Deceiving Yourself (1 John 1:8)

How can a person deceive themselves?  Do they purposefully lead themselves away from what they know to be the right way?  Some may think so, but that is not exactly the case.

A person leads themselves astray when they do not agree with or recognize truth, but instead create their own ideas and acknowledge them as truth.  The result is that they actually believe they are doing or believing what they should.

The Holy Spirit convicts all men of sin.  In order for a person to believe that they do not have sin, they first must disagree with the Holy Spirit's conviction and then speak falseness to themselves.  When they walk in light of this falseness, they have deceived themselves.

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (1 John 1:8)

Each of us have this tendency.  We do it when we resist conviction for sin and explain it away with circumstances or justify our actions with motives or results from our acts.  We also deceive ourselves when we resist God's leading.  We respond with excuses as to why we cannot do as he leads and then accept those excuses as truth.

Am I deceiving myself?  Are you deceiving yourself?  God knows the answer.  What we must do is submit ourselves to God and allow him to lead us with truth.  We may not like how he leads, but the results will definitely be better than living in deceit.