Joyce Meyer - He Rewards Those Who Are Diligent - Part 2

I'm telling you what, Christianity is not for cowards. Not if you're gonna be a real Christian. Amen? Cause there's gonna be sacrifices. There's gonna be things that everybody else you know does, that you're not gonna be able to do. Not if you want to be the real deal. And like I said, most things are gonna take a lot longer than you thought they would and that waiting is not always gonna be easy. But if you're diligent, God rewards those that are diligent, and your reward will come. "The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty". Proverbs 10:4, "Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth".

You can't be lazy. You can't be a procrastinator. You know, procrastination is the biggest liar and thief because it always tells you, you'll do it tomorrow. But somehow or another, tomorrow never gets around to coming. And one of the best things you can do for yourself is when God gives you something to do is just get up and do it, not put it off, and put it off, and put it off. Intending to obey God is not obedience. Amen? See, we fool ourselves. We think, "Well, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I know I should be giving more. I'm gonna do it". Well, when you gonna to do it? You gonna do it when it's easy for you? No, maybe God wants you to do it while it's hard. Maybe he wants you to do it while it's a sacrifice. Amen?

You know that there's an issue between you and somebody and you know you need to go and make it right and you're going to. Oh, you have full intentions. You love God. You're gonna obey him. You're gonna go make it right with 'em, but when? You don't know, just when the time is right. Well, you know when the time is right? When God says to do it. That's when the time is right. Diligent means "Constant in effort or exertion to accomplish what is undertaken. Attentiveness, industriousness, not idle or negligent, steadily applied and not carelessly or negligently". "The vine's Greek dictionary," says, "It's a working. It is indicative of a process". And, everything that we go through with God is a process. Growing up spiritually is a process. Amen?

And I can tell you from the time you came to know Christ until now, you have changed little, by little, by little, by little, by little. And sometimes you feel like you're making no progress at all, but that's a lie from Satan. You are making progress. I can tell you, you have not, the amount of time that we spent together in this seminar, which is less than 24 hours. 'cause we started last night at seven o'clock and we're gonna be finished today about quarter to three. And you got a full night's sleep in-between there. So, we haven't spent all that many hours together, but I can promise you that if you paid attention in the seminar that you will see changes in your life. Okay, now listen to this, "A diligent person does not quit or give up".

I've got a sign, I don't know why I put it in my bathroom but, my son said the other day, "Why do you have this in your bathroom"? Because it says, "Never, never, never give up". So, it is an odd place to put it, but. I'll tell you, I think, that one of the greatest benefits that I've had is I am not the kind of person to give up. I just won't give up. I feel like if anybody can have freedom, I can have freedom. If anybody can be a success, I can be a success. If anybody can have a close relationship with God, I can have a close relationship with God. And you need to believe that too. That all of the promises of God are for you, they are not just for somebody else, they're for you.

But you will have to be diligent. There is a part for you. You have to be diligent about seeking God. And really, if you seek him, he will lead you and guide you each step. You don't have to worry about, what you do now, and what you do next, and what you do then. God himself will lead you and guide you because he knows you. He knows things about you that you don't even know about you. And he knows exactly what the right time is to bring up whatever needs to be brought up in your life next. And we need to all grow up spiritually. We start out as spiritual babies and we grow spiritually. In 3 John 1:2, it says, "Beloved, above all else I would that you prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers". And what that means to me is God wants all of us to have the very best of everything, but he doesn't want us to grow in these natural areas beyond where we're at spiritually.

So, the more you grow spiritually, the more God will be able to do for you in the natural realm. The more you grow spiritually. I know, you might get a promotion at work. The more you grow spiritually. Because you see, the more you grow spiritually, the closer you get to God, the less these things mean to you, so God can give 'em to you because they're not gonna hold you back from a relationship with him. If you're a baby Christian and God starts giving you all this stuff, it's gonna take you away from him. It's not gonna bring you closer to him.

The Bible says, "Don't put a new convert in leadership lest they become stupefied". That's what the Amplified Bible says, "Unless they become stupefied". And I forget what else it says. But the point is, is that if you're not spiritually mature enough and you're put in some big position where you're gonna have a lot of people looking at you, maybe a platform position and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and it's just, you're not able to handle it. You're not ready to handle it. And it ends up hurting you more than helping you. And we as leaders have a responsibility, not to put people that are spiritually immature in key positions where they're gonna get a lot of attention because it's gonna hurt them, it's not gonna help them. Just because somebody's talented doesn't mean they're ready for the platform.

Do I need to say that again? Just because somebody is talented doesn't mean they're ready for the platform. Amen? When I was teaching 20 people in my living room floor, I would listen to preachers on television and I would say to God, in my childish stupidity, "Well God, I can preach circles around them". See, I was full of myself. Well, that's one of the reasons why God didn't promote me. He didn't let me go any further than 20 people in my living room floor. Because here's the thing that God taught me, long time, it took a long time, but this is what he said, "You have to remember, Joyce, that however many people you can help, that's exactly how many you can hurt".

See, if there's 50 people looking at you for help and advice and you fall into sin or do some goofy thing, you can hurt 50 people. But if you got half the world watching you, that's another whole story. So, you have to understand as well as God wanting to give you blessings, there's a responsibility that goes along with every blessing. Amen? And, you see, here's the interesting thing, I don't have a boss. God is my boss. And so, if I'm not ready to listen to him explicitly, I will get myself in big trouble. And so, it took so long. When I say 45 years, probably 20 of those years, I was not doing anything very close to what I'm doing now. And everything grew little, by little, by little. And I had to be diligent, and diligent, and diligent, and not quit, and not give up, little by little by little.

And as I grew spiritually, then the natural side of my ministry grew also. Does anybody need to hear this today? And this is especially good for those of you who have any desire to be in ministry or to do anything in front of people or to have your own business where you're gonna be having other people work for you. For five years, I worked at another church and I didn't feel like I was always treated right. God taught me, he said, "You're not fit to be in authority till you know how to come under authority". Yeah, yeah. Come on, get happier than that. See, now, I'm telling you a few deeper things. Things that have cost me a lot of pain to learn. Everybody wants to do their own thing. Everybody wants to be their own boss. Everybody wants to have their own thing. Well, why? Because we don't want anybody telling us what to do.

But you need to go through a period of time in your life where you have somebody telling you what to do. And some of what they tell you should be things you don't like and don't wanna do. And you should sometimes feel like you're not being treated properly. And you need to learn how to keep a smile on your face and love God anyway and not go talk about the other person behind their back to other people. Boy, those were hard lessons for me to learn. I'm giving you for free here in 45 minutes, I'm downloading on you about 25 years of my life. Because, see, maybe I wouldn't feel like I was getting treated right at work, or wasn't being treated fairly at work. And I would... And then finally, I quit telling other people, but I'd still go home and tell my husband. Now, listen, what I'm gonna say is important. And what God finally said to me is, "Don't you realize it's not about who you tell. It's the words that are hurting you. 'cause you're still putting those words out into the atmosphere".

And see, God wants us to always find something to be thankful for, not something to complain about. Remember, "Beloved above all else, I want to see you prosper and be in health even as your soul prospers". We are in a time when spiritual maturity is of utmost importance. Christians need to mature and grow up. Paul said in 1 Corinthians 3, he told them, he said, "I can't give you the meat of the word. I keep having to give you milk because you're babies, because you're still envious and jealous and bitter and resentful". And all these things that we deal with, that we have such a hard time getting beyond. And those are the very things that are holding us back. And see, what I'm giving you this afternoon is meat. We're not having dessert this afternoon. We're not having a milk bottle. I'm taking away your pacifier and I'm not giving it back to you when you go home.

Come on. It's time to cut your baby teeth. Need a little bit of a harder word. And everything that we hear in church shouldn't be something that just pats us on the head and tells us how wonderful we are. We also need to be confronted by the Word of God. Where we have to come to a decision, "Okay, I'm either gonna go on with God and I'm gonna confront this and do what I'm supposed to do, or I'm just gonna remain a baby all my life". And you might be happy, but you won't be any use to God that way. "The diligent will be satisfied," the Bible says. I was dissatisfied so many years of my life and I'm so glad to be satisfied. It's so wonderful, isn't it, to just be satisfied and not always be wanting one more thing? Just to be happy and to be satisfied, whether you get what you want, or you don't get what you want, you're gonna be happy and satisfied.

Proverbs 13:4 says, "The soul of the sluggered", that's a lazy man, "Desireth, and yet he has nothing: but the soul of the diligent shall be made fat". Now, I'm personally glad that doesn't say that our body will be made fat. But what is a fat soul? It's a soul that is deeply satisfied. Man, I love that: to be satisfied, to be content. Oh, I remember when we used to go out and do these conferences. And dave's a golfer. And we'd go home, and I'd be so tired. And he'd go out on Sunday and play golf. And I would get so mad, and I would spend all day Sunday pouting, and feeling sorry for myself, and acting ridiculous, "Man, I work all weekend and you go out and play golf and you...", it never stopped him.

Come on, I asking you to stop wasting your time. What you're doing is not working. Well, you know what? I don't know what the weather's gonna be tomorrow, but I kinda hope it's warm enough for him to play golf. Not because I don't love him, because I do love him. Are you over there? We get along better now than we ever have. But you know what I like now? Whoo! Tomorrow, I'm gonna have my birthday dessert. I've already got it planned. I'm just gonna watch some good movies, hopefully something funny. And I'm gonna sleep as late as I want to, which'll probably be about 6 a.M. Most mornings I'm up at 4:30 or 5:00. And I'll get up in the morning and I'll seek God because that's what I do every day and I'll write my journal something about this conference and I'm gonna go home and say, "They loved it". And I'm just gonna have a nice, peaceful day.

You say, "Well, couldn't you have a peaceful day if Dave was home"? Well, in the first place, I'd have to listen to him say, "Huh," 200 times. What's it gonna take to get you out here? I thought you'd be over here by now. But see, now, if he stays home, I'm satisfied. If he wants to go out, I'm satisfied. How many of you know that being satisfied is worth a whole lot more than a lot of the other stuff you're after? And see, dave's been satisfied as long as I've been married to him. And it used to just drive me nuts 'cause he was so happy and I was always like... I'll tell you what, dave's a good guy. He puts up with me. The process that you go through is giving you experience. And experience is one of the most important things that we can have.

One of the reasons why you believe what I'm telling you is because I didn't just make it up, I've been through it. And you can feel that, that it's real in my life. I know what it's like: I've had cancer, I've had both hips replaced, I've been betrayed by friends more than once, had a trusted employee steal from the ministry, been attacked unjustly by the media. I've been judged and criticized and misunderstood by people who didn't know anything about me at all. They didn't know me. I preached many times when I've been sick and in pain. I've been falsely accused and had God refuse to let me defend myself. Ooh, do you know how hard that is? But I've got experience.

And I'll tell you something, at 36 years old, I thought I knew everything. And now, at 79, I know that I probably still don't know much of anything. And I'm gonna tell ya, and I don't wanna hurt anybody's feelings, but if you're 20 or 30, you think you know everything. Man, have you got a lesson to learn? 'cause you know what? You don't know anything until you've been through some stuff. I have to read you this scripture about Jesus. Hebrews 5:8 and 9, "Although he was a son, he learned [active, special] obedience through what he suffered. And, [his completed experience] making him perfectly [equipped], he became the author and the source of eternal salvation to those who give heed and obey him".

So, what's this telling us? Jesus was never disobedient, but he learned the price of obedience by the things that he went through. And those things that he went through, that was what equipped him and gave him the experience to be our Lord and Savior. That's amazing to me that he had to go through that. And I had to go through a lot of the things that I went through to be equipped to do what I'm doing, right here, today. I had to be equipped for this. And the greater the thing is that you want to do for God, the more equipment you're going to have to have.

Oh, I remember when I told God, "Oh, God, if I could just preach 12 times a month, just 12 times a month". He said, "Are you sure"? Well, now, sometimes, I preach 21 times in a month. So, I'm just, basically, the moral of what I'm trying to get across to you here this afternoon is just that you have to be, you gotta kinda go along with God, not give up, be peaceful, be satisfied. Let God do what he's doing in your life and stop fighting him. Come on, stop fighting him. Because the more you fight, the longer it's gonna take. And the quicker you give in, the quicker you'll get to where you wanna be. Amen? Alright, c'mon, give God a praise.