Pride is the thing that keeps you from asking for help because you don’t want others to think you have a problem, even if you do.
Pride is the thing that keeps you silent when you should speak because you don’t want to cause trouble or cause a scene even if what you need to say is true.
Pride is the thing that prevents you from reconciling because you are right and being right is more important than a person.
Pride keeps you safe.
Except it doesn’t.
It keeps you isolated.
No matter how many people you have in your life, trying to love them through the lens of pride keeps you disconnected and self protected.
“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.”
1 Corinthians 13:4 NIV
You are loved and you are made to love others freely, fully, with hope and joy.
Love is not proud.
Lay down your pride and let love heal what is broken.
“Yes, everything else is worthless when compared with the infinite value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord. For his sake I have discarded everything else, counting it all as garbage, so that I could gain Christ and become one with him”.
Philippians 3:8 NLT
At the end of your life, you may or may not have human praise but if you have gone after a real relationship with Jesus, you will have so much more than that.
You will have rich relationships, miraculous moments, great faith adventures as well as the single most important thing you can have with you as you step into eternity – Jesus Himself.
Don’t waste your life by pursuing goals to make yourself more comfortable, more secure or safer.
Live the life you were created for by pursuing the one goal of knowing Jesus.
Not just to know about Him but to know Him in every area of your life.
Not just to work for Him but to work with Him.
Keep this goal as the top priority and all the other goals will quickly fall into their proper perspective.
“Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word.”
Hebrews 10:23 MSG
What promise are you holding onto today?
For me, it is this one:
“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.”
– Philippians 1:6 NIV
This scripture reminds me God will finish the work of restoration He began when I gave Him my life. He started it, His work will continue it and He will complete it. My life, His work.
It is a reminder that it is not my work that completes me but His.
My life’s work is to focus on my relationship with Him.
What a great job description: grow my relationship with God and let Him grow me.
What promise keeps you going?
What word are you holding on to right now?
Jesus is able and faithful to keep His promises to you.
Hold tight to Him and trust Him to hold tight to you.
It isn’t a skill to excel in, it is a relationship to have.
Through the good times and bad times, the easy times and the hard times.
Through ALL the times.
The longer you follow Jesus, the more you realize you need Him.
My college pastor said it was like this, “The closer you get to bright light, the more you see the flaws you have”.
It was good to know that the closer I get to God, the more I will see my imperfections and know more intimately my own flaws.
It was good for me to hear early on that in my walk with God I would never get to a point of “being an expert ” or “being perfect”.
“Brother and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,”
Philippians 3:13 NIV
We tend to focus on all the things we are not, all the things we haven’t conquered, all the things we haven’t grown in.
All those things take your focus from God and put it on yourself.
So, forget it.
Forget it all.
God didn’t choose you because someday you would be perfect. He chose you because He loves you and He is perfect enough for the both of you.
Forget what is behind you even if it happened five minutes ago.
Love God for who He is and let Him love you for who you are: His kid.
When God gives you a new vision for your life, He will equip you to live it.
When He gives you a new revelation of His relationship with you, He will empower you to experience it.
But new visions and new revelations will always come with a fight.
Whether it is the resistance of your flesh or the stubbornness of old mindsets, you will have to fight for what God has shown you and He will arm you for that as well.
“He trains my hands for battle; my arms can bend a bow of bronze. You make your saving help my shield, and your right hand sustains me; your help has made me great.”
Psalm 18:34-35 NIV
My prayer for you today is that you would know His love as He pours His strength into you.
I pray that you would know His peace as you lean on him.
I pray that you would rest in God’s grace as you walk by His guidance.
I pray that you would trust Him with the future and focus simply on the task before you.
I pray that you would be released from the restlessness within you as you receive a new determination to go forward in faith.
You are stronger than you know because you know where your strength comes from and whose Right Hand sustains you.
The Second Person of the Trinity, eternal, all-powerful, left heaven to add humanity to His deity.
He came to earth to bring heaven to humanity.
He came to bring heaven to you.
“All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).”
Isaiah 7:14 NLT
May you have a moment today where the awe-inspiring truth of Christmas captures your soul and remember that He did it all for you.
“Let’s keep a firm grip on the promises that keep us going. He always keeps his word.”
Hebrews 10:23 MSG
What promise are you holding onto today?
For me, it is this one:
“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” Philippians 1:6 NIV
This scripture reminds me God will finish the work of restoration He began when I gave Him my life. He started it, His work will continue it and He will complete it. My life, His work.
It is a reminder that it is not my work that completes me but His.
My life’s work is to focus on my relationship with Him. What a great job description: grow my relationship with God and let Him grow me.
What promise keeps you going?
What word are you holding on to right now?
Jesus is able and faithful to keep His promises to you.
Hold tight to Him and trust Him to hold tight to you.
Cindy Grasso 