The Lies We Believe about God: Knowing God for Who He Really Is

By Chris Thurman

Without even realizing it, many people believe lies about God, such as:
  “God’s love must be earned.”
“God has lost control of everything.”
“God gives us everything we want in life.”  
In The Lies We Believe about God, psychologist Chris Thurman explores the influences that affect everyone’s view of God, the cost of not knowing God for who He really is, and how knowing God more intimately can bring greater meaning and joy to life.
 
This engaging, biblically rooted book calls readers to see the truth of who God is—truth that can set them free to enjoy a deeper relationship with Him.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: David C Cook
• Release date: Jul 1, 2017
• ISBN: 9781434711854

Book preview

What people are saying about …

THE LIES WE BELIEVE ABOUT GOD

"If you want to know God—really know God—you’ve got to read this book. Dr. Chris Thurman cuts through our unknowing distortions to reveal how we can enjoy an authentic and life-changing relationship with God. It’s revolutionary. The Lies We Believe about God will likely be one of the most important books you ever read."

Les Parrott, PhD, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts

"I have known Dr. Chris Thurman and have learned from his wisdom for many years now. His earlier book The Lies We Believe was eye-opening for hundreds of thousands of people. But I love his latest book, The Lies We Believe about God, even more. It is packed with life-changing insights. The most important thing that determines the value, meaning, love, and joy of our lives is our view of God. This book will help you immensely."

Paul Meier, MD, founder of the Meier Clinics and bestselling author of Happiness Is a Choice

"The Lies We Believe about God is well-balanced between theological insights gained from a lifetime of biblical study and wise observations gained from a lifetime of counseling ministry. Jesus said, ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free’ (John 8:32). To the degree that we do not know the truth, we are vulnerable to ignorance and deception. Chris’s highly readable book, filled with keen insights and engaging first-hand stories, can liberate us from ignorance and deception about God, and it can help set us free."

Dr. Max Anders, bestselling author of 30 Days to Understanding the Bible and founder of the 7 Marks Resource Group

"Chris Thurman’s The Lies We Believe about God delivers the correction and clarity desperately needed by those who want to know who God really is. The false perceptions addressed not only expose popular lies about God, but also give clear biblical correctives that reveal His real character. Dr. Thurman’s application sections in the Final Thoughts summaries of each lie make the book a must-read for those in the faith and new members of the family of God."

Dr. James Rose, pastor emeritus of Calvary Baptist Church in New York

What we know and believe about God matters. It is foundational to who we are and the future. Faulty and toxic beliefs bring confusion and can taint everything in our lives. Dr. Chris Thurman masterfully exposes the lies we often believe about God and challenges us to know God and trust His heart and leading. A gift to us all …

Dr. Tim Clinton, president of American Association of Christian Counselors

"This may be one of the most important books you will ever read. The Lies We Believe about God is Dr. Thurman’s crowning jewel of all his works. Chris has a unique way of bringing clarity to the complex issues of life, and his devotion to truth and his ability to communicate it is eye-opening to the chaos of our culture. Absorb the truth of this book and you will discover a clear perspective of the real God who wants to have a personal relationship with you."

Dr. Tom Hufty, senior pastor of First Baptist Church in Maryville, Illinois

"So many false views of God are being taught in the religious marketplace of ideas these days. Sadly, this is even true within the Christian church. In his newest book, The Lies We Believe about God, Dr. Chris Thurman powerfully and biblically deals fatal blows to the distorted notions we have of God—the ways of thinking about God that keep us from having an intimate relationship with Him. This is a significant book written for the chaotic times we live in, times when truth has been sacrificed to the idol of ‘sincere feelings.’ Do you really want to know what God is like? Read this book and find out."

Dr. Matt Cassidy, senior pastor of Grace Covenant Church in Austin, Texas

Books that are lived before being written are few and far between, and that is why this book is important. Dr. Chris Thurman presents us with a three-fold cord of story-telling, biblical truth, and personal experience that untangles the knots of lies we have become accustomed to believe about God. Chris has walked in the trenches with many people through his decades of counseling, and he shares with patience and true wisdom consistently rooted in God’s Word. This book is a life journey of one man’s calling to uncover lies and powerfully fire back with biblical truth. Read slowly, friend, and allow the words to untangle the lies that keep you from walking with God. Get ready to be introduced to the Lover of your soul.

Dennis J. Gallaher, senior pastor of Freedom Fellowship Church in New Braunfels, Texas, and author of A Sabbath Rest

"When I read The Lies We Believe about God, I immediately thought about the countless Christians I’ve met over the years who have abandoned their faith due to some type of disillusionment with God. If only they had read this book to help shine a light on and expose the lies they believed about God before they took that first step off the path of faith! Whether you fall into the category of the disillusioned or simply find yourself just plain stuck, Chris Thurman’s book is for you. It should be mandatory reading for every Christian, no matter where they are in the journey of faith."

Vicki Courtney, speaker and author of Five Conversations You Must Have with Your Daughter, Move On, and Rest Assured

"In his book The Lies We Believe about God, Chris Thurman powerfully reminds us what many of us forget about the one true God. Using compelling stories from the Bible and timely stories from his vast counseling experience, we are reintroduced to the great and mighty God—and, as a result, we are transformed in our thinking and led to embrace a loving relationship with Him. Chris tells us his purpose in writing this book is to raise our view of God so we will be ‘awestruck and overwhelmed by the God who spoke the universe into existence and created us in His own image.’ Truly, this is an ambitious mission. After reading this book, I have been overwhelmed. Now I am praying that my passion and joy and intimacy with God will follow. I highly recommend this book to you!"

Dr. Rob Harrell, pastor emeritus of Austin Oaks Church in Austin, Texas

Years ago I believed that God was a lot like certain adult figures in my life—unpredictable, capricious, and scary. Because of that lie, I had a hard time trusting God and never felt close to Him. Dr. Chris Thurman’s book The Lies We Believe about God powerfully exposes ten lies we believe about God, lies that keep us bondage to a distant and broken relationship with the One who loves us dearly. Chris poignantly and wisely walks us through life-changing truths about who God really is that help us grow closer to Him and others in our lives. If you want to be set free from a fear-driven and fractured relationship with God, read this book and experience what it is like to fully enjoy and love our amazing Creator.

Leslie Vernick, life coach, speaker, and bestselling author of The Emotionally Destructive Marriage and The Emotionally Destructive Relationship

THE LIES WE BELIEVE ABOUT GOD

Published by David C Cook

4050 Lee Vance Drive

Colorado Springs, CO 80918 U.S.A.

David C Cook U.K., Kingsway Communications

Eastbourne, East Sussex BN23 6NT, England

The graphic circle C logo is a registered trademark of David C Cook.

All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes,

no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form

without written permission from the publisher.

The website addresses recommended throughout this book are offered as a resource to you. These websites are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of David C Cook, nor do we vouch for their content.

Details in some stories have been changed to protect the identities of the persons involved.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® and NIV® are registered trademarks of Biblica, Inc. Use of either trademark for the offering of goods or services requires the prior written consent of Biblica, Inc. Scripture quotations marked ESV are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved; KJV are taken from the King James Version of the Bible. (Public Domain.); NASB are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, copyright © 1960, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lockman.org).

The author has added italics to Scripture quotations for emphasis.

LCCN 2017931372

ISBN 978-0-7814-1290-2

eISBN 978-1-4347-1185-4

© 2017 Christopher Wyatt Thurman

Published in association with the literary agency of D.C. Jacobson & Associates LLC, an Author Management Company. www.dcjacobson.com.

Adapted from The Lies We Believe by Dr. Chris Thurman © 2003 Thomas Nelson, Nashville, Tennessee. Used by permission of Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.

The Team: Tim Peterson, Keith Wall, Amy Konyndyk, Cara Iverson, Abby DeBenedittis, Susan Murdock

Cover Design: Nick Lee

First Edition 2017

Dedicated to those who struggle

with a distorted view of God:

all seven billion of us.

Now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

—1 Corinthians 13:12

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. How You View God Is the Most Important Thing about You

2. Love of Another Kind

The Lie: God’s Love Must Be Earned

3. Shame on You

The Lie: God Is a Shamer

4. He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands

The Lie: God Has Lost Control of Everything

5. Good Will Hunting

The Lie: God Is Mean and Vindictive

6. When a Speeding Ticket Is a Good Thing

The Lie: God Ignores Our Disobedience

7. Santa Claus Isn’t Coming to Town

The Lie: God Gives Us Everything We Want in Life

8. You Can’t Handle the Truth

The Lie: God Sugarcoats the Painful Things He Wants Us to Face about Ourselves

9. How Many Gods Does It Take to Change a Light Bulb?

The Lie: God Changes Us

10. Who Are You Again?

The Lie: God Doesn’t Know Us Very Well

11. Resistance Is Futile

The Lie: God Can Be Defeated

12. Our God Is an Awesome God

Appendix A: Verses for Study and Meditation

Appendix B: Daily Review of Who God Really Is

Questions for Reflection and Discussion

Recommended Reading

Notes

About the Author

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

God has blessed me with so many loving and supportive people throughout my life. I am deeply indebted to them all.

I want to thank my literary agent, Don Jacobson, for believing in me and supporting my efforts to write about the lies we believe that damage our relationships with others and with God. My heartfelt thanks to the people at David C Cook, especially Tim Peterson, for allowing me to express the message I feel called to bring to hurting people. I am so very thankful for my friend and professional colleague Dr. Steve Stratton and the effort he put into reviewing this book. This book wouldn’t be half of what it is without his wisdom and insight. Also, I am grateful to my editor Keith Wall for the great job he did on this book. Keith, thank you for using your talents and gifts to help me better express how important our view of God is in influencing the way we live our lives.

My family is my greatest earthly blessing. I am so grateful for my wife, Holly, and her grace and kindness over almost forty years of being together. My children, Matt, Ashley, and Kelly, are an incredible gift to me. I am so proud of the loving and mature people they have turned out to be that I could just bust my buttons. Other than the grace of God, nothing down here on earth has meant more to me than my wife and children.

I want to thank two people I have never met but who had a profound impact on this book: J. I. Packer, author of Knowing God, and A. W. Tozer, author of The Knowledge of the Holy. The deep and penetrating things these two men had to say about God significantly changed my view of the Almighty, and I will forever be in their debt. Tozer’s statement What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us¹ inspired me to write this book and led to giving chapter 1 the title that I did. Their fingerprints are on every page of what I have written, and I will always be grateful to them for powerfully and positively changing my view of our Creator.

The clients that I have worked with over the years are a wonderful blessing to me. I so greatly admire the perseverance they have shown when facing their problems. Time and time again they have taught me what it means to be a courageous human being who refuses to settle for a watered-down existence on this planet. I have learned more from them than they have ever learned from me. I tell their stories throughout this book but have changed their names and circumstances to protect their anonymity.

My deepest gratitude is to God for the many blessings He has showered me with throughout my life. I sensed His loving and gracious presence from an early age, especially during times when my dad was away serving in the military. God has been my true spiritual and emotional Father, and I will be eternally grateful to Him for adopting me into His family, making me an heir in Christ, and giving me a future that goes beyond anything I could have ever hoped for or imagined.

My final thanks are to you, the reader. You have many options when it comes to the books you read. Thank you for reading this one. This is the last lies book I will write and the one God has been pointing me toward ever since my first book, The Lies We Believe, came out in the late eighties. I am convinced that the deadliest of all the lies we believe are the ones we believe about God and that spiritual forces of darkness are constantly trying to use them to destroy us. I pray that this book will help you break free from the shackles of a distorted view of God and that you will be able to experience an intimate and joyful relationship with the One who loves you with every fiber of His being.

Chris Thurman

Austin, Texas

INTRODUCTION

Last year I had the pleasure of vacationing in London and Paris. While visiting those two amazing cities, Holly and I saw things that were truly jaw-dropping. We saw Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle, the crown jewels at the Tower of London, Parliament, Stonehenge, the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, and priceless works of art such as the Mona Lisa and the Venus de Milo at the Louvre. We were on stimulus overload the whole trip.

Yet as impressed as we were by what we saw, none of it holds a candle to God. Not even close. Unfortunately, many people, me included, are more amazed by the people and things we see here on earth than by the God who resides in heaven and created those things. This is the single most tragic reality about the world we live in: we are more impressed with earthly things than we are with God.

More than fifty years ago, theologian A. W. Tozer observed, The history of mankind will probably show that no people has ever risen above its religion, and man’s spiritual history will positively demonstrate that no religion has ever been greater than its idea of God.¹ Tozer was right. As individuals and as members of the human race, we cannot rise any higher than our view of God will take us. Given how poorly many people’s personal lives seem to be going and how badly the world seems to be doing, our view of God is in desperate need of repair.

The purpose of this book is to raise your view of God. I’m going to do this by taking you into ten of the most distorted ways we think about God—lies we believe about Him—and then walking you through what He is actually like. I hope that by the time you have finished reading this book, you will be awestruck and overwhelmed by the God who spoke the universe into existence and created us in His own image.

Let’s go on this journey together, a journey aimed at overcoming the lies we believe about God so that we can see Him more clearly and exaltedly. My prayer is that as we begin to see God for who He really is, our jaws will drop, we will live with greater passion and joy, and we will enjoy a deeper and more intimate relationship with our Maker than ever before.

Chapter 1

HOW YOU VIEW GOD IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING ABOUT YOU

The world becomes a strange, mad, painful place, and life in it a disappointing and unpleasant business, for those who do not know about God. Disregard the study of God, and you sentence yourself to stumble and blunder through life blindfolded, as it were, with no sense of direction and no understanding of what surrounds you. This way you can waste your life and lose your soul.

—J. I. Packer, Knowing God

If you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding—indeed, if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding, and if you look for it as for silver and search for it as for hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the LORD and find the knowledge of God.

—Proverbs 2:1–5

As kids, my two older brothers and I played baseball in our backyard one Saturday. When my turn at the plate came, I swung three times and missed three times. My brothers called me out and took the bat from my hands. I got so angry that I went to the back of our house and smashed a window with my fist. I cut my wrist badly, freaked out my mom and dad, and was rushed to a nearby hospital. A few hours and eight stitches later, my parents brought me back home, no doubt wondering what they were going to do with a hotheaded kid like me.

So why did I have such an angry reaction to being called out on three strikes? At the time, I was under the mistaken impression that a batter was called out when he got four strikes. In my young and misguided mind, I had confused balls with strikes and thought my brothers cheated me out of an extra swing. Given my disproportionate sense of fairness, I obviously overreacted.

When I was a child, I obviously didn’t understand baseball very well. Because of that, I didn’t play the game graciously or kindly. Had I known the rules, I would have simply handed the bat over rather than broken a window. And I would have avoided stitches and giving my parents a heart attack over their bloodied child.

The sad truth of the matter is that most of us don’t know God any better than I knew baseball when I was a child. We know a few things about God, but we don’t really know God. The apostle Paul said, "When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child,