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When we lift ourselves up, God is very capable of bringing us down. He invites us to humble ourselves under His mighty hand. But if we don’t, He will do it for us.
And that is probably one of the most painful things that we can go through emotionally. I’m Joyce Meyer, and I believe that God can heal you everywhere you hurt.
Tonight, I’m speaking about pride and humility. Now, Andrew Murray wrote a book simply called Humility, and I recommend it. It’s a small book, but it’s very, very, very powerful.
People don’t really understand how dangerous pride is and how powerful humility is. Now, I’m going to say it again. We don’t really fully realize how dangerous a haughty spirit is and how powerful humility is.
Now, here’s just a couple of things he said.
Pride, well, first, there is nothing so dangerous as pride. It’s natural to us. It is insidious and yet hidden from our sight.
You see, people that have a problem with pride, the last thing they’re going to do is face and admit that they have a problem with pride. That’s why it’s difficult to sell any kind of resources with the word pride on them, because people who need them would not want anybody to see them pick it up, lest somebody think they needed it. Pride is behind all lack of love, all indifference to the needs of others and their feelings, and their weaknesses.
It is the source of all hasty and critical judgments, all manifestations of temper, all touchiness, and irritation, all feelings of bitterness, and all unforgiveness come from a spirit of pride. Now, before I start talking to you about humility, I want to make it clear that humility is not a weak, wimpy, go-around, you know, with some supposed look of humility on your face all the time. To be honest, I think that just is annoying to God.
The place to be humble is in your heart and in your mind. And if you have a humble heart and a humble mind, then it’s gonna come across in a right, godly way. A humble person doesn’t think more highly of themselves than they ought to, but they don’t think lowly of themselves either.
They really just don’t have themselves on their mind that much. They know who they are in Christ, and in him, they’re bold and courageous. God has called us to be bold and to be courageous, but that doesn’t mean to be obnoxious and to walk all over people and to hurt other people.
So, true humility will be bold in Christ, and I want to take a few minutes to talk to you about being bolder, and especially being bolder in prayer. We’re nothing in ourselves, but we’re everything in Christ. I can do nothing without him, but I can do anything that he wants me to do through him.
Come on, now. I can’t do it without him, but I can do whatever I need to do through him. Can I tell you that you are stronger than you think you are?
Get the words, I can’t, out of your repertoire of words that you use. And don’t be going around saying, it’s too hard, I can’t. You can do whatever you need to do in this life, if you lean on Christ and trust him to help you.
Amen? You can be in a very, very difficult situation and you can be there with a smile on your face and you can be there and be a blessing to other people while you are hurting yourself. I think I’m gonna say that again.
Because, see, sometimes we just think if we’re in a difficult situation, then the whole world has to stop until our problem gets solved. And that’s just not true. While you’re hurting, God will use you to help somebody else if you’ll let him.
And that’s one of the quickest ways to receive your own healing. While you’re hurting, you can be in a very difficult situation and you can be there with a smile on your face and a good attitude. And while you’re waiting for your breakthrough, you can and should be a blessing to other people.
Somebody say, Amen.
In Ephesians 312, the Apostle Paul said, Because of our faith in him, we dare to have the boldness, the courage, and the confidence of free access, an unreserved approach to God with freedom and without fear. Now here’s Paul who says, I’m the chief of all sinners, but yet he’s also saying, in Christ, because of knowing who we are in him, we can have boldness and access to the throne of God to go boldly before the throne and ask God for radical things in our life that we don’t deserve and probably shouldn’t have, but we can ask him because he’s good. Maybe some of you are not asking for enough.
I’ll tell them you didn’t like it. Maybe some of you are not asking for enough.
You know, several years ago, I got this urge one day, and I believe we get Holy Ghost urges, amen? Don’t push those down. If it’s a fleshly urge, push it down.
But if it’s a Holy Ghost urge, let it come up. Let it come out. And as I was praying one day, I got this urge to pray that God would let me teach the word to every human being on the planet.
Now, just hang on. My mind said, that is crazy. Nobody can do that.
And then the devil said, and who do you think you are? The enemy does not want you to pray bold prayers. You ought to pray something so big that you’re not even sure God can answer it.
And I guess that’s kind of the way I felt about that that day. God, I want to teach the word to every person on the planet. Well, we’re not getting them all yet, but there’s a whole bunch.
Our program is translated into 83, 85 different languages now. Translated. I don’t know how in the world God does it.
This is what I do, and he gives us all these wonderful people that make all this other stuff happen, and all these wonderful ministry partners around the world, even like other ministries who partner with us in getting these translations and making these things happen. It’s important for people to hear the gospel of Christ in their own language. Even if English is a second language for them, they need it in their own language because they can relax and receive it that way.
So we’re on television across the Middle East, Africa, India, Asia, Mongolia, I mean places that I wouldn’t even know how to get to. And the word works in people’s lives, no matter what language they speak or what culture that they’re from. Everybody needs Jesus.
So through the internet, through satellites, through television, through radio, through printed material, through books, the gospel is available to pretty much the whole entire planet now. And I’m not foolish enough to think that they’re all watching me every day. I’m not that full of myself.
But I would, let me tell you one thing. I would rather pray big prayers and get part of it than to pray little prayers and get all of it. Come on.
So I’m challenging you to know you don’t deserve it. That’s the first qualification to go boldly before God. You know you don’t deserve it.
I don’t deserve when I’m getting ready to ask you. I don’t deserve it. And I’m not coming in my name.
I’m coming in Jesus’ name. And I know that I’ve done a lot of things wrong, but you said that you forgive me and you forget them. So I’m not even going to bother talking to you about my past.
Come on. Stop talking to God about something he forgot about a long time ago. You don’t need to be talking to God about your past.
You need to talk about your future. How we begin in life is not nearly as important as how we finish. And I had a lousy start, but I’m determined to have a good finish.
How about you?
Okay, now listen, you have not because you ask not. God’s not getting mad at you for asking. The worst thing that can happen if you ask for something you’re not supposed to have is you just won’t get it.
Amen. I’m not suggesting asking for a bunch of carnal stupid stuff, but start asking God to use you. Use me, God, use me to help somebody else.
Hebrews 4, 15 and 16 are wonderful scriptures. We have a high priest.
We do not have a high priest who is unable to understand and sympathize and have a shared feeling with our weaknesses and liabilities and infirmities and the assaults of temptation. But one who has been tempted in every point, just like we are yet, without sinning. Whatever you are going through, whatever your temptation might be, Jesus understands it because he also was tempted, yet he never sinned.
Isn’t that awesome? How many of you especially, I think women are especially like this, you just want to feel that somebody gets you, that they understand you, you know? I finally told Dave, even if you don’t understand, just lie to me and tell me you do.
And so now, one of his favorite things is I understand, and I just pretend like he does, and it makes me happy. Amen? But Jesus understands, and I love that about him, that no matter what I’m going through, on my weirdest of most weird days, he understands.
He gets you. Amen.
Verse 16 says, Let us then fearlessly and confidently and boldly draw near to the throne of grace, the throne of God’s unmerited favor to us sinners, that we might receive mercy for our failures and find grace to help in good time for every need. Appropriate help, well-timed help coming just when we need it. When you have not behaved well, don’t draw away from Jesus, run to him.
You can’t hide from God, and believe it or not, he is great at helping people who don’t deserve it. But you have not because you ask not. So start asking.
Learn how to pray your way through the day. Don’t just pray for yourself, but pray for other people too. The righteous are bold as a lion.
I love that. Now, pride is extremely dangerous. And it’s defined as to be lifted up to be high-minded, to indulge in self-esteem or self-confidence, and to glory in self-achievement.
I hope you noticed how many times the word self is used in that definition. Self, self, self, self, self. The Bible says if we’re going to follow Christ, we need to take up our cross and follow him, forgetting ourselves.
That’s the cross that we are to carry, is to get ourselves off of our mind, be Christ-minded, and let him flow through us. We die to self and live for him. Amen?
Pride and boasting go together. The proud person talks a lot about themselves. And I personally don’t wish to have somebody full of pride for a good, close friend.
And when I meet somebody, and all they do is talk about their selves and tell me all about their accomplishments and everything they’re doing, and it’s them, them, them, them, them, them, them, all the time, I’m just like, really? That’s just not really what I want to talk about all the time. Boasting is defined as the practice of quackery.
That’s what it says, the practice of quackery. Pretending to be something that you’re not. See, boasting is just dumb because anything good that we are able to do, it’s only because Christ is doing it through us.
Amen.
Pretending to be something that you’re not, it’s created by high-mindedness, thinking that you know when you don’t. Whew! Well, let me tell you what I know.
Well, let me tell you what I know. Well, I know, well, let me tell you what I know. You know, well, we don’t know anything until we know that we don’t know.
I love what the apostle Paul said, I’m determined to know nothing among you but Christ and Him crucified. And God wants us to have knowledge, but we don’t need to go around trying to tell the whole world what we know. Thinking we’re something that we’re not.
Other familiar words are haughty, puffed up, vain, glorious. We might just simply say that a person that’s proud, in a wrong way, is full of themselves. No, I’m proud of my children.
And to be honest, I’m proud of the work that’s been accomplished in this ministry. But I remind myself on a regular basis that it is certainly God and not me. I am not foolish enough to think that I could ever, in any possible way, pull this off.
And I am very grateful that you showed up in this building tonight, and I believe that God brought you, amen? And I thank God every time there’s people in the seats, because I had days when there weren’t many. And let me tell you something, those days are good for all of us.
It’s good for all of us to go through lean years and to not get what we want, because it helps us to appreciate what we have when God does open the winds of heaven and begin to pour out those blessings.
The sin that Satan committed was a sin of pride. He was originally an angel of worship. His body was made of musical instruments.
And he was an awesome, amazing, beautiful creature. But in Isaiah 14, beginning in verse 12, we’re reminded of the fall of Satan. How have you fallen from heaven, O light bringer and day star, son of the morning?
How have you been cut down to the ground, you who weakened and laid low the nations, O you blasphemous satanic king of Babylon? You said in your heart, now I want you to notice how many times the word, the term I will is in here. I will ascend to heaven.
I will exalt my throne above the stars of God. I will sit upon the mount of assembly in the uttermost north. I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.
I will make myself like the most high. Ooh. And this was God’s answer.
You shall be brought down to Hades. So when we lift ourselves up, God is very capable of bringing us down. He invites us to humble ourselves under His mighty hand.
But if we don’t, He will do it for us. And that is probably one of the most painful things that we can go through emotionally, is to be all full of ourselves and have to have God show us that we’re nothing without Him. Now, our society today is full of a lot of I wills.
And a lot of people think they don’t need God. And that is so sad to me because God is so wonderful. He is so absolutely, totally amazing and wonderful.
I just don’t get it why anybody would not want to have a relationship with such a good God as He is. I mean, I really just, I mean, I just don’t get it. I don’t understand.
Because when you have a relationship with God, not religion, but a relationship with God, and I think to be honest that bad experiences with religion is part of why so many people don’t want anything to do with God. Jesus did not die so you could have a religion, or so I could have a religion. Don’t be so proud of, well, I’m Catholic or I’m Lutheran, I’m Baptist, I’m Methodist, I’m Pentecostal.
Please don’t be offended, but God don’t give a rip. Amen.
Do you believe in Jesus, that he died for your sins? That he rose from the dead? That he paid for your sins, that through him you can have a brand new life?
Do you believe that God is good? Well, you see, I guess a lot of people in the world don’t believe that, and the bottom line is, is I’ve often wondered sometimes, I read this someplace, I wonder how many people who claim that they’re atheists, if they thought they could keep doing exactly what they’re doing, and still have a relationship with God and the promise of going to heaven, I wonder how many would become believers then. See, the reason why people don’t want to have a relationship with God is they want to do all these things that aren’t right according to the Word, but they’re all ruining them and destroying them.
We need to pray for people in the world today, and for a great harvest to come in, and we need to get out in the world and be shining lights. Give people an example of something to want. Show them what a relationship with Jesus is really like.
Amen. Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 13, 10, Pride is the root of all strife and all contention.
You can’t have an argument with somebody unless somebody’s in Pride. And how many arguments are there daily around the world just because people are trying to prove who’s right? Let’s look at Daniel chapter 4.
Stop fighting with people just to prove that you’re right about something.
Now, there’s a most amazing story in the fourth chapter of Daniel. You may or you may not be familiar with it. I want to encourage you to read the whole of the chapter later.
You can make it a Bible study one day next week. But I’m going to read enough of it and tell you about the story that we can learn the lesson out of this that God wants us to have for this evening.
Nebuchadnezzar, verse 1, Daniel 4, verse 1, Nebuchadnezzar the king to all the people, nations, and languages that dwell on the earth. May peace be multiplied to you. Now I want you to listen particularly to what he says in the next three verses.
It seemed good to me to show the signs and wonders that the most high God has performed toward me. How great are his signs and how mighty are his wonders. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom and his dominion is from generation to generation.
Everything is about God. And I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at rest in my house and I was prospering in my palace. So as long as he had the right attitude and was given God all the glory for everything good that was going on in his life, and we need to voice that on a regular basis.
God, I know that I’m nothing without you. I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me and I don’t take it for granted. Now watch what I’m going to say.
I don’t want you to miss this. The greatest way that we can show that we really, really appreciate the good things that God has done for us is to go be a blessing to somebody else.
Don’t let your gratitude just be a bunch of vain, empty words, but put some action behind it. God, you’re good to me for no reason and I want to find somebody that doesn’t even deserve goodness and be good to them just to show them how good you are. Tell you what, if every Christian would get out in the world and behave like this, it wouldn’t be long and we’d all be able to go home.
Now, look at verse 30. I don’t know how long these 27 verses took in real time, but it says something in here about 12 months. The king said, is not this the great Babylon that I’ve built as a royal residence and seat of government by the might of my power and for the honor and the glory of my majesty?
Now, it only took him 27 verses or a little over 12 months to go from everything is God, I would have nothing without God, all the credit belongs to God, to look what I’ve done and see how great I am. Now, it is very challenging for God to find any man or woman that he can do really great things through you and them not get full of themselves. Do you know how many things there are out there that try to steal our joy every single day?
If there’s one thing we all have in common in today’s world, it’s problems and all these things can make it difficult to experience and maintain joy. So what are we supposed to do? Wait for everything to magically get better?
Or is there a way to find joy in spite of it all?
Moreover, let us also be full of joy when? One more time. Not be full of joy when your problems are over, but be full of joy now.
See, we can rejoice in our problems if we know that God is going to use it to work something good in us. The devil cannot beat you if you’ll have that kind of a positive energy.
Learn to experience God’s joy today and every day. In Joyce’s book, Five Decisions That Bring Joy in a Difficult World. It’s yours free upon request.
Joyce identifies specific choices you can make to experience more joy than you ever have before, as well as some practical keys to help you live out those choices on a daily basis. To get your free copy of Five Decisions That Bring Joy in a Difficult World, call us at 1-800-727-9673, or download a digital copy at joycemeyer.org or through the Joyce Meyer app.
If the devil cannot keep us sad and mad, then he loses the battle. I said if the devil cannot keep us sad and mad, he loses the battle. The devil don’t want your stuff, he wants your joy.
Why? Because joy is strength. I’m talking about doing ordinary everyday life with a calm delight and a smile on your face because you know who you belong to and you know that in the end, what’s going to happen.
Our circumstances may overwhelm us with worry, discouragements and fear, but God has a different plan for us. Start experiencing the joy you were created to have. Contact us today and request Joyce’s free book, Five Decisions That Bring Joy in a Difficult World.
Call us at 1-800-727-9673 or download a digital copy at joycemeyer.org or through the Joyce Meyer app.
What if you were able to see the trials of your life the way God sees them?
Part of the beauty of being a believer is that you can have a problem and still enjoy your life.
Blessed in the mess from Joyce Meyer, order your copy today.
We hope you enjoyed today’s program. We are 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.
