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

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This book is more of a manifesto about spiritual formation. Specifically, why do we find it so hard to become people who look like Jesus? The World, the Flesh, and the Devil Willpower is at its best when it does what it can (direct my body into spiritual practices) so the Spirit’s power can do what willpower can’t (overcome the three enemies of the soul).” (p. 175) People shouldn’t do whatever they want, and not all desires are equal. Christians should distinguish between primal desires, like lust, and superior desires, like the desire to love and follow God.

According to the author, the West is facing a spiritual apocalypse. Christians need survival strategies – and they can’t fight the battle alone. LiveNoLies is brilliant, deep, scriptural, and will equip you to face the enemy and fight.”—Jennie Allen, New York Times bestselling author of Get Out of Your Head Saint Peter predicted that Christians would be exiles. But living in exile doesn’t mean having a lonely existence. In today’s culture, an effective church needs to be a community of close relational ties, where people form deep, intimate relationships with each other. Christians should also commit to attending regular meetings with other followers of Jesus; at the meetings, people could confess to each other and offer love and support.I hold a master’s degree in Biblical and Theological Studies from Western Seminary, and these days, you can find me continuing to read, listen, and learn what it looks like to follow Jesus in community.

This insight about “deepest vs. strongest” desires is similar to the “important vs. urgent” idea. We need to stop choosing something now at the cost of something better later. Well-respected psychologist and researcher Dr. Erich Fromm lived through both world wars and lost his Jewish faith on the other side of that trauma. After researching Nazism for years, he came to the conclusion that no one starts out evil;12 instead, people become evil “slowly over time through a long series of choices.”13 His book The Heart of Man, which is an exploration of evil and the human condition, is worth quoting at length: The longer we continue to make the wrong decisions, the more our heart hardens; the more often we make the right decision, the more our heart softens—or better perhaps, becomes alive…. Each step in life which increases my self-confidence, my integrity, my courage, my conviction also increases my capacity to choose the desirable alternative, until eventually it becomes more difficult for me to choose the undesirable rather than the desirable action. On the other hand, each act of surrender and cowardice weakens me, opens the path for more acts of surrender, and eventually freedom is lost. Between the extreme when I can no longer do a wrong act and the extreme when I have lost my freedom to right action, there are innumerable degrees of freedom of choice…. Most people fail in the art of living not because they are inherently bad or so without will that they cannot lead a better life; they fail because they do not wake up and see when they stand at a fork in the road and have to decide.14” We are at war. Not with a foreign government or domestic terrorists or a creepy new artificial intelligence hell-bent on taking over the world. No, it’s a war we feel deep inside our own chests: we are at war with lies.

Skilfully weaving together uplifting wisdom and reassuring, practical guidance, this is a book for anyone looking for everyday disciplines to help them care for their soul. Live No Lies will equip you with all you need to make practices for resisting evil an active part of your spiritual formation, and leave you motivated to find happiness and peace in Jesus. Not all desires are created equal. Or at least, not all are equally beneficial. Some of our desires are higher or nobler and lead to life and freedom and peace; others are lower or more animalistic and lead to death and slavery and fear.” When a person fasts, they train their body to not get what it wants. They stop giving into their desires, so they are no longer controlled by them. Of course, being deprived of food is a form of suffering, but it’s a lesson in suffering with joy. It can even be a path to freedom. It’s rare to have well-read, conservative voices in our culture who also have their pulse on our personal spiritual formation. That’s what Comer is doing in this book. We all know we’re in the midst of a spiritual war; we can feel it in our bones. We sense it in our distraction and daze, our longings and abandoned dreams. Some enemy is trying to pull us out of our allegiance to God, away from our first love. Comer presents this enemy with the traditional concepts of the early church: Satan, the flesh, and the world.

These days, however, even many Christians are skeptical. People treat the devil as a myth or ancient nonsense. of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars Live No Lies: Recognize and Resist the Three Enemies That Sabotage Your Peace by John Mark Comer In context, Jesus had just told his followers that “if you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples,” and as a result, “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” The world is a dangerous place. Christians are threatened not just by the devil’s lies and their own desires, but also by the world itself.The author also makes an excellent point that the worst lies are those which deny something good and right about God. This affects our trust in him; so if we are struggling to trust him then we should consider if there is a lie behind this which we have accepted into our lives. The tables are turned, and John Mark sits down in the hot seat for today’s interview. Join him and his good friend, and pastoral successor, Tyler Staton for a conversation on the story behind writing a book on the world, the flesh and the devil. But of course, the two of them end up talking about all sorts of even more interesting subjects. In addition, a church should be a community of holiness, set apart from the hedonism of secular society. For example, Christians should be mindful of their sexual behavior and attitudes, and use their bodies to honor God.