Daily Devotional for Saturday July 17, 2004

Pride Goes before Destruction

(Proverbs 11:2, 16:18; 1 John 2:16)

Martha Stewart is a current example of this Biblical truth. For many people who enjoy the success of this world, there comes a point when pride overtakes your life. You become the ?god? of the world that you have created. You have the financial resources to live however you want and do whatever you please. You see other people as simply there to serve you and fulfill whatever needs you may have. You answer to no one. Nobody tells you what to do. Your decisions are final. My friend, when this becomes your life, it is only a matter of time before the world you created will come crashing down. We see it happen all of the time with entertainers, business people, and sadly, even those who are in the ministry.

I can relate with what Martha is dealing with in her life right now, since I went through a very similar experience in my own life 15 years ago ( http://www.weeklyplanet.com/2003-12-04/cover.html ). I was blessed with much success in the business world at a very young age that caused me to abandon the call God had on my life, so that I could focus on building my own kingdom instead. I did a great job of it for a decade, until my world came crashing down in 1988. Like Martha, I got involved in some illegal stock trades. Like Martha, I thought that I was above the law and used my high-priced attorneys to fight the government. Like Martha, it not only cost me an incredible amount of money, but eventually my freedom. Like Martha, it was my PRIDE that led to my downfall. The sin of pride carries a huge price!

There is nothing wrong with having success, or having money. In any business there has to be one person at the top who makes the ultimate decisions. But we must guard ourselves from letting pride take over our lives. We must never forget that powerful verse in John 15:5 that tells us, ?Without me, you can do nothing!? God must ALWAYS be first in our life and the head of our life. The very first sin was PRIDE. Satan decided that he wanted to be God. That is EXACTLY what pride is. It is when we decide that WE want to be God. When we make that choice, it is only a matter of time before we will fall.

Satan made that choice and was kicked out of Heaven with his eventual eternal home being the Lake of Fire. Bill Keller made that choice and spent 31 months in Federal Prison. Martha Stewart made that choice and will be spending 5 months in Federal Prison. When you take God off of the throne and replace Him with yourself, it is not a matter of if, only when you will be destroyed. Deuteronomy 8:19 tells us, ?If we forget God, and chase after other gods, that we will be destroyed!!!

I love you and care about you so much. Pride is not just an issue that the rich and powerful people of the world fall into. WE ALL CAN FALL INTO THE SIN OF PRIDE!!! Any time that you make the choice to put yourself over God, any time that you make the choice to live your life apart from God, you have fallen into the sin of pride. That is why it is important to get up in the morning and first thing, pray. Prayer is many things, but one thing it is, is an act of dependence upon God. When we pray, we are saying, ?God, I need you?! Keeping God in His rightful place, on the throne of our life, as the head of our life, is how we can keep from falling into the sin of pride.

I will be praying for you today. I pray that you will not fall into the sin of pride. Like all sin, the sin of pride carries a big price tag. Again, the way to avoid this sin is to always keep God first in your life. I not only wake up each morning and go right to prayer, but taped to the mirror in my bathroom are those powerful words from John 15:5, WITHOUT ME YOU CAN DO NOTHING.

I pray that in the coming months Martha Stewart will ask God to forgive her for her sin of pride and ask Jesus Christ into her heart. She has tremendous gifts God could use to touch many for His Kingdom if she is willing to humble herself, accept responsibility for her crimes and quit blaming others for what she did, and surrender her life to the Lord. 14 years ago, I repented of my sin of pride and asked God to forgive me. I had to learn a very tough lesson about the consequences of this sin of pride. I pray that you will heed this warning today and not allow pride into your life. The Bible is true when it says, ?Pride goes before destruction.?

PRIDE (Proverbs 16:18)

Pride and the fall I have come to realize that the majority of people who are getting these devotionals every day, are very intelligent, mature, and gifted. Many are what society would call overachievers and successful.That is why today, I want to give you a warning from God?s word to help you from having to endure some of God?s ?tough love? we read about in Hebrews 12. First of all, there is nothing wrong with being ambitious, driven, people of achievement. The trouble comes when our priorities are out of place and our efforts are more focused on what the world expects from us and not so much what God expects. Let me remind you, the gifts, talents, and intelligence God gave you was for the ultimate purpose of serving and glorifying Him. There are so many ways God uses us and in may cases, He allows us success in ?the world? in order to serve Him better. Again, I am in no way condemning success in the world we live in. We need more driven Christians who are successful in order to use all of the resources,.finances, man power, influence, and creativity .to further the Kingdom. I am only trying to get you to stop for just a second to revisit where your priorities are and if you are overachieving in the world and underachieving for the Lord.

The Bible, history, and daily life all give us unlimited examples of people who are successfully falling. That fall can ultimately be traced back to their ego and pride. It is one of Satan?s greatest plots against God?s most gifted children. It is an easy trap to fall into. At a certain point, you think all of your success is because of you, and forget it is only because of God. You start to believe you are in total control of the ?world? you have created, being reminded how little control you really have when your spouse leaves, your children are in trouble, people close to you die, you find out you have major health problems, and a multitude of things you have absolutely NO CONTROL over. God blessed me in so many ways, but after a period of so much rebellion, He took mercy on me and allowed me to fall, in order to build me back into what He wanted. You see, that is where pride, the ?first sin??since it was because of pride Lucifer was cast out of heaven?become deadly. We end up in control of so much of the world we live in, and are so good at it, we start to act like we can do a better job at being God than God can. As much as you may think you are, you are not omniscient, you are not omnipotent, and you are not omnipresent. You are not God!

I was led to write this Devotional today, because there are many successful people who need to hear this warning today. There are many students reading this Devotional that need to learn early how to prioritize their life. Success in the world is tremendous, but at the expense of being successful for God, it is not worth it. Why trade success for a day, when you can be successful for eternity? I love you, care about you, and sometimes have been criticized for not being more upbeat; more pleasant in the thing I write each day. The trouble is, I am one of the most upbeat people you will ever know, and what I write is all based, not on my words, but on His. Too many want to read the promises and gloss over the warnings. It is like driving down the street and going through the green lights and ignoring the red lights. You may do it a few times, but eventually it will catch up with you and the results could be deadly. You are committing spiritual suicide by not heeding to the many warnings God has placed in His Word to protect you, mostly from yourself.

I will be praying for you today. This is a great warning for everyone, but there are some who need this word desperately today. My prayer is that you adopt a plan I have been using for the years. On my mirror in the bathroom, the first thing I see every morning is the verse out of John, ?Without me you can do nothing.? My prayer every morning is that I never forget that without Him, I am able to do nothing that will stand the test of eternity. I have found that when I humble myself before Him, it become much easier to humble myself before people.

May His blessings be with you in abundance today as you serve in His strength.