There is a story told about a little boy who came running into his house shouting, “Mommy! Mommy! A lion just ran across our front yard!”

The mother replied, “Son, you know that was not a lion. That was the neighbor’s big dog. You go upstairs and confess to the Lord that you lied about that.”

The boy went upstairs and after a while he came down again. His mother asked, “Did you confess your lie to the Lord?”

“Yes, I did,” he answered. “But the Lord said when he first saw it, he thought it was a lion too!”

Lying is a sin that comes quite naturally to the human heart, but Christians must always strive to speak the truth.

“Do not lie to each other, since you have taken off your old self with its practices and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge in the image of its Creator.”—Colossians 3:9-10