you are in process. It’s a beautiful thing to share in the middle of the lesson—you don’t have to wait until the end!
It’s a choice. Believing truth is always a choice. In every situation, in every conversation, and in every moment you stand in front of a mirror and begin to criticize yourself, you have the choice to fight for truth or give into the lies.
There is so much power when you begin to understand that you are who GOD says you are, not who other people say you are or who your mind believes you are.
You’re free from those labels, my friend. The only labels you have to hold on to are the ones that remind you that you are loved and cherished and beautiful.
Let me tell you about believing in Truth and how it changed my life.
I’m free. I can live and speak and love openly because I believe who God says I am. My insecurities are quieter (not gone, but quieter) and my worries are lighter (not weightless, but lighter) and my heart is fuller because I know how God feels about me.
I am released to believe that I am who He says I am. That the Bible is true. That I am deeply loved no matter what.
I’m not perfect, but I have the freedom to be right or wrong or successful or not.
You can too, friend. Really. You can. This isn’t something special for me and me alone because I’m an author or an adult or a Nashville resident. This is for you too.
Freedom from lies is for all of us.
Christ has set us free to live a free life. So take your stand! Never again let anyone put a harness of slavery on you.
Start today. Don’t wait. I wonder if your heart has been just waiting for permission to fight, to stand up and refute the lies that try to take over your mind. In your comfy place, wherever that is, take some time and think about the labels that try to define you, think about the lies that try to divert you from the course God has planned, and look for the truth that should be your identification.
Read this chapter again if you need to, really. Digest it. Feel it. Ask God to change you through it. This can change the whole course of your life and the direction of your words.
Believe the truth. Fight the lies. Everything will change.
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
—Psalm 119:105
• Luke 19
• 1 Peter 3
• Song of Solomon 4:7
• Exodus 14:14
• Jeremiah 29:11
• Jeremiah 31:3
• Romans 5:8
• 1 Corinthians 6:20
• Acts 10:34–35
• Hosea 10:12
• Galatians 5:1
• Make a list of the labels that you feel like have been placed on you. Circle the ones that you think may be lies.
• What lies do you know you currently believe?
• Write out a prayer to God asking Him to reveal to you anything you believe that isn’t true.
• Find some Scriptures that will help combat the lies and help you embrace the truth.
• Talk to someone else in your life—a friend or mentor—about the lies you are believing. Let him or her help you identify truths to fight against those lies.
• Write out some Scriptures that are truths you need in your heart, and hang the verses in your room or bathroom or on your car’s dashboard or in your locker.
• Post your favorite new verse on social media and hashtag #SpeakLove.
• Settle into this chapter, don’t rush it. There’s a lot to be learned here and digested, so take your time and really work through what you believe about yourself and what labels need to go.