Deion Sanders is an extremely talented African-American athlete who plays baseball, basketball, football and also does stuff on the tracks. Ever since he turned pro in 1989, Deion Sanders has been known as “Prime Time”, the hottest defensive back in the American National Football League and a base-stealing sensation in Major League Baseball. He is the only athlete in history to play both a World Series and a Super Bowl. By the age of twenty-five, Deion was already at the top of his game, but he was desperate for something more. Still pursuing his dreams, he cut a rap album in 1993. His song, “Must Be the Money!” hit the top ten charts all across America, and the money just kept coming in. But despite all his success, his life was out of control. Ten minutes after buying a brand new $275,000 Lamborghini sports car, he realized he was still desperately empty, searching for answers in all the wrong places. Deion tells his story in his gripping autobiography, “POWER, MONEY, & SEX – How Success Almost Ruined My Life”. I have been tremendously blessed by Deion’s story. Below are some portions of it. Please take time to read them. I strongly believe that Deion’s story will bless you too especially if you are a man.
“I learned a lot from my fathers, especially from the things they did wrong. My biological father used drugs and my step-father used alcohol.”
“To this day I’ve never messed with either of those and I never will.”
Page 17, paragraphs 5 & 6
“Now that I’ve been through major changes in my life, I realise that it’s very hard for people who grow up without a father they can count on to trust in the Lord. If their earthly father let them down, then they have a hard time believing that their Heavenly Father will do any better.”
Page 72, paragraph 5
I tried everything. Parties, women, buying expensive jewellery and gadgets, and nothing happened. There was no peace. I mean I was playing great. Each time I would turn on the TV I could see myself on three or four commercials. At one time I think I was on five different commercials at the same time. You see yourself, the kids see you, you’ve got all this media attention and everything the world has to offer, but no peace, no joy, just emptiness inside.”
Page 86, paragraph 3
I’ll see a beautiful woman who was a challenge and I’d end up conquering her and I’d say to myself, Aw, man, this is not it! I’d go to Hollywood and hang out with celebrities and actresses I knew out there, and I’d conquer them…. Next thing I knew I’d be lying up in bed with two, three, four women, and realizing, I’m just getting farther and farther away. And this is definitely not it.”
Page 87, paragraph 2
“I was struggling with just about everything in my life. My attorney, Eugene, could see what I was going through and he tried to help as much as he could, but I was so disappointed and disturbed by the way things were falling apart that I wouldn’t listen to his advice most of the time. He talked about his faith, how Jesus gave his life purpose, and things like that, but I wasn’t ready to receive any of that.”
Page 92, last paragraph
“I was lying there in bed about four o’clock in the morning when I was awakened by these awesome lights in my room…. Before long it was silent and the lights disappeared, and later that night I got up and opened my Bible to a passage that said, “If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” That’s Romans 10, verses 9 and 10. I knew they were meant for me and at that precise moment I was delivered.”
Page 99, paragraph 2 & 3
“I knew more than anything that I couldn’t leave the women alone right then, so that’s what prolonged it. But I made the cardinal mistake of trying to get myself together before I went to the Lord. You can’t do that; you have to go to Him to get yourself together.”
Page 104, paragraph 3
“I was so naïve about spirituality at that time that I thought I had to play with the Lord around my neck, like I had Him on a chain! So I played every game with that chain hanging around my neck. But I always knew I needed a relationship with God. My mother and grandmother made sure I understood that I needed God in my life. But I wasn’t living it. I just didn’t know how to make the move to the next level.”
Page 110, first paragraph
“You see, money just allows you to become who you really are. The more money you have, the freer you are to be who you are inside…. Money magnifies your personality and enhances who you are inside.”
Page 117, paragraph 3
“Once I began my walk and started coming closer to the Lord, I realized that those three things – power, money and sex – are very powerful and that they have two sides. I had seen one side up to that point. Now I needed to see the other side. God was doing a work in my life, and He was just about to turn on the Light.”
Page 118, last paragraph
“When you grow up, a young black kid like I was, and everybody starts talking about you, calling you Mr. Sanders, and telling you how good you are, man that can go to your head. Pretty soon you start to think that you’re somebody. But you’re nobody until you’ve got a greater purpose in your life, and I found out that you can never have that kind of purpose until you know God. I learned my lesson the hard way. Unfortunately, some people will go through hell before they realize that’s the truth.”
Page 120, paragraph 3
“You can spend ten years of your life in a relationship with a woman and still be lonely. Then who are you going to cry to? You were there for your wife and family to cry on. You were there for your children and your parents to cry on because you supported them. You were there for your friends to lean on. But who is there for you? No one. Because no one knows what you’re feeling inside.”
Page 121, paragraph 4
“From time to time people will tell me that I’m a role model for their kids. But that disturbs me. I don’t think mums and dads should encourage their young people to look up to athletes and celebrities as role models. I don’t even like the term ‘role model’ because that’s exactly what it is: a model playing a role. Chances are that your child is only going to see me for three hours on a Sunday afternoon, or in some commercial or endorsement I might do on TV. He may see me doing some interview after the game, or hear something I’ve said on a radio show, but I’m not going to be there to take him to school or help him with his homework.”
“I’m not going to provide for him or teach him right from wrong. That’s a job only his parents can do. I recognize that I have a responsibility, not only to baseball and football fans around the country but to the Lord, and that I am to say and do things that young people will see and admire and try to emulate. But my first responsibility is to my own kids. So I try to put everything in its proper perspective.”
Page 122, paragraphs 3 & 4
“You know if I had come out as a Buddhist or a Muslim or as a follower of any other religion in the world, nobody would have said a thing. But when I take a stand for Jesus Christ, some people just go crazy. But the only reason is that they don’t believe. They don’t want what I have to be true, because if it’s true they’ll have to admit that their own lives are all messed up and they need to make some changes.”
“When I was in the world I attracted who I was. It was always the fun, sexy, party people. Now I’m attracting people who love the Lord and recognize that God always comes first in my life. And that’s what they want, too. When I go to dinner with a woman now, I put Matthew, Mark, Luke and John right between us! And when we go through all those books, we know how to Acts!”
Page 126, paragraph 3 & 6
“You know, it’s stressful to live a lie. It works you to death. That’s what causes batteries to go dead, because they have no power beyond themselves. They can give off a little energy for a while and the light may shine momentarily, but before long things starts to go dim because they’re not hooked up to anything lasting. If you want to keep on burning, then you need to get plugged up to something bigger and stronger than you are.”
Page 132, last paragraph
“When your energy is depleted your first reaction is to start changing things: changing cars, changing jobs, changing neighbourhoods, changing relationships, changing this and that, because you’re desperate and looking for answers in all the wrong places. Before long you are trying things you said you would never try. You’re reaching out to people you said you’d never be with. You’re dialling those old phone numbers, replaying those old memories, and you’re holding on things you thought you would never touch because you’re running out of power and you’re desperate.”
“Through his counselling with men and women Bishop (T.D. Jakes) has found out that every man has got to have someplace he can go and fall apart. You need to have someplace where you can just go and say, “I’m at the end of my rope; I am running out of strength. I need to be refuelled so I can powerful publicly. I need someplace where I can go and strengthen myself so that when the trumpet blows I’ll be ready for the next show.”
Page 133, paragraphs 3 & 4
“God wants to hook you up so that you can be man of power. He wants you to have power, but it has to come from appropriate places. He just wants to deliver you from imitations of life. God doesn’t mind you having things. He minds things having you.”
“God will bless you the day he can trust you. If He can’t trust you, you’ll get so caught up in the things he gave you that you’ll forget who gave them to you. Isn’t that right? Just breathe in. Take a deep breath. Who do you think gave you that breath? If he didn’t let you, you couldn’t catch your breath. If God didn’t love you and help you, you couldn’t take one more breath of air.”
Page 135, paragraphs 2 & 4
“When teaching is real and true, it can also be very personal and painful. I feel that myself when Bishop teaches on the basic conflicts that happen when there is infidelity in a marriage. Some folks have done things that cause their mate to loose respect for them. Now, you can’t walk in and beat on your chest and demand what you’ve already forfeited. You can’t expect a wife to love a man who’s been messing with some other woman or doing things behind her back and acting like it’s okay because he deserves it! She’s not buying any of that, and she’s not going to give him the respect and appreciation he wants when he’s been cheating and lying and going behind her back. She’s just not made that way.”
Page 138, last paragraph
“It takes time to build trust if there has been infidelity in a relationship. And some of you need to realize that fact – particularly with women as it concerns adultery. You see, women define adultery as the epitome of betrayal. I think men have trouble understanding what that means to a woman.”
“Bishop observes that, biologically, men have a propensity to have their body in one place and their emotions in another. We don’t tend to get vulnerable about the giving of flesh. But when you start fooling with our hearts, now you’ve got tears in my eyes…. But the same way men whimper about somebody breaking their heart and trifling with their emotions, that’s how women feel when you take your body and share it with somebody else. And why shouldn’t she feel that way? She has a right. You promised to be faithful, didn’t you?
Page 138, paragraphs 2 & 3
“But nobody can fight with their hands tied behind their backs. I’ve been broke and had really hard times and I understand that. But maybe all your needs are met and you’re doing fine, so all this stuff about struggling just sounds alien to you. If that’s the case, then let me ask you something: For all you make, do you really have enough to show for it? Do you honestly believe that you’re all you were meant to be? And if not, why not?”
Page 144, last paragraph
“At this very moment God is watching you to see what you’re going to do with what he has given you. He gave you life. He gave you gifts. He gave you resources, family, children, and now He’s standing there watching you. He says, “Show me what you can do with that.” And you’re wasting time complaining, “I ain’t got enough help. I got to build a house and all I’ve got is these dumb trees!” You have to devise a plan – through prayer and meditation and thought – to decide what you’re going to do with what you’ve got.”
Page 146, paragraph 4
“No matter how virile or how spiritual you may seem to other people, in the back of everyone’s mind, to some degree, there is an innate interest in power, money and sex. One of the challenges for people who have come out of the world into the church is that they become a Christian and suddenly everything that was “normal” yesterday becomes taboo today.”
Page 153, paragraph 2
“The fact is, if you had a bunion on your foot before you got saved, as soon as you get home from church take your shoe off and see! That same old bunion is still there! You body has not received notification that you are saved, and when it does get the news it doesn’t like it…. You’ve been saved in you spirit and you’ve been changed in your mind, but your physical nature is yet to be changed. If it was changed you wouldn’t be tempted in that area, because it wouldn’t be there anymore.”
Page 154, paragraphs 3 & 4
“Most men are too quick on the draw. She has worked all day and she comes home and she’s got tricycles and homework and chicken dinner to make. So she’s supposed to go from being workhorse to a mommy to a nursemaid to a sex goddess in the course of two hours’ time? That’s quite a metamorphosis to make.”
“But one thing that makes it easier for her is if she’s reminded that beneath all these other tasks is a man who cares, who cares deeply and who stimulates her mind and emotions. He appreciates and affirms who she is and he shows genuine affection in little ways. He calls her now and then just to say, ‘Hi honey. I was just thinking about you, and I just wanted you to know that I love you.’ That what she needs to hear.”
Page 155, paragraphs 4 & 5
And this is my favourite portion of the book:
“One of the things that will always stop you from winning over sin is by focusing on it. You spend all your time concentrating on that one thing that you need to forget until it just drives you crazy. Let me tell you something: The best way to get loosed from sin is to get distracted by righteousness. Until all of a sudden you’re so caught up with what God is calling you to that you get the grace to leave what He’s calling you from. God never called a man from anything without calling him to something better.”
Page 158, last paragraph
“I try to be on guard at all times against the wiles of the devil because he knows me and he knows where all my doors and windows are. But I’ve taken away the welcome mat and Jesus is standing guard at the doors to my heart. I have passionate hunger for the things of God, and each day I’m feeding on His word. Jesus said, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matt. 5:6), and that’s how I want to be. I want more of what God has to offer, and He has graciously allowed me to have access to some mighty men of faith who make sure that I’m constantly filled with the world.”
Page 192, last paragraph
“Success almost ruined my life, but, thank God, I came to Him just in the nick of time. And that has made all the difference.”
Last page, last paragraph
If you’ve been blessed by Deion Sanders’ testimony, please encourage someone to read it also. Remain blessed.
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