Major corporations and businesses pay tens of thousands of dollars each year to men and women to come in and “motivate” their employees. “Life coaches” are paid 5-figure fees by company CEOs and top executives to help them through the day to day grind of managing their professional and private lives. The fact is, if these corporations and key executives simply got the FREE Daily Devotional from Liveprayer each day, they would not only save a huge amount of money, but the employees and top executives would get the best motivation and coaching possible right from God’s Word!

Today, I am going to “coach” you in what many may see as a simple issue everyone deals with in life. However, for those who are successful and prosperous it is a HUGE hurdle that most who have “made it” by the world’s standards fail to clear. That is being able to say “I am wrong” when you make a mistake. It is the ability to admit your mistakes, humble yourself, and take responsibility for your choices and actions. This is a critical issue everyone has to deal with every day.

You see my friend, the Bible clearly tells us that we have all sinned and come short of God’s glory. In the book of 1 John, the Word actually says that we all sin, and if we say we don’t we are liars! During the course of each day, we sin, we make mistakes, we exercise poor judgment, we make horrible choices. Nobody, NOBODY is immune from this. The key is how do we handle the mistakes we make during the course of a day?

There was no better example of how NOT to handle your mistakes than Martha Stewart. If you listened to her statement on the courthouse steps after being sentenced several years ago, if you saw her interviews with Barbara Walters and Larry King, you saw a woman who was defiant, unrepentant, showed no remorse, no contrition, and instead of accepting responsibility for her actions, was still blaming everyone else but herself.

If you never pay attention to anything I say to you, please pay attention to this. When you make a mistake, say you are sorry, accept responsibility for your actions, make whatever amends you need to, and move on! When you refuse to acknowledge your mistakes, when you blame others for what you did, when you become defiant and unrepentant, a single mistake in the course of a given day can end up destroying your very life!!!

You see, satan wants to hold your mistakes over your head. When you refuse to acknowledge what you did was wrong, when you allow satan to help you find excuses for your mistakes you have played right into his hands. Instead of getting beyond your mistakes, your mistakes take on a life of their own and literally becomes an anchor around your neck. Rather than putting your mistakes behind you, your mistakes become part of your daily life.

I love you and care about you so much. As basic as this word is, it is an issue EVERYONE deals with because we all make mistakes in life every day. The more successful you are by the world’s standards, the more difficult saying “I was wrong” becomes. As people fall into the traps of pride and ego, the great justifier satan will always help you find an excuse for YOUR mistakes so that you can say you were right. My friend, that is a lie from the pits of hell itself. We all sin, we all make mistakes, and nobody is right all the time…..except Jesus!

I will be praying for you today. Praying that these words will find fertile resting place in your heart. Listen, it should be the goal of every follower of Jesus Christ to not sin, to live life perfectly. That MUST be our goal and why our daily time with the Lord in prayer and the Word is so critical. It helps us to stay connected to Christ and make Christ-like decisions during the course of the day.

But the reality is, only Jesus went through this journey without sin. As hard as we try, we will sin, we will make mistakes along the way. God knows this and gave us that great promise in 1 John 1:9 that tells us, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

My word for you today is simply this. When you sin, when you make a mistake during the course of your day, don’t start trying to figure out an excuse for what you did, don’t try to cover it up. Instead, go to God and ask His forgiveness, admit your mistake to those you need to, make whatever amends might be necessary, and move on. We all sin, we all make mistakes, that is a fact. How we respond to our sins and mistakes is critical. There is only one correct response, “I was wrong!”

In His love and service,

Your friend and brother in Christ,

Bill Keller

About the Author
Bill Keller is the president of Bill Keller Ministries which owns Liveprayer.Com. Bill has his ministry credentials through an independent group of ministers, Spiritual Life Concepts in Largo, Florida, and is a member of a non-denominational church in Palm Harbor Florida. Bill has been married for 23 years to his wife Nan and the couple have no children.

Related posts:

1. Dying To Self Daily
2. Are You Ready To Stand Before God?

Dying to self daily is what Paul spoke of so often. It is how we walk in the “Spirit” and not in the “flesh” as we are instructed in Romans Chapter 8 and Galatians Chapter 5. The whole issue of dying to self daily is the absolute key to living a victorious life in Christ. It literally means that you have to die to self DAILY!

This is why so many people who are saved, love the Lord, live beneath their blessings and in constant turmoil. This is how people who know Christ as their Savior end up committing adultery, cheat people, lie, get in bondage to drugs, alcohol, food, sex, gambling, shopping, greed, and anything else people become enslaved to. They don’t die to self each day and end up walking in the “flesh” and NOT the “Spirit.”

People wonder all the time how a pastor, a deacon, an elder, someone in the leadership of God’s church could leave their wife and run off with another woman. People wonder all the time how a Sunday School teacher who loves the Lord could neglect her children and family because of alcohol. Maybe you are wondering how you could be raising your hands to Jesus, speaking in tongues, and being used by God to touch lives one day, and sinning against God the next. The answer is when you fail to die to self each day, you are walking in the “flesh,” not the “Spirit.”

The question that needs to be addressed today is HOW does a person “die to self?” The first step is an action, something that you must do. Dying to self is a conscious choice that you must make, one nobody can make for you. It is the act of surrendering your life completely to Christ. The reason God’s Word talks about dying to self DAILY is because it is something that we must do each and every day. Our life with Christ is not for an hour or two on Sunday, but literally 24/7. It is critical to make the choice to die to self each and every day.

Since this is something you must do each day, I do it and counsel others to do it the moment you wake up in the morning. As I first open my eyes to a new day, before I do anything I take a moment and thank God for a day that was not promised to me and make the conscious choice to completely surrender my life to Him that day. I literally tell God to take my life and use it for His glory that day, to use me as an instrument of blessing. When we get saved, we not only ask Christ into our heart and life by faith, but we give our very lives to Him. In dying to self each day, we are reaffirming that our life doesn’t belong to us any longer, it is His.

At the moment we are born again, we receive the promise of the “Comforter,” or the Holy Spirit. Each Believer is indwelt by the Holy Spirit to empower them and guide them throughout their life. It is literally the power of Almighty God living within each person who has given their heart and life to Christ by faith. As you surrender your life afresh to Christ at the start of each day, you are allowing your life to be controlled by the Holy Sprit and not by your flesh. It is no longer you but God that is in complete control of your life. You have traded in your thoughts and desires for God’s thoughts and desires. It is not YOU that is living, it is Christ living in you as Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20.

This whole process takes only a few minutes of time alone with the Lord, but it is the most important few minutes of your day. When you don’t go through this process each and every morning, you wake up, start going through your day, and not only does it feel like the day is weighing you down, you don’t have that confidence. The reality is, the day IS weighing you down because you are operating in your strength and not the Lord’s, and the lack of confidence comes from the fact you are in control of your life and not Christ.

Sadly, some people go days, even weeks without really dying to self, and it usually takes the consequences of their poor choices during that time to bring them back to the Lord. Like I say often, your way doesn’t work, God’s way works! Let me give you some advice out of my love for you. You can never run your life better than God can. The sooner you realize that, the more peace, joy, and abundance you will know during this journey through life.

There is probably no more critical a message I will ever share with you in living a victorious life in Christ than the one today. All of the benefits in God’s Word exist and are available to those who believe, but there is a price to pay and that price is our very life surrendered, yielded to the Lord. It is a choice, an act, that nobody can force you to commit. The important thing for you to hear today is that it is not something you do just once and forget about. It is something that you must do DAILY! EVERY DAY! WITHOUT FAIL! Each morning when you wake up, you have to make the conscious choice to die to self, to surrender your life to Christ, and walk in the “Spirit” instead of the “flesh.”

I love you and care about you so much. The difference between a person who knows the Lord as their Savior living a defeated life and a victorious life, lies in what I am sharing with you today. Please, save your money. You don’t need to waste it listening to Tony Robbins or the motivational speakers of the world lie to you that you can do it on your own, and you don’t need to spend it on books and tapes from preachers who preach a feel good Gospel but forget to tell you about the sacrifice involved. The key to living a victorious life in Christ lies in you waking up each morning and making the conscious choice to die to self and allow Christ to control your life.

The fact is, the Bible says that if you have asked Christ into you heart and life by faith, it is no longer your life, that it belongs to Him. The Word says we have been “bought with a price.” So in essence, each day you are only giving the Lord what already belongs to Him anyway. Remember my message in the past on what really happens when we get saved? We are literally giving our life to Christ. It is no longer ours, but is now His. The reality is, each morning when we wake up, we have to make the choice to die to self so that Christ can live within us during that day. If we don’t do this each and every day when we wake up, we will soon find ourselves walking in the “flesh” and not the “Spirit.”

I will be praying for you today. Praying that you will sit down and read this message over and over. This is the meat and potatoes of the Word. This is where the rubber meets the road in regard to our Christian walk. This is the part that nobody really wants to talk about since we love the benefits of being saved, but we really don’t want to think about the price that Jesus paid or the sacrifice we have to make each day. You MUST think about it since it is the difference between you living a defeated life and living a victorious life. To live that victorious life in Christ, to walk in His victory, you have to die to self each day so that you are walking in the “Spirit” and not the “flesh” so that it is Christ, not you that lives.

In His love and service,
Your friend and brother in Christ,
Bill Keller
LivePrayer.com

Related posts:

1. Admitting Your Mistakes
2. Are You Ready To Stand Before God?

Life is a mist, are YOU ready to stand before God?

Last June, Tim Russert, the host of NBC’s Meet the Press and the Washington Bureau Chief for NBC news, woke up in Europe with his wife and son where they were celebrating his son’s graduation from college. He flew back to Washington in the morning to prepare for that Sunday’s Meet the Press program and was in the audio booth cutting some of the audio for the program when he had a heart attack and died.

Russert’s death is a classic reminder of what I share with you so often of how fragile this life is and how quickly it is over. Tim Russert woke up that morning in Europe, flew to Washington, was in his office preparing for his Sunday television program, and died before the day was over.

My friend, tomorrow is promised to none of us. We never know if we will even see the end of today!!!

We all take our lives for granted most of the time. TODAY, take a moment, and realize how brief your life really is. I am thankful to God to be here today, to still be doing what He has called me to do. But I never forget for a moment, our life is a gift from above. Don’t take it for granted!

For each one of us, the one certainty is that one day this life will be over and we will pass into eternity. It is not a question of if, only when. That is why I try often to reinforce to you that we must live each day to its fullest. Our purpose in this life is to serve and glorify God. When it is over, the only thing that we will take with us from this life is our personal relationship with Christ.

Back in August of 2001, I had a chance to play in a charity golf tournament. During these past 111+ months since Liveprayer started, I have had very little time to play a game I really enjoy. It was a very enjoyable round. Beautiful country club near Brandon, Florida. Warm but overcast Florida summer day. Wonderful people playing. Not to mention I actually played pretty well for not having played much.

On the 8th hole, I hit a 150 yard approach a little short and ended up in a greenside bunker. I was talking to the gentleman I was playing with as we approached the bunker. I have always had a very bad habit of chewing on my tee while playing. Nervous energy I guess. As I waited for another player in our foursome to hit his shot, I took a deep breath and actually inhaled the tee.

At first, I didn’t know what happened. Then, when I realized I had inhaled the tee, I tried to cough it up. It became apparent that it would not come out, and had gotten lodged in my throat part of the way down. One of the men came running over and asked if he should call 911. I told him yes. At this point, I realized the key was staying calm, and breathing. I was able to breath through my nose, so that kept me from panicking. My playing partner got behind me and tried to pop it out of me that way, but it was lodged in my throat sideways and that didn’t work. I could also now feel some blood running down my throat, obviously from the cut in my throat where the tee was lodged.

At this point, there was about a 30 second period when all of this was happening where an incredible calm came over me. In a very clear and concise way, I realized that I may actually die. You never know how these things will play out, and that was a legitimate possibility. My thought at this was one of gratitude. I remember clearly thanking God for such a wonderful life. I wasn’t praying for God to heal me, or take the tee out of my throat. I wasn’t begging for my life. I wasn’t mad at God. I just had a great peace about me, and an incredible sense of gratitude to God for allowing me to live such a wonderful life.

It seemed that within seconds I forced myself to swallow hard and all of the sudden felt the tee dislodge and go down. I drank some water, got my sand wedge, and hit a great bunker shot within a few feet of the hole! I got back to my golf cart and called my wife and simply told her how much I loved her. Even though I was still spitting up blood from where my throat was cut for the next several holes, I did finish the round. Needless to say, I have been broken of the habit of chewing on tees!

I share this with you today just to remind you how precious life really is. Not only how precious, but how quickly it can end. DON’T EVER TAKE YOUR LIFE FOR GRANTED. EACH DAY IS A SPECIAL GIFT FROM GOD. Let me also say that for anyone reading this today, that does not have 100% assurance that if your life ends today you will spend eternity with God, the Bible says TODAY is the day of salvation. Please take a few minutes, the most important few minutes of your life, and go to: http://liveprayer.com/plan.cfm . Pray and ask God to open your heart, then read the words and watch the short video clip. Please share it with everyone that you know who doesn’t know Jesus as their Savior.

I love you and care about you so very much. Please pray for Tim Russert’s wife and family, that they will know the Lords comfort and strength as they continue to deal with their loss. I don’t know if Tim had a personal relationship with Jesus Christ or not, but I know the second he took his last breath he was standing before God. At that moment, it didn’t matter that he was the well known host of Meet the Press, the only thing that mattered was if He knew Jesus as His personal Lord and Savior.

Death is a part of the human experience. The Bible says “O death, where is thy sting!” For those who have put their faith and trust in Jesus Christ it is not an event to be feared, but one that simply marks the end of our time in this life. Don’t ever forget this important point. Only God says when our work here is over. So have no fear. As long as He still has work for us to do, we aren’t going anywhere. I guess He still has some work for me to do, just like He does you. I pray each day we are found faithful to that work until the day He calls us home!

In His love and service,
Your friend and brother in Christ,
Bill Keller
LivePrayer.com

Related posts:

1. Dying To Self Daily
2. Admitting Your Mistakes