There is no experience in Christian living so full of danger as a great flush of victory! Many of us "fall back" right after a great revival because we think we can live on the great victory we just gained. We fail to realize that tomorrow is a new day. Lamentations 3:22,23 tells us it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. We can't carry yesterday's manna over for today. No moment is so perilous as when we have experienced great deliverance or victory.

There are those who will say, "If you're a Christian, pride is gone." No! No! No! There is a pride, which remains there: that which causes us to comb our hair, wash our face, take a shower, etc. There's a pride that makes us proud to know the Lord Jesus Christ as our personal Savior and want to let all those around us know about Him, too. That type of pride is a God-given virtue. However, the same pride, if allowed to, can react in the wrong way and assert itself in the wrong way. Unless we stay humble at the feet of God, and in daily communion with Him, it is easy to take pride in ourselves and boast of our own arm for past great victories. By resting on them, sometimes referred to as "resting on our laurels", we may be misled into thinking we have the strength for the battles of today. This is utterly contradictory to divine truth!

When we are apart from (away from) the Grace of God and the blood of Jesus Christ, the smallest temptation is too powerful for us. That's the lesson, teaching us that no matter how greatly God has moved and taken us through trial and tempation, that small trial we next face may knock us out, unless we have the same God on the job.

Just as in Joshua's case, God sometimes lifts a cup of failure to our lips. That is a bitter one to drink--the cup of failure. It was necessary in Joshua's life that he drink from the cup of failure. It was not God's purpose, but it became necessary because he had to learn a lesson. God still chastens everyone whom He loves. We have to daily look to the Lord, without whom we are nothing.