Overcoming Satan's Lies — Kay Arthur

The Cultural Lies Shaping Women's Lives

In 1963, Betty Friedan decided that women of her generation felt unhappy and stifled. In 1970, the feminist movement began, which was anything but feminine. In 1973, in the year of Roe v. Wade, they started sex education in the schools, and then they passed, the Senate passed the Equal Rights Amendment.

And from 1973 on, when you picked up a woman's magazine, you would see things on the cover that would indicate that women did not need men anymore. That they were going to shun marriage and motherhood for a career.

They were telling women, sleep with men, don't marry them, and remember sex is power. And in a book, What Our Mothers Didn't Tell Us, a new book out, it's a secular book by Danielle Crittenden, and her subtitle is Why Happiness Eludes the Modern Woman, she says, as a result of that, in the 1990s, we are more likely to be divorced or never married than all the women of the previous generation.

We are more likely to bear children out of wedlock. Number three, we are more likely to become junkies or drunks or to die in poverty. And number four, we are more likely to have an abortion or catch a sexually transmitted disease.

And if we are mothers, even of infants and very small children, we are likely to work at full-time jobs and still shoulder the bulk of the housework as well. Precious one, I have a question for you today.

Examining the Lies We Believe

In these final minutes that you have, as I have prayed for you, God has laid on my heart to ask you if you have believed a lie. If you are a victim of what the world has put before you and fed you over television and in the magazines and in the books and in the voices that are coming out, if you have believed a lie regarding who you are, if you have believed a lie regarding your femininity, if you have believed a lie regarding your role, if you have believed a lie regarding where you can find truth and what is truth and whether or not there are absolutes.

And so I come to you today and I'm going to ask you, precious one, to go with me before the throne of the one who is pure and unadulterated truth and to ask him to show you if you have unwittingly, unknowingly believed a lie and embraced a lie.

If you have possibly been so abused verbally and emotionally or maybe physically in the sense that now that you believe you have no worth nor no value, that you would ask God to show you how he feels about you.

Or if you feel, for instance, that you have sunk so deep that there is no recovery and although you may come to know Jesus Christ, you have to sit on the back pew because God couldn't possibly use you.

Would you ask him if that is true or if that is a lie? And finally, as we go to prayer, precious one, would you ask God to show you whether you have a religion or a relationship? Because today could be the beginning of a brand new day and today you could walk out of here as a brand new creature in Christ Jesus, having all things passed away and all things becoming new.

Today, God could take you when you feel so unworthy and so unloved and he could cup your precious face in his hands and call you beloved when you thought there was nothing lovely about you. So would you go with me to the Lord?

And I'm going to beseech him, but as I beseech him, because I know, precious one, that I am just flesh and I know that no flesh can glory in his presence and I know that unless he, in a sense, rends the heavens and speaks to you face to face, that it's just another day.

And I know he's already spoken to you through all the rest of the wonderful, precious speakers that I so admire and so treasure, that he has a final word for you, a final word, and I don't want you to miss it.

So would you bow with me now in prayer before the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, God the Creator. Father, I bow before you and I bow before you, Father, because I'm on this platform in fear and in trembling, in a respect and in an awesome sense of the fact that you have brought these almost 8 ,000 women here for a day in which you want to renew them, a time in which you want to continue to speak to them until I'm finished.

And Father, I know that they're precious to you and I know that so many of them don't believe that and I know that so many of them have been told contrary and I know that some of them are hurting so badly that they wonder where you are and it's a miracle that they're even here.

And I know, Father, from those I've already talked to and hugged and loved in line as I've signed the books, that there are some that have survived and they say they're alive now and they haven't killed themselves and they haven't taken their lives and they haven't walked out of their marriages and they've made it because they've known you and because they've known your word and because they've found truth.

And Father, we don't want to believe a lie. We want to exchange every lie for truth. We ask you now, Father, to speak to each woman here, to speak to them so intimately and so preciously that they will know that they have heard from heaven.

Cup their faces in your hands, God. Hide me. Don't even let them see me, but let them hear your word. Let them hear truth and move on them by your Spirit. And if they have a religion, show them that and tell them that you want to bring them into an intimate relationship.

Father, if they have believed lies that are self-destructive or are destroying their families or destroying their marriages, Father, would you show them that? Would you expose those lies? And Father, would you send your truth and would you set them free?

Father, I remind you of the one's prayer who sits at your right hand when he prayed before he went to Calvary. Father, I do not ask you to take them out of the world. I ask you to keep them from the evil one.

And Father, you and I know that the evil one is a liar and a murderer and a destroyer and a deceiver. And so, Father, I ask you now, even as your son asks you, Father, sanctify them through thy truth.

Thy word is truth. Now, Father, may your word go forth in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. And may it do the work, the supernatural, the divine work that it does as it searches our hearts and minds and shows us, Father, if there be any hurtful way in us.

And I thank you now for what you're going to do in Jesus' name. Amen. I would like you to take out your pens and I would like you to take out your Bibles. And I would like to ask you, precious one, if you have believed a lie.

The Sufficiency and Preservation of Scripture

First of all, number one, and you want to write it down, have you believed a lie about the word of God? Now, there is teaching around and it has infiltrated our seminaries and it has stood in pulpits and it has said that this only contains the word of God.

That there are no absolutes. That this has bits and portions that come from God, but you can't trust the whole thing. But I want you to know that this Bible is pure, unadulterated truth. It is the word of God.

And the same God that spoke and brought the world into existence. The same God who made the world and everything in it in six days and then on the seventh rested. That God is the one who spoke by the power of his word and brought the world into existence.

And that God, because he is the creator of the heavens and the earth and everything that it contains, that God is able to preserve this word and keep this word for you and I down through all the generations.

These 66 books were penned by men who were moved by the Holy Spirit and who recorded not things of their own devising, of their own private interpretation, but holy men of God spoke as God inspired them so that all scripture is given by inspiration of God.

It is profitable for doctrine, for what you and I believe and teach, for reproof, to show us where we're wrong, for correction, to show us how to take what's wrong and make it right, and for instruction in righteousness, that you and I might be thoroughly furnished, listen carefully, for every single good work of life.

So next to that put 2 Peter 1 20 -21. 2 Peter 1 20 -21. And then put 2 Timothy 3 16 -17. Have you believed a lie about the word of God? Have you believed that it is not the word of God? If you have, you have believed a lie and you are deceived and you need to come back and recognize that if God is God, then he is able to preserve his word.

And Jesus said, not one jot or tittle will be changed until everything be fulfilled. Also, in that, are you, have you believed a lie about the character of God? Have you believed the fact, and most people do, that God is a God of love?

And he is. And John chapter 4, 1 John chapter 4, tells us that God is love, and that herein has God loved us, and that he gave his only begotten Son for us. Yes, God is love. And in that chapter, he mentions love 28 times in one chapter.

And it's all centered around the love of God for man. But listen, God is not only love, God is holy. And the sum total of all of his attributes show us that God is other than man. And you and I cannot contain all the knowledge of him.

But he says this, he says, I am holy and you are to be holy. Our God is not only a God of love, but he is holy and he is just and he is righteous in all his ways. And no man can stand and raise their puny fist at God and say, what doest thou?

Because he is the sovereign ruler of all the universe. And he does according to his will in the army of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth. He is God. And he is to be, listen carefully, precious one, because we've lost it.

He is to be feared. He is to be reverenced. He is to be respected. And you and I, when we come into his presence, it's not to be in a flippant way because he is the one before whom all the cherubim and the seraphim stand and cry night and day, holy, holy, holy Lord God almighty.

Heaven and earth are full of thy glory. Glory be to thee, oh God most high. Second, have you believed a lie regarding your worth to God? Regarding, now listen carefully, your value as a woman of God. You are woman.

Humanity's Worth as God's Image-Bearers

You are a distinct creation by God. And in Genesis chapter one, verse 26, when God created the heavens and the earth on the sixth day, he said to the son and the Holy Spirit, let us make man in our image.

And it says in the image of God, God created them male and what? You tell me. Male and female. And he gave them, them, dominion over all the earth. You are a special creation of God. Psalm 139 says this, that God formed you in your mother's womb when there was not yet one of your days.

He numbered them all. He says you are fearfully and wonderfully made. He is the one that brought the sperm and the egg together. You may not like your father. You may not like your mother, but God in his sovereignty, the God who wounds and heals, who kills and who makes alive, in his sovereignty plans your birth.

He put the sperm and the egg together and it matters not whether you are conceived in wedlock or out of wedlock. You were conceived by the will of God. It is God's will that you exist because he is the creator.

My precious husband is here and you can see him at the, at the book table afterwards where, where I will be greeting you and, and, and continuing what we have been doing all day. But my precious husband is an illegitimate child and yet he is God's creation and God brought him into existence and God had a purpose for him, even as God has a purpose for you.

You, do you understand your worth? Do you understand your value? Do you understand that God made you female? It was so precious because a woman came up to me today at the table and she said, I just want to thank you.

She says, God has changed my life and, and, and through your ministry, he has brought me out of a lesbian lifestyle. She has seen that God made her a woman and you and I need to understand that. I want you to understand and you want to put it down besides Genesis 1 26 and besides Psalm 139, write down Revelation chapter 5 and Colossians chapter 1 verse 16 and in Revelation 5 and Colossians chapter 1 verse 16 at the end of Revelation 5, it says, for thou God has created all things and by thy pleasure, for thy pleasure, they exist.

And in Colossians chapter 1 verse 16, speaking of Jesus Christ, he's telling us that we were created by God. Now listen, you were created not only by God, but precious one, you were created for God. That's how special you are to God.

That is your worth. That is your value. The almighty creator of the heavens and the earth who spoke and brought the world into existence, spoke and brought you into existence. You are a created being created by God and created for God and you will live as long as God ordained and no one can take your life from you and no one can shut what God has opened and open what God has shut.

Your times are in his hands and his hands are nail pierced hands. Do you believe that? If you don't believe that, if you don't believe that, it's because you don't know the word of God, precious one. It's because you haven't studied the word of God.

It's because you have believed a lie instead of believing the truth. Number three, have you believed a lie regarding your role as a woman and where you will find fulfillment? Now listen to me carefully.

Finding Fulfillment Through Character and Service

Listen to me carefully. You will not find fulfillment in a career, but you find fulfillment in character. It doesn't matter what your career ever becomes as K Cole James, Cole's James was saying to us, it doesn't matter where she's been.

It's what K is and you're not going to find fulfillment and climbing the corporate ladder because it is empty at the top and you have to stand and you have to look at the mirror and you have to see who you are.

So you're not going to find fulfillment in a career, but in character and listen very carefully, you're not going to find fulfillment in self in, in, in becoming, Oh, you're full potential. You're going to find fulfillment in service, not in self, but in service.

You're going to find fulfillment and you will never ever find it until you listen to Jesus Christ. When he says, if any man is going to come after me, let him what deny himself, take up his cross and follow me for he that would save his life will lose it.

And he that would lose his life for my sake and for the gospels will find it. And I promise you, you will never, ever, ever find fulfillment in self. Now in Genesis chapter two, verse 18, and I would like you to go there.

I want you to see what your role as a woman is. I want you to see in Genesis chapter two, what God does is he takes the, the creation that he lays out in Genesis chapter one, and God often does this in the scriptures.

And in Genesis chapter two, he zeroes back in and he gives us the details. And so he gives us the details on how he created man and how he created woman. He creates man first man comes and he has given a command and he is told to tend the garden and not eat of the tree of the good of good and evil for in the day that he eats of it, he will surely die.

Man names the beast of the field. And then the Lord God says, it is not good. Verse 18, for the man to be alone, I will make a helper. Now listen carefully, suitable for him. Man was created first. Woman was created second.

It happened on the second day. You may not like what God says, but you're not God. And how dare you raise a puny little human fist in the face of God when he's the one that gives you the very breath that you believe that you breathe and the one that is numbered your days when as yet there was not one of them, you are woman.

And God made you to be a helper suitable for man. Now that word helper means a counterpart. It means a complimenter. It means a completer. And if you would take your two hands, and this is a little bit hard with a microphone like this, but if you take your hands, you take one hand and you make that man, you take the other hand and you make it woman.

And then you knit them together like that. And what God has done is he has fit us together. We are a counterpart. Now listen, we are a complimenter. We are not competitors with men. Why? Because we're woman.

And we were made as a helper suitable for man. And so in all your dealings with men, it does not make you any less. That man couldn't have gotten on the face of this earth apart from a woman unless it was Adam.

And he was the last one that got here by a single act of God. Every other one had to be born of a woman. And so a woman has a high place. And yet he tells us that we are a counterpart. We are a complimenter.

We are to be a completer of men and not a competer. Now I had a hard time learning that because I have a very strong personality. And I remember one day when my daddy sat me down and he says, let me ask you a question.

He said, if you could beat a man in tennis, would you? And I said, I sure would. He says, that's what I want to talk to you about. All right. Now, men don't like to be beat at tennis. Ask Jack. All right.

Biblical Instruction for Women, Marriage, and Motherhood

Now, what else did he do? Well, in first Timothy chapter two, as he talks about the creation of a woman, and you want to write this down. And if you can, you want to take the time to look at it and all the T's and the Bible come together.

But in first Timothy chapter two, this is what he tells us about woman. He says verse first Timothy chapter two, excuse me, verse nine. He says, likewise, I want women to adorn themselves with proper clothing, modestly and discreetly, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly garments, but rather by means of good works as befits women making a claim to godliness.

God made you and he made you to be a godly woman, to look like a godly woman, to dress like a godly woman, to act like a godly woman. And he tells us in verse fifteen that women are preserved through the bearing of children.

If those children continue in faith and love and sanctity with self-restraint. Now listen, precious one, you may say, but I'm single and I and I haven't born children. And I understand. But listen, there are many orphans in this world that need the love of a woman and the compassion of a woman and the tenderness of a woman.

But God made us and he made us to bear children if we are married. And if we are not, we are not to bear them. All right, Titus chapter two, and Kate touched on this, but in Titus chapter two, listen to what he says.

He says the older women are to be reverent in their behavior. They're not to be malicious gossips nor enslaved to much wine. They are to teach what is good, that they may encourage the young woman now watch to love their husbands, to love their children, to be sensible, to be pure, to be workers at home and workers at home mean a keeper of a house kind, being subject to their own husbands, that the word of God may not be dishonored.

Now, how does that hit you? Does it irritate you? Do you not like it? Well, precious one, just know this. I didn't say it. God said it. God is the one that said it. God is the one that you have an argument with.

And I want to tell you something. You don't win arguments with God because God is God. And when you and I believe God and when you and I submit and when we take his word as truth and we embrace that, then we find peace.

In first Timothy chapter five, he tells us about women and what they're to be like. And he's talking about widows. They're to have a reputation of good works. If she's brought up children, if she's shown hospitality to strangers, if she's washed the saints feet, if she has assisted those in distress and if she has devoted herself to every good work.

Now, why is he saying that? Because listen, you and I are different than men. God has given us a sensitivity. God has given us a compassion. God has given us a something that women possess that the world so desperately needs.

He's given us a tenderness. He's given us the time. He's given us the opportunity to reach out. And the problem is, is we have believed a lie and we have turned away from being keepers at home. We have put our children in daycare centers and we have gone out to earn a living.

Now, some of you have to earn a living. Some of you don't have a husband at home. Some of you don't have someone to take care of you. But listen, listen, listen, listen, whatever it takes, do everything that you can not to focus on getting another man, getting married again, but to focus on being what a woman should be.

And that is being making a home for that child and giving that child a safe haven and bringing that child up in the nurture and the admonition of the Lord. You may not like precious ones. Thank you. You may not like what I'm saying, but listen, I am not going to fear your face.

I am not going to be dismayed by you because I am here to give you truth. And this is truth, like it or not, it is truth. And this is what God says. And you either believe it and bow the knee and receive the benefit and the blessing of God, or you stiffen your neck and you watch God bring you down.

And you don't want to watch God bring you down. Out of this magazine, which is called New Woman, I got this article. And in the article, she says, should I stay at home with my baby? Two months ago, I had my first baby.

Before she was born, I was convinced I'd never be a stay at home mom. In fact, my friends and I have always, and this is typical, looked down on women who stayed home with their kids. But since I've returned to work full time, I'm totally miserable.

All I want is to be with my daughter. My husband would like me to quit my job too. And though it would be a stretch for us, we've saved enough that we could swing it financially, at least for a few years.

But I feel now, listen, and this is what women are doing. I feel so much pressure to be true to my original idea of myself. True to original idea of myself. What is wrong? Well, the thing that is wrong is we have believed a lie and we have been told as women that you must take care of yourself, that you must make self preeminent, that you never surrender yourself to a man and you never surrender yourself completely to your children.

You take care of yourself. You must be number one and you never violate that because if you violated it, this is what they say. You have violated the cause of womanhood. I want you to know that it's a lie straight out of the pit of hell.

And the reason that we are in the trouble that we're in today, the reason that we have so much divorce, the reason that our children are hurting so desperately is because we have believed a lie and we are going to lose the next generation.

Television, Family Formation, and Cultural Consequences

Listen carefully, 40 percent, and this is according to American Demographics, May 1999 from the Census Bureau, 40 percent of never married women in their 30s have a child. It says single motherhood for divorced or never married has just increased.

In 1970, there were 3 .4 single mothers. Now there are nearly 10 million. For the first time in 60 years, the majority of first children, 53 percent, were born to or conceived by unmarried women. 41 percent of the single mother households, now listen, subsist below the poverty line.

I want you to know that what you see on television and what you see on the sitcoms is a travesty of what God has planned. God planned a man and a woman to get married, to bear children, to establish a home, and to live together and be raised together with a mother and with a father.

And the United States of America is being destroyed, is being destroyed because we have believed a lie. I had more statistics, but I want to tell you something that I just read that just absolutely, absolutely appalled me.

It says right now that what has happened is because the mother is working and the father is working that the child's time has become so terribly organized that they go from one activity to another, so much so that when they're interviewing children, this is what they said, I have to get in the shower and that's the only time I have alone and quiet little children saying they go stand in the shower to get the stress and the pressure off of them.

We have so organized their time, getting them from one event to another event, one skill to another skill, one sport to another sport, or one nursery or daycare to another nursery or daycare, that that child has no time just to be a kid, just to go outside, just to play, just to learn how to do with his peers.

And one of the things they say, and I think if you look at this, and as I read it, I thought this is Columbine. This is what they said, that part of the development of the conscience and self-control is related to making decisions, some good, some bad, and learning from those decisions.

Now listen, they're saying that the child has no decisions to make because his time is so tightly organized, he's told where to go. And it says when children are not making many of these decisions, I think they'll have more trouble developing a code of social responsibility and self-regulation.

And he goes on and he tells that on weekdays, in fact, the number one activity for American children after sleeping and school is watching television. And they watch as much television combined as they do studying, reading, visiting, and household conversation.

In other words, they're hearing what the TV says more than what they're hearing the parents say. And why has it happened? It has happened because we believed a lie. It happened because in 1963, Betty Friedan decided that women were miserable and that she needed to do something about it.

Biblical Sexual Ethics and the Honor of Marriage

Well, what happened to me in 1963? I want to tell you that. But I want to tell you by telling you this, number four, have you believed a lie regarding your sexuality? Now listen to me very carefully. The Bible says in Hebrews 13, four, that marriage is honorable and all, and the bed undefiled, but fornicators and adulterers, God will judge.

I have scads of illustrations up here that I cannot use, but I will tell you this, that I went out and this month I bought some magazines, $16 worth, just so that I could show you the covers. Marie Claire, sex, how well do you know your lover?

Your best body, rescuing American's child's prostitutes. Glamour magazine, what he thinks when he first sees you naked. Okay, it must be young. Surprise, read why he's hot for what you hate and hide. And then how to make him worship the ground that you walk on.

And then shameless tricks to double your pleasure. Cosmopolitan, sex exclusive, 1 ,000 men confess the squeezes, licks and teases they long for. And it goes on and I don't want to repeat it. And then meet a guy by the 4th of July.

These sex, six sexy tips will have scores of sun bronze studs begging to be your beach boy. And it goes on and on and on. New woman, how often do you have sex? What's your bedding average says about you?

And I have another article here that in this article, the woman says, when enjoy your singleness, when else can you sleep with anyone you want to? As a young girl, I picked up a magazine and that magazine was a detective and it showed a woman stretched out like this and her breasts bulging and that and her hands tied behind her and it awakened desires and charged my imagination.

I was brought up in the church. I was baptized as an infant, uh, confirmed as a, as a child of God at 12 as a child, excuse me, at 12 and told that I became a child of God. There's a way that seems right unto men, but the end thereof is the way of death.

I was given a religion, but I wasn't introduced to a relationship. I wanted to be happily married. That's all I wanted. And I married my husband and my husband was an outstanding athlete. He was voted most likely to succeed the top one in his university school.

He had been offered contracts by the Yankees, the pirates, the Indians, and the Phillies. He asked me to marry him. And I thought, because he talked about God, that this was the marriage that I had been looking for.

He seemed to fit all the qualifications. On our honeymoon, he sat me down and he looked at me and he said, you are now Mrs. Frank Thomas Getz, Jr. And these are the things I don't like, and I want them changed about you.

I was heart sick. I didn't know that I was married to a manic depressive. And because my time is almost gone, I cannot tell you the whole testimony. It's out on the table and it's in a number of my books from Silver Refined to others on Lord Heal My Hurts and on Spiritual Warfare because that marriage was so devastating.

I went for counseling. I was advised. I believed a lie. I was told to leave him. I left him. I shook my fist in the face of God. I said, to hell with you, God. I'm going to find someone to love me. And I went out and I became what I had read.

Personal Testimony of Sin, Grace, and Restoration

I did not know that what a man or a woman thinks in his mind, so he will become or so she will become. And we are to keep our thoughts with all diligence, our mind, our heart with all diligence, because out of it are the issues of life.

And so I walked away. I didn't know one night that a little boy, my oldest son, would come down the steps. And I only tell you this to help you, to give you hope, that he would come down the steps and he would sit on the steps and he would watch his mother on the living room floor with a man.

How awful for a boy to see that. I sunk deep and deep and deep into a pit because I believed a lie. And the lie that I believed was this, that I could be sensual and sexual and that's how I would get a man and that's how I would hold a man and that's how I would be happy.

And I didn't know that no man here on earth could do it. But there was a man that said, I love you this much and spread out his hands and died on Calvary's tree for me. And that Jesus, who knew no sin, was made to be sin for me, that I might be made the righteousness of God in him.

I did not know. And so when I shook my fist in the face of God, my husband, and walked away and I became immoral, my husband would call me and say, I'm going to kill myself. And I'd say, well, Tom, do a good job so I get your money.

He was manic depressive and we didn't know it. Bless his heart. And the lie that I didn't understand, and I want you to write it down because we don't have time for it and I'm so sorry. But the lie that I bought was the lie of how I am to love my husband and how I am to submit to my husband.

Marriage, Submission, and the Call to Obey Scripture

And write it down in Ephesians chapter 5. In Ephesians chapter 5, God tells me that as a wife that I am to do two things. And you may not like it, but this is what God says. And it isn't Southern Baptist, honey.

It is Bible. And it is Ephesians chapter 5. And he tells us that we are to submit to one another in the fear of the Lord. But then it says husbands, wives, submit to your own husbands as unto the Lord.

Husbands, love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave himself for it. And as he nourished the church and as he cherished the church, the husband is to nourish and to cherish you. But then he says, wives, reverence your husband.