Obviously, lying is a bad thing. When we lie, or follow others who do, we are in line with Satan because he is the “father of lies” (John 8:44).

Lying is a sure sign of evil. It is his calling card. It is also a violation of the Commandments.

And there is that expression: “the worst person you can lie to is yourself.”

“Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any wicked way in me” (Psalm 139:23–24).

Scripture repeatedly warns that self-deception can be more spiritually dangerous than deceiving someone else, because once we lie to ourselves, we can begin calling sin virtue, pride humility, or our own desires God’s Will.

One of the clearest verses is James 1:22: “Be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves.” When we lie to ourselves we lie to He Who made us.

Let’s ask honestly, inwardly: what lies do we feed our souls? In what ways are we self-deceiving? What do we tell ourselves because it’s what we want to hear (as opposed to what we need to hear)? Is pride preventing us from acknowledging a truth? Do we hate like the plague admitting a fault or mistake?

When you are in prayer, these are some of the questions you may want to ask.

Honesty starts with humility. You can’t be honest without being humble. And you can’t be humble without being honest.

For the devil is also the “prince of pride” (Ephesians 6:12, 1 Timothy 3:6, and Job 41:34).

Do we really want to be in his camp? Do we really want to feed him energy?

Dishonesty obscures and so too does it weave into another title for Satan: “prince of darkness.”

You can deceive others and still know the truth. But when you deceive yourself, you risk losing sight of the truth altogether.

“First take the log out of your own eye.” — Matthew 7:5: That’s essentially a warning against self-deception, for we can become perfectly good at seeing another person’s faults while constructing explanations that excuse our own.

Deepest summer is a good time to revisit the honesty of Scripture, which opens us up to ourselves. We see in it that it is the devil who not only deceives, who not only puffs us up, but who binds and oppresses. And so we have the expression, “The truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

Jesus also connects spiritual blindness with an unwillingness to face truth in John 3:19–20, when He says that people sometimes avoid the Light because they do not want their deeds exposed.

We avoid truths about ourselves because they are painful, embarrassing, or require repentance.

But when you are honest with yourself, you set yourself free of the devil’s shackles in ways you might not currently appreciate.

Are you too involved with the “world”? Do you deceive yourself into thinking you are more prayerful than you are? We all need to know. It is one thing to be aware of the “signs of the times,” and to pray away the evil rising around us, which to an extent is to scan the news. Evil is real. It must be exposed (John 3:20–21).

But when we become too involved with the “world”—money, politics, social media, stature of any sort—we fall into the thrall of a final title for Satan: “prince of this world.” The world is a structure of any kind created without God.

If we are worldly, we will argue; we will stand divided; we will pursue power, pleasure, wealth, approval, and self-exaltation. We will pay attention to celebrities and politicians more than Jesus. We will judge everything by visible success. We will live as though this present life is all that exists.

Christians must live among other people, work, raise families, create, serve, vote, buy, sell, teach, build, and participate in society. But they must not allow the spirit of the age to rule their hearts.

Jesus told His disciples: “They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world” (John 17:16).

[resources: books of inspiration]