“Kings take pleasure in honest lips; they value a man who speaks the truth.”¹

In speaking about personal honesty—that is, being honest with one’s emotions and motives—the challenge is, how do we learn to be this? It isn’t easy. For many, it’s like learning a new language. However, there are some positive steps we can take.

First, realize that a normal human being has a whole spectrum of emotions ranging from love, joy, peace, wonder, and all the way through to fear, hurt and anger. These are all God-given emotions. Without them, life would be terribly dull. To be emotionally whole means to be in touch with every human emotion. Unfortunately, when these emotions are denied, they can become ugly. For instance, buried love can turn into lust. Denied fear can turn into phobias. Buried wonder often expresses itself in materialism; that is, instead of loving people and using things, we end up unhappily loving things and using people. And unresolved hurt and anger can turn into bitterness, resentment, and even rage or violence. Or if one turns his anger inward, he can become very depressed and/or physically ill.

Second, we need to see our need and be totally committed to becoming personally honest.

Third, we need to accept responsibility for any problems we have, and consider the possibility that our impaired relationships, dull marriage, unsatisfactory sex life in our marriage, anxiety, depression, destructive habits and any physical symptoms we have, may be caused or greatly aggravated by our own unresolved, supercharged, repressed negative emotions.

Fourth, and most important of all, we need to learn to pray honestly. If necessary, tell God that you don’t know how, or are too afraid, to be honest with yourself and need his help. Ask him to give you the courage to see yourself as you are and to face you with the truth about yourself. His answer will probably come in an unexpected way—perhaps through a book, a personal setback, a friend, a difficult or broken relationship, or some other painful situation. Unfortunately, most of us only look at ourselves if we are hurting sufficiently. As C.S. Lewis put it, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Fifth, learn through practice to express your feelings openly and honestly, especially to the people who are important to you. Start with non-threatening feelings such as, “I was really feeling upset today when such and such happened.” Or “I sure was scared today when my boss called me into his office.”

Keep practicing on the “easy” ones and then, in time, when you’re feeling hurt, confused, afraid, frustrated, or angry, admit it and say, “I feel confused or angry.” Never say, “You make me mad,” or “You hurt me.” This blames the other person for our reactions, which are always our responsibility. Identify why you are feeling the way you are. For example, say, “I know my feelings are my problem, and I may be overreacting, but when you speak sharply to me as you just did, I feel hurt and/or angry.”

If the person won’t accept your feelings, write them out in a letter. If you feel you should give it to him or her, sleep on it and rewrite it (and be sure to pray about it) before doing so. And, as already pointed out, never ever send a first draft. If he or she still won’t accept your feelings, try what Gary Smalley and John Trent suggest in their book, The Language of Love. Share how you are feeling by using word pictures; that is, by making up a story or parable that will clearly show how you are feeling.

Finally, if I love you, I will always be open and honest with you and as the Bible suggests, I will always strive to “speak the truth in love.” Therefore, I will never blame you for my feelings, but will take full responsibility for them, and for handling and communicating them in a loving, non-vindictive manner.

Denying our faults and feelings, acting them out blindly, or lashing out and hurting others with them, is weak and immature. Acknowledging and talking them out in a responsible manner is a hallmark of the mature adult. It may not be easy, but it is true strength, and is the only way to develop growth producing and intimate relationships.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to always be honest with myself, with you, and with my closest friends and loved ones. Help me to become known as a person who is real, genuine, and an authentic, kind, loving, and accepting person, and thus a clear channel through whom your love can flow. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Proverbs 16:13 (NIV).

What joy for those whose record the LORD has cleared of sin, whose lives are lived in complete honesty! When I refused to confess my sin, I was weak and miserable, and I groaned all day long. Day and night your hand of discipline was heavy on me. My strength evaporated like water in the summer heat. Finally, I confessed all my sins to you and stopped trying to hide them. I said to myself, ‘I will confess my rebellion to the LORD.’ And you forgave me! All my guilt is gone.”¹

How well King David knew the pain from hiding his guilt and what joy comes to those who live in complete honesty. The point is, whenever we fail to admit our sins and faults and talk or write out our negative feelings in creative ways, we inevitably act them out in self-destructive ways.

Dishonesty and denial of emotions also acts as poison to relationships. It erects “brick walls” around the heart and suffocates love.

Best-selling author, Dr. John Powell, believes that “most of us feel that others will not tolerate emotional honesty in communication. We would rather defend our dishonesty on the grounds that it might hurt others, and, having rationalized our phoniness into nobility, we settle for superficial relationships. Consequently, we ourselves do not grow, nor do we help anyone else to grow. Meanwhile, we have to live with repressed emotions—a dangerous and self-destructive path to follow. Any relationship which is to have the nature of true personal encounter must be based on honest, open, gut-level communication. The alternative is to remain in my prison, to endure inch-by-inch death as a person.”²

Denial of emotions also causes the exaggeration of opposite characteristics. Saccharine-sweet people often seethe inwardly with hostility. People who withdraw take their anger out on others in underhanded ways. Withdrawal is a “dirty way to fight.” The dogmatic are riddled with self-doubts. The overconfident are insecure. The extremely prudish are overcompensating for sexual inadequacies. Others silence painful feelings in over-busyness or go-go-go activity, substance dependency, destructive behavior, overeating, constant talking, unbalanced religious fervor, theological rigidity, a controlling attitude, and so on.

Some project their faults onto others, seeing in them the very faults that lie hidden within themselves. They simply cannot accept in someone else what they refuse to accept in themselves. Or they might displace their bad feelings by taking them out on somebody else. For example, Fred may be angry at his boss, but fearing he may lose his job if he says anything, takes his feelings out on his wife and children.

We can also become experts at rationalization. For example, when we deny our fears, we can unconsciously sabotage our relationships, or set ourselves up to fail in certain situations. We then brush off our failures by making excuses, blaming others, or even by saying what happened must have been God’s will!

Dishonesty with ourselves or anyone else never pays. Honesty is still by far the best policy!

To be continued … How do we learn to be honest with ourselves?

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me the courage and help me to be real—to be totally open and honest with myself, with you, and with at least one trusted friend. And please help me to find a trusted soul-mate with whom I feel totally safe to be open and honest. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name. Amen.”

1. Psalm 32:2-5 (NLV).
2. John Powell, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am? p. 61. Argus Communications, San Mateo, Illinois. Copyright 1969. Used by permission.

There was a time in my life when I thought to be liked and accepted, I had to be strong, strong like the Rock of Gibraltar. Let the storms rage, the lightning strike, the winds blast, and the seas beat violently against it, and there it stands, solid and secure.

To me, fear was weak, and anger bad, so you never showed these emotions, and, as a man, you certainly never cried or showed your hurt feelings. Through years of practice, I learned to hide many of my emotions, put on a brave front, and pretend to be something outwardly that I wasn’t feeling inwardly.

The trouble with being a rock, however, is that rocks don’t feel. They aren’t real either, and they can’t relate intimately. Neither could I. Like the first man, Adam, who feared rejection, “I, too, was afraid, so I hid myself.” That is, I hid the real me.

One of the serious side effects of denying and hiding our emotions is that we deposit them in our unconscious memory bank where they build up unhealthy interest. The payoff is that we either withdraw or become defensive, touchy, hostile, non-feeling, cold and distant, or depressed. So we smile when we are angry and laugh when we are sad, and so on.

Or we act out these buried emotions through destructive behavior or physical illnesses. For example, medical science reminds us that unresolved emotions such as fear, sorrow, envy, resentment and hatred are responsible for many of our sicknesses. Estimates vary from 60 percent to nearly 100 percent.²

This is a good reason why the Bible teaches us to be open and honest and to deal with negative emotions “before the sun goes down”; that is, as quickly as possible.

How well I know it! On the positive side, however, when I learned to get in touch with deeply buried feelings of grief and cry again, I was healed of miserable hay-fever. Like, where do our tears go, when we stuff them? And when I got in touch with years of buried anger and learned to express it creatively, I was healed of painful bursitis in both shoulders. The fact is, we simply cannot improve on God’s rules for relationships and for healthy and wholesome living.

Furthermore, until I learn to weep with all my heart, I will never be able to love with all my heart. This is because the walls I put around my heart to block my painful feelings, also block out my love feelings!

So God’s challenge to each of us is to dare to be honest! The payoff pays great dividends—for this life and the next!

To be continued….

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, thank you again for your Word that teaches me how to live wholesomely so that I can find inner peace, improved health, more happiness, and lasting joy. Please help me to so live. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Ephesians 4:15 (NLT).
2. S. I. McMillan, None of These Diseases, Marshall, Morgan and Scott, 1966, p. 7.

A Daily Encounter reader asks, “Can you please write on the devastating consequences of lying? Can a person be walking with the Lord and still continue to lie?”

When the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Corinth he had to rebuke them because of their manner of living, which was anything but glorifying to God. He called them babes in Christ and carnal Christians. Thus, if a person is a Christian and is a habitual liar, he is not living in harmony with the will of God, and is a carnal Christian. If he has genuinely accepted Jesus as his Savior, he will not lose his salvation, but he will certainly lose out on God’s blessing. (Keep in mind, however, that not all who profess to be Christians, are.)

Sad to say, many habitual liars end up believing their own lies. They have practiced this deception for so long, that they are living in denial and are blind to the fact that they are liars. This is a moral character issue as well as a pathological sickness.

As Peter explains in his first epistle, as Christians, if we are going to grow up into the fullness of our salvation, among other things, we are to stop pretending to be good, and be done with dishonesty, deception, and fraud, which are all various forms of lying.²

Unfortunately, many of us who wouldn’t dare tell a lie verbally can act and live dishonestly. For example, when we consistently act one way outwardly but feel the opposite on the inside, we too, are living a lie. Some of us have done this for so long we have no idea that we are living in denial. In so doing, however, we cover our inward pain with a mask and pretend to be something that we are not. This is a killer of close relationships and intimacy, because we can only be loved and accepted to the degree that we are known. No matter how much people may “like” my mask, it will never make me feel loved because my mask isn’t me. Closeness and intimacy can only come from being real, open, and honest.

And the kind of honesty God wants from all of us is honesty from the heart, which means to be genuine, real, and authentic as was Nathanael, one of Jesus’ disciples who, when Jesus saw him “coming toward Him … said of him, ‘Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom is no deceit [in whom there is nothing false]!’”³

To be continued ….

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please help me to be honest from the heart so that I will be known as one in whom there is no deceit and nothing false. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Ephesians 4:25 (NKJV).
2. See 1 Peter 2:1-2 in The Living Bible.
3. John 1:47 (NKJV).

On more than one occasion Jesus confronted the Pharisees in no uncertain terms for their hypocritical behavior, as did the Apostle Paul to Peter in the above Scripture verse. So when is it right for us to confront others and when do we need to keep silent? How do we know when we are reacting in proportion to what has happened or if we are overreacting? When someone attacks us personally, when do we turn the other cheek? Or when we see wrong in society, business, or politics, should we speak out or should we look the other way and say nothing?

When people attacked Jesus and accused him falsely, he remained totally nondefensive and said nothing because he had nothing to hide. On the other hand, when people misused the house of God and used people for their own ends, or tried to hide their hypocrisy behind a facade of religious piety, or loved their man–made legalistic rules more than they loved people, Jesus spoke out against them in no uncertain terms.

The bottom line is our motive. Jesus always did what he did because he loved God and he loved people. He attacked evil and wrong head on because it was destructive to those whom God loves—us. Furthermore, Jesus always spoke with authority but was never authoritarian, rigid, controlling or manipulative because he always acted out of pure motives and had no hidden agenda.

Suggested prayer: “Dear God, please give me the insight to discern that which is right and that which is wrong, and give me the courage to stand up and be counted, speak out against and confront the wrong, but always in a loving and Christ–like manner. And help me always to be willing to do my part to bring about change. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. Gratefully, in Jesus’ name, amen.”

1. Galatians 2:11 (NIV).