Pride is a Cheater

~Beth Moore
Praying God's Word


My name is Pride. I am a cheater.

I cheat you of your God-given destiny...
because you demand your own way.

I cheat you of contentment...
because you "deserve better than this."

I cheat you of knowledge ...
because you already know it all.

I cheat you of healing...
because you're too full of me to forgive.

I cheat you of holiness...
because you refuse to admit when your wrong.

I cheat you of vision...
because you'd rather look in the mirror than out a window.

I cheat you of genuine friendship...
because nobody's going to know the real you.

I cheat you of love...
because real romance demands sacrifice.

I cheat you of greatness in Heaven...
because you refuse to wash another's feet on earth.

I cheat you of God's glory...
because I convince you to seek your own.

My name is Pride and I am a cheater.

You like me because you think I'm always looking out for you.

Untrue.

I'm looking to make a fool of you.

God has so much for you, I admit, but don't worry...
If you stick with me

You'll never know.

"More Than Enough"

"The Grace to Forget Past Disappointments"

"…but this one thing I do, forgetting those things which are behind, and reaching forward to what lies ahead, I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus."—Philippians 3:13-14

Have you ever entertained any of these thoughts: "Why didn't I….? I never should have…! If only he had… I'll never be able to forgive…"

These thoughts are thoughts of regret, shame and guilt, resulting from past disappointments which most of us have experienced. Although we all have been disappointed, we're not meant to carry these disappointments into the future. Hanging onto the past is a major stronghold for many Believers. Dwelling on past mistakes, failures, losses or betrayals year after year brings an increasing weight of sin, shame and guilt—which will inevitably lead to bitterness, weariness, self-pity, accusation, doubt, unbelief and the fear that the future will just be a repeat of the past. Once disappointed, always disappointed, you reason. If they disappointed me once, they will disappoint me again.

By dwelling on past disappointments, you lose confidence in relationships with others, with God and with yourself. One of the main keys to overcoming disappointments in life is learning to let go of the past. This letting go is difficult for many because we're required not only to let go, but, in its place, to take hold of something new: we must learn to love again and to trust again—and sometimes the heart is still too wounded and hardened to open to love.

So what can we do? First, we must recognize and admit to ourselves and to the Lord that we are disappointed and that our heart has hardened to love. This may be difficult to confess, as part of the pain of disappointment is fearing that disappointment will happen again and again. We fear being disappointed if we dare to trust again and maybe even fearing to trust God again.

But we can take courage by understanding that the Lord's very purpose in coming, as He Himself declared early on, was to "bind up the brokenhearted" (Isaiah 61:1), to heal our disappointed hearts and restore hope to our innermost being. He understands deeply that we are brokenhearted by sin and failures and He has compassion for our souls.

This Hebrew word translated brokenhearted is shabar, an extremely vivid and powerful adjective that means maimed, crippled, wrecked, crushed, quenched, violently ruptured. Is this the condition of your disappointed heart?

Do you feel like you've been crushed because of betrayal?

Do you feel ruptured beyond repair because of lost dreams or lost loves?

Do you feel your hopes and prayers have been wrecked?

Do you feel crippled from an impossibly difficult journey?

Do you feel the Lord Himself has disappointed you by prayers that have gone unanswered or dreams that are still painfully unfulfilled?

Have you disappointed yourself by some egregious sin of the past?

You have no options but this: you must let go of the past. How, you ask? By choosing to forgive those who have hurt you, betrayed you, left you or wronged you. And choose to forgive yourself for your reactions to these injustices or for your own betrayals. You let go of the past by believing that God will restore to you anything and everything that was taken, including love, relationships, time, money, dreams, hopes, talents.

This truth, for many, is difficult to grasp: can the Lord truly restore lost time? Lost opportunities? Lost love? Yes He can and not only can He, but He greatly desires to restore to you everything you have lost—redeeming, restoring and multiplying it back to you.

Meditate on this marvelous promise from our Lord: "So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten, the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust, My great army which I sent among you" (Joel 2:25).

At the very moment you gave your heart to Jesus Christ, you became a new creation: "...old things passed away and everything became new" (2 Corinthians 5:17). When you receive Christ's forgiveness in your own life, you are released from the pressure to make up for past mistakes or failures. Christ has put your sins as far from you as the east is from the west, never to remember them again. Guilt and shame are gone and you can live in freedom. How is this possible?

Consider the Cross! He bore your sins as the Passover Lamb. Do not take His death in vain by attempting to remedy your own sins and failures by holding on to them in remorse—or holding others' sins and failures against them in accusation. None of us are righteous: the Blood of the Lamb is the only remedy for sin. The only remedy for past disappointments is to repent and turn to Christ, thanking Him for making all things new.

"Then He who sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I make all things new.' And He said to me, 'Write, for these words are true and faithful.'" Revelation 21:5Christ is the same "yesterday, today and forever" (Hebrews 13:8). That means He made all things new yesterday, He makes all things new today, and He will make all things new tomorrow. There is nothing at any time in your life which He cannot make new! Cast all your cares upon Him, receive His yoke, and you will find rest for your life.

Begin to experience the bright future God has in store for you. Don't let the regrets of yesterday destroy your hopes for tomorrow. Many Believers lead lives of "quiet desperation" as Thoreau described, hardly aware that they have ceased to dream big dreams and pray big prayers, believing God for the impossible.

Be vigilant to cast off any trace of the fear of future disappointments and trust the Lord's kindness toward you, receiving His grace to forget the past. He is an extraordinarily generous, caring and tender Father who knows what is best for His children. Abandon yourself to His care, for His name is "Faithful and True" (Revelation 19:11).

"And those who know Your name will put their trust in You; for You, LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You." Psalm 9:10

No matter what has happened in the past, know that our God is a God of restoration—and He will restore what the enemy has stolen from you as He promises in the Book of Joel. Accept God's mercy and forgiveness today, as His mercies are new every morning and His faithfulness is not just adequate—it is great (Lamentations 3:23)! Great is His faithfulness! Look forward to the exceedingly wonderful plan He has for your future.

"Now glory be to God! By His mighty power at work within us, He is able to accomplish infinitely more than we would ever dare to ask or hope." Ephesians 3:20

Pray this with me: Precious Heavenly Father, thank You for the gift of forgiveness, the gift that releases me from the pains of the past and enables me to run towards You and the bright future You have in store for me! Please show me if there are any areas of unforgiveness or hardness in my heart, so that I may forgive, receive Your infinite love and walk in victory. I ask You to impart to me the dreams and vision You have for my life, restoring all the enemy has stolen. I ask for the grace to forget past disappointments. I believe You are granting this to me now even as I pray! Amen!

Bobby Conner
Eagle View Ministries

Don't Be Afraid of Failure~

by David Wilkerson

When Adam sinned, he tried to hide from God. When Peter denied Christ, he was afraid to face him. When Jonah refused to preach to Nineveh, his fear drove him into the ocean, to flee the presence of the Lord.

Something much worse than failure is the fear that goes with it. Adam, Jonah, and Peter ran away from God, not because they lost their love for him, but because they were afraid he was too angry with them to understand.

The accuser of the brethren waits, like a vulture, for you to fail in some way. Then he uses every lie in hell to make you give up, to convince you that God is too holy or you are too sinful to come back. Or he makes you afraid you are not perfect enough or that you will never rise above your failure.

It took forty years to get the fear out of Moses and to make him usable in God’s program. If Moses or Jacob or David had resigned himself to failure, we might never again have heard of these men. Yet Moses rose up again to become one of God’s greatest heroes. Jacob faced his sins, was reunited with the brother he had cheated, and reached new heights of victory. David ran into the house of God, found forgiveness and peace, and returned to his finest hour. Jonah retraced his steps, did what he had refused to do at first and brought a whole city to repentance. Peter rose out of the ashes of denial to lead a church to Pentecost.

In 1958, I sat in my little car weeping; I was a terrible failure, I thought. I had been unceremoniously dumped from a courtroom after I thought I was led by God to witness to seven teenage murderers. My attempt to obey God and to help those young hoodlums looked as though it were ending in horrible failure.

I shudder to think of how much blessing I would have missed if I had given up in that dark hour. How glad I am today that God taught me to face my failure and go on to his next step for me.

Healing For The Rejection We All Experience

"He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. "(Isaiah 53:3)

Today's devotional comes from Kevin's book Rejection~

My father died on my sixth birthday. Leukemia. I soon found that I had lost my mom as well. Her need to work and her own emotional pain crowded nurturing and time together out of my life. Then, two moves in the next three years made me the new kid in town that got picked on by everyone else.

By seventh grade, things had changed. I was well-liked and accepted. But I had no friends -- no one to whom I revealed my true self. Why? I had experienced enough rejection by then that I was unwilling to risk being rejected again.

There are three different types of rejection we can struggle with. The simplest is performance rejection. This occurs when we experience criticism for our actions that is not given in love. While such rejection stings, it is not devastating. A poor job evaluation is an example of performance rejection.

The second type of rejection is very painful. Personhood rejection occurs when people reject who we are. Our identity is called deficient, not our conduct. I remember a teacher in fifth grade calling me names when I did not attend his class. My inability to please him (performance rejection) resulted in a rejection of who I was (personhood rejection). A small incident? Yes. But I remember it 37 years later.

Rejection, like abuse, is not measured by what happens, but by the impact it has.
The lack of affirmation is another part of personhood rejection. Just like flowers need water, we need affirmation. When affirmation is withheld, our sense of being acceptable withers and dies. Even though no one may say anything negative, the lack of anything positive is just as powerful a rejection.

We rejected ones may become people pleasers, keeping everyone else happy regardless of the personal cost. Or we may seek rejection. We don’t want it, but performance rejection is less painful than the personhood rejection we fear. In both cases, we end up living in emotional isolation.

From there, it is a short distance to third type of rejection - self-rejection. In this place, we despise and punish ourselves for who we are. By rejecting ourselves, we are finally able to join everyone else who has rejected us. It has cost us happiness, but we don’t think we deserve it anyway.

Once rejected by others, it is easy for us to believe that God also rejects us. In fact, the more rejection we experience, the more difficult it is to have a relationship with God. We have already learned to perform for others and hide our true self away. When we do that with God, we find our relationship with Him as empty as relationships are with everyone else.

Receiving healing from rejection brings us back to life emotionally. Intimacy is possible again and we feel more alive than ever. A significant part of this healing is found in allowing God access to our true selves. It is scary to do, but possible when we see that He is the ultimate recipient of rejection.

Read this short meditation slowly and prayerfully. Allow God to meet you in those sentences that emotionally parallel your own rejection. As you do, it will create the internal space needed for the Lord to comfort and heal.

As the hammer descended onto the nails, the pain experienced by Jesus was intensely physical. Those blows and all the other abuse He experienced also carried with them the sting of rejection (Mark 9:12). Mankind had rejected its Maker.
It was on the cross that Jesus experienced the culmination of a life of rejection.
Herod tried to kill Him before He could do anything to deserve it (Matthew 2:16).
He was thrown out of the synagogue and the people of his hometown tried to kill him (Luke 4:28-29). His family thought He was crazy and attempted to stop Him from doing His ministry (Mark 3:21). One of His closest followers betrayed Him for his own selfish purposes (Matthew 27:3). Another follower refused to admit he knew Him (Luke 22:57). Jesus experienced performance rejection when He did not do what everyone thought He should do. He experienced personhood rejection because He was not who everyone thought He should be. Yet, through it all, Jesus experienced the affirmation of the Father (Matthew 3:17). That is, until He hung on the cross. There in the midst of His deepest, loneliest and most agonizing hours, even the Father rejected Him (Mark 15:34).

That rejection by the Father allowed God on the cross, who is as equally God as the Father (Colossians 1:19), to enter into the fullest and most painful expression of all human rejection the rejection of one’s self.

There is no road of rejection that we can walk where we will not find the footprints of the Savior. And in each step He has taken, we will see His blood, bringing forgiveness and healing to all who will receive it.

This Week.........Ask the Lord each day to help you identify areas of rejection in your life. As things come to mind, forgive those who rejected you and forgive yourself for believing the rejection. Ask the Lord to heal the hurt and replace the rejection with His love.

"Father, thank you that You experienced rejection, too. Thank you that I have a friend who sticks closer than a brother, even in times when I feel like no one is on my side. Lord, I want to have as close a relationship with You as possible. Please heal my rejection so that I can enter into that deeper place with You. Amen."

Kevin Grenier is the author of Rejection.