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God is not just trying to make it hard on us. He wants to set us free. And you can’t run away from the hard things.
If you run away from the hard things, then you always, they’re always there chasing you. I’m Joyce Meyer. I’ve seen God’s power transform my own life, and He will do it for you.
Well, thank you so much for joining me today on Enjoying Everyday Life. I hope that you enjoy the teaching, and not only that you enjoy it, but that it makes a real positive difference in your life. I’m talking about determination.
We started yesterday talking about being determined to keep a good attitude no matter what’s going on in your life. Today we want to talk about being determined to not be anxious and upset every time you have a problem. because you can’t solve your problems anyway, only God can.
So believe it or not, it’s perfectly okay for you to give your problem to God and then go ahead and enjoy your life while he solves it. I think I might need to say that again. because you know, we kind of automatically think that if we have a problem, we should be miserable the whole time we have the problem.
Or if you’ve got a kid that’s not doing well in school or whatever. But you don’t have to be miserable if you really believe that God is working on it and that he’s going to solve it. Then why not go ahead and be happy because the joy of the Lord is your strength.
And we’re in the business of making the devil mad. And he does not like it if you’re happy. So the happier you are, the madder you make him.
A couple of scriptures that use the word determination. And when I say determination, I want to repeat what I said yesterday. That doesn’t mean just self will.
We can’t do anything apart from God. But it does mean that whatever the word tells us to do, or whatever God asks us to do, we do need to be determined if we’re going to do it because the enemy will work overtime trying to make sure that we don’t. And so God wants us to be peaceful.
jesus said in John 14, 27, my peace I leave with you. Not as the world gives do I give unto you, but my own special peace I give and bequeath unto you. So stop allowing yourselves to be upset and disturbed.
And stop allowing yourselves to be fearful and intimidated. So God’s done his part, I’ve given you peace. Now your part, you stop allowing yourself to get upset.
How many of you can feel upset coming from down in here somewhere? Well, the key is to stop it before it gets to your mouth. because once it gets there, then you only start magnifying the problem by then you have more to repent for.
1 Peter 5, 8, and 9 says be well-balanced, temperate, which means discipline, sober of mind, be vigilant and cautious at all times, for that enemy of yours, the devil, roams around like a lion roaring in fierce hunger, seeking someone to seize upon and devour. Withstand him, be firm in faith against his onset, rooted, established, strong, immovable and determined. Knowing that the same identical sufferings are appointed to your brotherhood, the whole body of Christians throughout the world.
And Paul said in Philippians 3, my determined purpose is to know him and the power of his resurrection that lifts me out from among the body, what lifts me out from among the problems while I’m still in the body. You can be lifted above your problems into a place where God is, even though you have problems. And Paul said, I’m determined to know him in such a way that I’ll be able to do that.
It seems that some people are always anxious and upset about something. You know, that can become a habit. You can make problems out of things that really don’t even have to be problems.
I think some people call it making mountains out of molehills. And it’s amazing to me now, after 45 years of studying the word and walking with God, the things that I don’t get upset about that I would have gotten very upset about when I was more of a immature baby Christian. And we all go through those stages, but the point is, is if you’ve been saved 50 years and you’re still in that first stage, then there’s a problem with that.
God is not upset with us if we haven’t arrived, but he does expect us to always be growing and making progress. So we should be able to look at our lives and see some difference every year. Some area where you’re making progress.
We must learn to live the deeper life rather than a surface life. If you think about a body of water, if there’s a storm, on the top of that water, it’ll be rough and waves. But if you could go down deep, it would be just as still as it could be.
And see, that’s the way that God wants us to be, because really we are a spirit which is deep. We have a soul, next layer, and we live in a body. So it’s our soul that gets upset, our mind, our will, and our emotions.
And a lot of why we get upset is based on how we think, how we think about a situation. Do you really believe that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose? See, I really do believe that because I’ve had enough experience with God now that I’ve seen it happen over and over and over.
And I’ve also learned to say, this won’t last forever. See, the enemy, he talks to us like, well, I can’t stand this because we think it’s going to last forever. But you know something, you can do anything if you do it one day at a time.
I want to make sure that our viewing audience gets that. Whatever it is you’re going through, if you take it one day at a time, God, just give me the strength I need for today. And don’t let the devil tell you it’s going to last forever because think of all the other things that you thought were going to last forever, that God took care of and you don’t have them anymore.
You know, we worry about all that stuff and we get upset and what we should do is P-R-A-Y, who can spell? Pray. Our first response to every problem should be to pray.
And when I say pray, don’t think of it like, oh, I’ve got to get somewhere in this certain place and I’ve got to get in this certain posture and I have to have enough time to pray for a long time. No, we need to learn that we can pray about anything, anytime, anywhere. You can pray out loud or you can pray silently, depending on where you’re at.
So, we have to learn that the world is not going to change. If anything, it’s going to get worse. And I spent a lot of time praying for God to change my circumstances.
And he really didn’t. So I finally figured out he wants me to change. It’s not my circumstance.
Oh, you know, maybe one circumstance would go away, but then another one would come right behind it. How many of you have something going on in your life on a pretty semi-regular basis? Okay.
We all do. You know, I mean, I could tell you just in the last week, things that have happened to me and, you know, I’m here today doing what I’m supposed to be doing. And, you know, when we’re having problems, we should not withdraw and isolate and stop keeping our commitments and just stay home and feel sorry for ourselves.
Activity, the Bible says be alert and active. And we should be actively continuing to do what God wants us to do. Keep your commitments.
If you’ve committed to do something, if at all possible, go ahead and do that thing. I love these scriptures in Luke 5, 1 through 8. I use them often and they really have taught me a lot.
Now, it occurred that while the people pressed upon jesus to hear the message of God, he was standing by the lake of Gennesaret, the Sea of Galilee, and he saw two boats drawn up by the lake, but the fishermen had gone down from them and were washing their nets. And getting into one of the boats, the one that belonged to Simon Peter, he asked him to draw away a little bit from the shore, and then he sat down and he continued to teach the crowd of people from the boat. I don’t know if you know it or not, but when you talk across water, it amplifies your voice.
He didn’t have microphones, but that was why he asked him to draw away a little from the shore. When he had stopped speaking, he said to Peter, put out into the deep water and lower your nets for a haul. Now listen to what Peter said.
Master, we toiled all night exhaustingly, and we caught nothing in our nets. Now, let’s think about how they felt. No sleep, been up all night, fishing all night, catching nothing.
How many of you know if you’re fishing, so to speak, in life? Or let’s just say that you’ve been doing the right thing for a long time and you still haven’t had a breakthrough. It gets kind of hard, doesn’t it?
You need a refreshing. You need a little bit of encouragement. But you know, the Bible says that God will never allow more to come on us than what we can bear.
But with every temptation, He always also provides the way out. And He does. So Peter told jesus how he felt.
He said, look, we’re tired. We are exhausted. And these nets were not easy to wash and get all cleaned up and put away.
He said, we didn’t catch anything. But on the ground of your word, I will lower the nets again. I love that.
So what’s he saying? I don’t think this is going to work. I don’t feel like doing it.
And I don’t want to do it. That’s his soul. But because you said to, I will do it.
Now what do you think would happen in our world if everybody who calls themselves a Christian would just start to read the book, the Bible, and just do what it says?
Wow.
I mean, and that’s really what it comes down to. Everything that the Bible says is for us. Even the things that are hard to do.
God is not just trying to make it hard on us. He wants to set us free. And you can’t run away from the hard things.
If you run away from the hard things, then you always, they’re always there chasing you. Anything you run from is always chasing you. But if you turn and confront it, then you can win over it.
You can master it. You can’t get rid of fear by running away from it. You have to confront it.
That’s the only way you can get rid of it. And so, sure enough, they did what he said. When he had done this, they caught a great number of fish, so many that their nets were at the point of breaking.
When jesus said a hall, he meant a hall. How many of you are ready for a hall of blessings in your life? Amen.
And I love this part. So they signaled to their partners in the other boats to come and take hold with them, and they came and filled both the boats so that they began to sink. What I love about that is, if we do what God tells us to do, not only will we have more than what we need, we will have so much that we will be able to bless all the other people around us.
And I love that. We should not just want blessings for ourselves, but we should want to be able to bless other people because that’s where the real joy comes in your life, is being able to bless other people. So when Simon Peter saw this, he fell down at jesus’ knees saying, depart from me for I’m a sinful man.
So we need to learn to act on what we know, not what we feel, or what we think. So the next time that you’re really upset, and sure enough, you just got yourself more upset by just talking about it for an hour, and now you’re really in a mess and you’ve got a decision to make and you’re all emotional, well, trying to make that decision based on those emotions is the wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong thing to do because your emotions will lie to you. You say, well, what should I do?
Go get somewhere where it’s quiet, take a few deep breaths, and try to calm down and just see what’s in your heart. And you know what? You’ll find out that you do believe that jesus will deliver you.
If you’ve been around the Word very long, you do believe that. In your spirit, you know that, because he fills our spirit full of good things, but that’s why our mind has to be renewed. The Bible says in Romans 12 that unless we renew our mind according to the Word of God, we will never really experience the good plan that God has for our lives.
So isn’t that interesting that God’s got a good plan for our lives? But just our, just wrong thinking can keep us from ever actually experiencing that plan. I remember all the years that I had no idea that my thinking or my words made any difference at all in my life.
I wasn’t being taught that in the church that I was going to. I was just being taught doctrinal things, which is important. But we need to learn how to live.
We need to learn about our soul, and it’s our mind, our will, and our emotions, and how we need to learn to keep that area calm so God can actually have his way in our lives. We need to act on what we know, not what we think or feel. And you know a lot more than you think you do.
You just let your soul take over. That’s why we need to learn how to live deeper. The deeper life manifests itself in the fruit of stability.
The more spiritually mature you are, the more stable you will be. The Bible says, for example, be rooted deep in love, in the love of jesus. You don’t just, jesus loves me on the good days.
No.
How many of you have ever said when you’ve been having problems, well jesus, don’t you love me, or I don’t feel like you love me?
I’ve said that when I was a younger Christian. Well, don’t you love me? I feel like you don’t love me.
I would never say that now. No matter what happened to me, I would never say that. You know why?
because I know, I don’t just know, it’s not just information, it’s revelation. And that’s what happens when something becomes revelation to you. Nobody, no devil in hell, can take it away from you.
And so, he said, you need to be rooted deep in love, so nobody can take it away from you. Ephesians 3, 17 and 18, may Christ through your faith actually dwell, settle down, abide, and make his permanent home in your hearts. You know, I think about that sometimes, and I think, I really want to just think about it more, that God lives in us.
I mean, even though I say it, it’s like, really? I mean, we’re the home of God. God lives in us.
We’re full of the Holy Spirit. And the bottom line is, you’ve got what it takes to face any situation that comes along. You just have to remember who you are in Christ, and not listen to the lies of the devil.
Oh, he’s such a liar. And he wants us to believe his lies, so we’ll be deceived, and think that God doesn’t love us, and he’s not going to come through for us, and this is, you know, never going to end, and it’s not going to work out good, and my life is terrible. May Christ, through your faith, dwell, settle down, abide, make his home in your hearts.
Has to be through your faith, because you don’t always feel that way. May you be rooted deep in love, and founded securely on love. You see, how can you put your faith in God when you’re having problems, if you don’t know that you know that you know that he loves you?
And he loves you with a perfect love. And I’m going to tell you something today that we really need to realize. No matter how much more you improve in behavior, God is never going to love you any more than he does right now today.
You say, well, then why should I keep trying to improve? because you love him. You’re not trying to buy God’s love by having better behavior.
He loved you while you were still yet in sin and sent his son to die for you. He has a perfect love for us. We can’t buy his love with our good behavior, but if you have something in your life that needs to change, trying, say patience, for example, trying to be patient, it ain’t gonna work.
You ever try so hard to change and the more you tried, the worse you acted? Man, I’ve had that, but you know what the Apostle Paul did, too? He said, the thing I wanna do, I can’t do, and the thing I don’t wanna do, that’s what I always end up doing.
I said, well, Paul, I relate to that. And then toward the end of chapter seven in Romans, he said, who will deliver me from this body of death? And then it says, oh!
Exclamation mark. Thank God, he will! Exclamation mark.
Who’s gonna deliver us? He will. So the thing to do is to fall more and more and more in love with jesus.
And so, if you’re gonna work on something, work on your love relationship with jesus, tell him a hundred times a day how much you love him. because jesus said, if you love me, you will obey me. So, I believe that the degree of our obedience lines up perfectly with the degree of our love for God.
The more you love him, the more you’re going to want to do everything he wants you to do, and the more you’re gonna not want to displease him. Be founded securely on love, that you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints, God’s devoted people, the experience of that love. Do you know that we actually should experience God’s love?
And in 1 John 4 it says that we should be conscious and aware of God’s love. And that actually was, that scripture was very life changing for me because if you pay attention, you’ll catch God loving you. I call them winks from God.
Little things that he does for you that maybe would only mean something to you, but you know it’s God showing you that he loves you. And I’ve also discovered, I believe very much, that God loves us through other people. because God wants to work through us to edify and encourage and build other people up.
You want a ministry? Be an encourager. People need to be encouraged.
It’s amazing sometimes when I’ll, you know, give somebody a compliment and they say, you made my day. That’s pretty amazing when you have the power to make somebody’s day just by giving them a compliment. So start watching for God’s love in your life.
And you might even keep a journal and just write down all the little things that God does for you that really, to be honest, nothing God does is little. Everything he does is big. And then it goes on to say that who can ever separate us, Romans 8.35, from Christ’s love?
Shall suffering and affliction and tribulation or calamity and distress or persecution or hunger or destitution or peril or sword? Then it goes on to say, but we are more than conquerors. Through Christ, who loves us?
What does it mean to be more than a conqueror? I think it means that you already know you have the victory before you even get the problem. So therefore, you don’t have to be afraid of trouble.
I can remember when I used to get the first hints of trouble, I’d be like, oh no. I was afraid of trouble. Oh no, not again.
But see, now, I know I don’t like to go through them, but I know that I will have the victory, and so therefore, I am more than a conqueror. I don’t even have to wait to see what I’m gonna conquer. And you don’t have to either, because you are more than a conqueror.
Thank you for being with us today. We really do love you, and I pray that you will have a great rest of the day.
So, sometimes what we think will bring us happiness still doesn’t do it for us. We try everything, look out for number one, but life still feels empty.
Well, you know, we typically look at our circumstances and try to change them in order for me to be happy. I know this because I thought this way for years. I was always on my mind, I would constantly think, what about me?
What about me? I had no idea that the root of my unhappiness was something I could actually change. I was getting in my own way and missing the blessings that God has for me.
You see, selfishness steals our joy, but God has such a better way for us to live. I firmly believe that people need to realize that there is great power in an unselfish life. That’s why I’ve written, What About Me?
Inside I share why it’s important to get out of that me mindset and how to change your perspective in a way that will benefit you and others.
Request What About Me today and take important steps to living an unselfish life. It is available to you right now for your gift of any amount. Call us today at 1-800-727-9673 or visit us online at joycemeyer.org.
I have absolutely no doubt that what I share in this book will change your life. just like it completely changed mine. You can get out of your own way, walk in love, and live unselfishly.
Request your copy of What About Me Today. And if you would like to go even deeper with Joyce by declaring war on selfishness, consider giving a gift of $45 or more, and you’ll receive Joyce’s What About Me Study Guide in addition to the book. This in-depth study is a great addition alongside the book to ensure you master content with confidence.
And remember, you’ll not only receive Joyce’s book What About Me, but your gift today allows us to share the love of Christ around the world through our hand of hope outreaches. What About Me is available to you now for your gift of any amount. Or go the extra step to receive the What About Me Study Guide too for $45 or more.
It is a great opportunity for a book study with family or friends, and it’s yours today. So give us a call at 1-800-727-9673, or visit us online at joycemeyer.org.
If enough of us become unselfish followers of jesus, we can change the world.
Hey, friends, fun things are happening with Joyce’s Talking Out Podcast, and we are ridiculously excited to tell you about it.
We love you so much, and the waiting for a new episode, it’s just too hard.
It’s too much, so we had a brilliant idea.
Let’s get together more often.
Join us along with Joyce and our guest for a new episode every week.
We have a spot saved on the pink couch just for you, every Tuesday starting September 3rd.
Thank you.
We’re so grateful to our Joyce Meyer Ministries partners who make this and all we do possible, including sharing God’s Word and offering help to people in need all over the world. This program has been made possible by the partners of Joyce Meyer Ministries.
