Joyce Meyer - The God of Possibilities - Part 2

Mark 10:46, "Then they came to Jericho. And as Jesus and his disciples, together with a large crowd, were leaving the city, a blind man, Bartimaeus (which means, 'son of Timaeus'), was sitting by the roadside begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to shout, 'Jesus son of David, have mercy on me'! Many rebuked him and told him, 'be quiet'". Well, you know what? That's what they told me... When my life was touched by God back in 1976, the church I was in did not believe in the gifts of the spirit and what was being referred to, and is referred to, in the Bible as the baptism of the Holy Spirit. And I was so excited because God had touched my life and filled me with the spirit, and I was starting to function in the gifts of the spirit, I mean, I was just so excited. I was teaching my little Bible study at home every Tuesday night, and the elders called me in. The religious, and they said, "You are going to have to be quiet or leave the church".

Well, I left. Now, lookin' back, you know, maybe I was a little bit too mouthy, I don't know but you know, if you're excited about Jesus, you're excited about Jesus. And I wanted everybody else to have what I had. And all I know is I'm still here, and I'm still not being quiet. Amen? You get excited about Jesus, your family will tell ya to be quiet. Your friends will tell ya to be quiet. Your authority at work will tell ya to be quiet. Come on, and I'm not sayin' we should be obnoxious and just try to cram Jesus down everybody's throat, but who can really, truly be saved and keep quiet? When Andrew was called by Jesus, the first thing he did was go and tell Peter.

The Bible doesn't say, "When Christ comes into your life be quiet, and don't tell anybody". "Well, you know my religion is a private thing". Well, you find that scripture for me, will ya? When you're radically saved and you know, you're going to heaven and not to hell and Jesus changed your life, "Shhh... Don't tell anybody". I don't think so. Because of the way the world is now half of Christians are afraid to go into a restaurant and pray. Listen, when you go in a restaurant, you don't have to start screaming out loud your prayers, but you don't have to act like you got a headache either. I mean, how about saying, "Thank you Jesus for our food". You can pray quietly at your table, but you have a right to pray!

So that message is all around you, even if you're not hearing any words, "Be quiet. Don't talk about God in public. Don't say the word 'God'. You might offend somebody". You know what I've noticed? The unbelievers don't care if they offend me. I'd say maybe we just need to shake things up a little bit, and here again, I'm not talking about being obnoxious, but you can't hide who you are nor do you have to hide what you believe. I believe in Jesus Christ, that he died for me, was raised from the dead, is alive today, and I believe that my life is worthless without him. It's worthless without him. And I don't intend to be quiet. "And many rebuked him and told him to be quiet, but he shouted all the more, 'son of David, have mercy on me'"! And I love the next two words, "Jesus stopped".

See, that kind of radical faith will stop Jesus, and he'll look around for you, "Come down here, I'm going to your house today". Oh, I'm having too much fun, this should be illegal. "And Jesus said, 'call him'. So they called to the blind man, 'cheer up! Up on your feet, man, he's calling you'. Throwing his cloak aside, he jumped to his feet and came to Jesus", and he went away seeing. Amen? Wow, Matthew 19:23-26, "Then Jesus said to his disciples, 'truly, I tell you it's hard for someone who's rich to enter the kingdom of heaven'". And why is it? Why would it be harder for somebody rich to enter the kingdom of heaven? Because money and things and position and power have a tendency to draw people away from God. They don't have to feel this way, but if they're not careful, they can slip into a self-sufficiency.

It's amazing, the needier you are the more time you spend with God. "Seek ye first the Kingdom of God, and all these other things will be added unto you". "'and again, I tell you it's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who's rich to enter the Kingdom of God'. When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished and said, 'well, who then can be saved'? Jesus looked at them and said, 'with man, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible'".

Now let's think about about the camel going through the eye of a needle. When we hear that, we think of the eye of a needle and this big ole camel trying to get through it and we're like, "Well, yeah"... So, then, if you got any money, you don't know if you're happy about it or not. But he was just simply making an analogy and if you knew what the eye of the needle really was, and probably some of you do, you'd see the point of the story. Camels were loaded up with goods from other countries and they were brought to other cities, in this case Jerusalem, food for people, items that needed to be sold, household items they needed, and there were gates that went into the city and one of these gates was called the eye of the needle. But it was a short gate, and the only way that a camel could get through it...

So let me tell ya, the more stuff you have, the more money you have, the more powerful you are, the more famous you are, the more you need. You know, after I have two or three days of everybody clapping and cheering for me and thinking I'm the greatest thing since sliced bread, I get, "God, you, and I know what I am without you. I'm amazed that you use me". Amen? If you're the boss or the supervisor where you work you have an opportunity to be a blessing to people. It doesn't make you better than them, that doesn't mean you get to talk down to them, or treat them like they're unimportant and every night when you go home or maybe a couple times during the day, you need to get on your knees somewhere and say, "God, help me remember that you've put me in this position and you can take me down quicker than it took me to get up here".

Joyce Meyer: Well today, I've been teaching about stirring up our faith and believing that with God all things are possible. And Ginger is here with some questions about faith for the impossible that you've sent in, in the areas where you need God to do some things that seem impossible to you, but are possible with God. Well Ginger, what kind of questions do you have for me today?

Ginger: Well there are a a lot of situations like that in our lives aren't there? Where it's impossible for man, it's impossible for me, but with God. And I would love to start by just asking you this question because I remember you calling me several months ago and saying, "God has really impressed this verse on my heart, and I want to make it a focus for this year," and this was a long before anything was really changing the way that it has since then. So, tell me about that impression that the Holy Spirit has put on you and why you feel it was so important.

Joyce Meyer: Well, it was in November of 2019, and I actually was watching a TV program and the person was not trying to be spiritual per se, but they said, "All things are possible". And 'course right away, I thought about the scripture that," all things are possible with God". And you know, when God is impressing something on your heart, it just seems bigger than what it would if it was just a normal situation, it's kind of like it just, man, it's just like, "Yeah, that's what God wants us to believe for in 2020". Little did we know that we were going to have lots of unique things happening because of the pandemic, and that we were going to literally need to believe that with God all things are possible and you know, we've been seeing it.

Ginger: We have.

Joyce Meyer: We've been seeing some supernatural supply and just you know, we're having to do things a different way now, and God's anointing people to do that and it is really important to remember, that all things are possible with God. How many times do we have a situation and the first thing that comes out of our mouth, is, "Well that's not possible"?

Ginger: Right.

Joyce Meyer: But with God all things are possible, so.

Ginger: My daughter has this little sign in her house that says, "With God all things are not easy, but they're possible".

Joyce Meyer: Right.

Ginger: And so I think that's important as we're answering these questions, it doesn't mean it's all going to just be simple.

Joyce Meyer: It's easy for God, not easy for us.

Ginger: Right, right and you know, often we think, "I believe that God can do it, but I don't know if he'll do it"...

Joyce Meyer: "For me".

Ginger: "...In my situation, or for me," exactly. So, a lot of these questions go along those lines. Ellen from Texas says, "There's a lot of bad news on TV everyday. The world is in chaos. How can I keep my faith level high and believe that everything is going to turn out for good when I don't see that it's even possible"?

Joyce Meyer: Well, one of the things that really helps me is I don't watch the news. Now, some people may think, well you should know what's going on. Well, what I do is I look at the headlines on my phone every morning as long as I can stand it, and what I mean by that is, it's just one negative thing after another, after another and the longer this has been going on the more tired I get of it, because I do believe that with God all things are possible. And I believe that, you know, the Israelites they faced an impossible situation when they had the Red Sea in front of 'em and the Egyptian army behind 'em, and God parted the Red Sea. Well, that's certainly in the impossible zone, and I just believe that if we keep our faith in God, and we do have a part, and I think we need to be careful about a lot of negative talk. You know, it's just like everybody's talking about the same thing and to be honest, some people are hopeful but other people, everything they say about it is negative. And our words are important, and so, I think just, you don't have to have a steady diet of what the news is saying.

Ginger: This leads right into this next question, beautifully. Augustina says, "Is it possible to act on faith without speaking or confessing it out loud"? You're talking about our negative words.

Joyce Meyer: Well, I think that faith has to be released for it to work. And I believe it's released through praying, through prayer or through your words, what you say, or through action. So, yes, you know, we're not making a law out of, you have to confess it in order for it to come to pass, but the Bible does say "You have not because you ask not". And I do believe that somebody needs to pray, if it's not me, God will be putting it on somebody else's heart. Now, obviously, he can do whatever he wants to and sometimes he does go beyond the normal, but God really wants to partner with us and he wants us to be active in listening to him and taking action on his word. I always marvel at the fact that when they were at the Jordan river getting ready to cross over to go into the Promised Land, the waters didn't part until they put their foot in 'em. I like to put it, I mean, sometimes you just gotta put your foot in it.

Ginger: Yeah.

Joyce Meyer: You don't know what's gonna happen, but I mean I've seen many times where like, maybe I've been going to teach and I just did not feel God's presence at all, I didn't know if my message was that good, and get up and open my mouth and the power of God's right there. So, a lot of times God doesn't let us have those feelings because he wants us to do it in just total faith.

Ginger: I think of Indiana Jones taking the step out onto that ledge, even before he could see where it was.

Joyce Meyer: Yeah.

Ginger: Anyway, so, here's another question that says, "I would like to understand why the people I'm praying for keep testing my faith". I love that question.

Joyce Meyer: That's cute. Well, one thing you have to remember when you pray for somebody else is, their will is involved, and God has given each of us free will. So, I can't push my will off on somebody else and make them do what I want them to do, just because I pray.

Ginger: As much as we would like that.

Joyce Meyer: But I do really appreciate something that Dave said one time, and it's stuck with me and I share it often, "Don't be surprised when you start praying for somebody if they act worse". You say, "Why would that be"? Well, because when God starts dealing with people, many times if they don't wanna listen to God or if they don't wanna hear it, they can actually react worse for a period of time. So, instead of getting disappointed and saying, "Well, here I've been praying and you're acting worse than ever". We probably should get excited and think, "Man, God must be dealing with 'em because I've been praying".

Ginger: That's a great way to look at it. Alright, Barbara asks this, "I'm trusting God for healing from cancer. I saw your testimony on your own breast cancer, and there's so much scary information out there, but I want my miracle from God. How can I persevere in this impossible situation"?

Joyce Meyer: Well, it's really a decision and you're either gonna go over or you're gonna go under. You're either gonna be negative or you're gonna be positive. And I really believe in being positive and believing for the most that you can believe and trusting God with the outcome. We can't even control God with our prayers, but I would continue to pray for healing as long as I had a breath in me and trust God that he was going to take care of the situation. So, you really have to decide, "What do I wanna do here, do i", you know, whatever your situation is, if you're negative which there is a lot of negative information about everything, and if you listen to all that and take it in, whatever period of time you have to wait, you're just gonna be miserable. If you're negative and have no hope and you're discouraged and depressed. And so people may not believe this, but you can choose to have a good attitude. I mean, I heard one time, "Your attitude belongs to you and nobody can make you have a bad one if you don't want to". I think every day we're making choices all day long and 'course I teach and I've definitely discovered and rediscovered, that what I put my mind on very much effects what I feel. And also I think if you have people around you that do just tend to be negative... Now, obviously, you can't get away from your family if it's a family member, but you certainly don't have to spend time with friends that are discouraging and negative. And even your family you can ask them, you know, "I'd really rather you not do that or talk about it in that way, because I'm doing all I can do to stay positive as it is, and I don't need negative input".

Ginger: Final question for you. Lynn from Kansas asks, "How do patience and faith go together"?

Joyce Meyer: Well, the Bible says that's how we receive from God, through faith and patience. And I love what Mark 11 says, I think it starts in about verse 23, and it says, "Have faith in God constantly," and then it goes on to talk about speaking to the mountain, but it says, "Whatever you ask in faith, whatever you ask for in faith, believe that you have received it, and you will get it". Now, that's interesting. So, in God's economy, believing always comes first, and you believe without any... That's what faith is, it's the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, you know? So, my faith, sees it in a different realm. It's like it's on its way, but I just love that scripture, if you think about it, it's like, believe you have received it, and that's talking about in the spiritual realm, God's doing it, he's working on it, it's on its way, and you will get it but it doesn't tell you how long it will be before you get it. And we know that God can do things fast, or he can do them slow. And so we have to come to the point of trusting God that if it takes a longer than what we think it should, there is a reason. We may someday know the reason, we may never know the reason but God knows what he's doing.

Ginger: Yeah, and it is so encouraging and in the most difficult times in our life to know that it's out of our hands and it's in the hands of the one who can do all things.

Joyce Meyer: That's the challenge about faith, is learning how to believe for what you don't see and don't feel but you do have it in your heart. And see, I know God can do anything, and so, that gives me hope. Well, I'm going to pray for you today.

Father, I pray for everybody who has all these questions and they're facing what seems to them like impossible situations, but we believe God, we really believe that all things are possible with you. And just because we are imperfect, that doesn't mean that you still can't do things in our life because you see our heart. And so, I pray for every person who's releasing their faith, believing for something that seems impossible, that they will see and experience your miracle working power in their life and that they will be content and joyful until they do see it. In Jesus' name, amen.