Every aspect of the good that flows from God to you depends on your honesty with yourself, others, and God. Any lack of honesty precludes the full flow of God’s goodness into your life. You will never experience a substantial increase in the flow of God’s goodness into you and your life while you are still a dishonest person. You can’t be honest without growing towards God, and you can’t grow towards God without first being honest.
Dishonesty precludes many types of goodness from flowing into your life, including being born again. The devil is the father of lies, and you can’t be born again while you are one of his children:
Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do. He was a murderer from the beginning, and abode not in the truth, because there is no truth in him. When he speaketh a lie, he speaketh of his own: for he is a liar, and the father of it. (John 8:44)
God does not lie,1 and you can’t be very much like him while you still do.
Dishonesty doesn’t just slow down the flow of God’s goodness into you—it makes invisible the path to greater goodness. You can’t identify what is best or improve your understanding of it without being an honest person. Dishonesty will cause you to lose the ability to see the ways in which you knowingly deviate from God’s example and will in your life.
Honesty is recoverable, but requires a process more difficult than living according to the truth in the first place. You regain honesty by correcting the ways you knowingly deviate from God’s example.
Footnotes
- 1. In hope of eternal life, which God, that cannot lie, promised before the world began; (Titus 1:2) ↩