Joyce Meyer - The Power of Thoughts and Words - Part 2

So, reasoning. How many of you have a tendency to reason yourself right out of doing? Boy, we've got to be careful about that. There's a lot of areas that reasoning goes off into. But confusion is caused by reasoning. When you have a problem and you need an answer, you gotta have that answer from God. But if your mind is all full of turmoil and reasoning, it's gonna be difficult for you to hear God speak to you. You have to keep your mind and your spirit quiet so you can discern what God is saying to you. And God speaks to us in many different ways. He whispers, a still small voice. A lot of times I just call it a knowing. You know, it was like when I was in the closet God didn't say, "Give Ruth Ann that red dress"! It was just like I looked at it and I knew. We know, don't we? It's like, you know.

You know what God wants you to do. And, I'll tell you what's really hard. When God tells you to give something that you really like to somebody that you really don't like. Now, that is a challenge. And then to have to watch them wear it. And, you know, I was telling Pennie tonight, I went through so much of that stuff when I was a much younger Christian and God was teaching me the things that I'm teaching you now. And that doesn't happen to me as much now. Once in a while, God will ask me to give away my favorite, this, or that, but God uses things like that to train us in obedience. And sometimes it's just a little somethin'. You know, I didn't know anything about this giving. I didn't know anything about how important that was.

Now Dave and I, thank God, have always been tithers because he was taught that growing up and the church that we went to taught tithing. And so, we've always been tithers and I'm glad that we were. But we weren't gonna go beyond that. Well see, a lot of people now say, "Well, tithing is not part of the new covenant. It's not part of the New Testament". And I won't argue with you about it, but I'll just simply say this, Jesus said to be generous. And if you want to talk about giving, you start studying the word generous and see what that is. You're way past tithing when you get generous. And I feel like, if they could give 10% under the law, what should we be doing by grace?

So, you don't need to be comin' to me and tellin' me, "It's not New Testament". You know, it's probably not. We need to go way beyond. We don't live under the law anymore. We live by grace. And when you know how much God loves you, do you know how many people, see, people have to feel love. They can't just hear it because a lot of people are like I was everybody who ever told them that they loved 'em, hurt them, and took advantage of 'em. That's why when we go to like these developing countries, we go to India or Africa or places like that. I mean, what good it's gonna do to tell a starving person, "God loves you".? But if you keep feeding 'em every day for about a year and then you tell 'em God loves 'em, and "It's because of Jesus that I'm here doing this for you", because see, when you do things for people that there's no reason at all for you to do it, then they start gettin' curious.

Why do you think the Bible says, "If your enemy's hungry, feed him: if he's thirsty, give him something to drink"? In the Old Testament, it says that'll be like "Putting burning coals on his head". Well, we think that that's like, "Wow, he's gonna get his now"! But that's not what that means. Those hot coals are talkin' about love. That love that you show them that they know they don't deserve is what breaks the hardness off of their heart and will change them. So, we wanna use our stuff. Because, you know what, you're not an owner of anything. We don't own anything. Nothing is mine. You know, I have a tendency to say, "My ministry". Well, it's not my ministry. It's God's ministry and he's giving me the privilege of having this part in it. And what a privilege it is to speak to as many people as I speak to every day over TV? It's like, "My God, why did you call me to do this? I don't deserve this". And not one of us deserves anything that God does for us, but we have to keep that in mind.

And remember that we're here for a purpose. And our purpose really is to work with God to expand the Kingdom of God. And it can't just be by preaching. Because people have heard preaching, preaching, preaching, preaching, preaching, and 50 different flavors of it. But they can't argue with love. When you start loving people, I mean really loving them. And, you know, love is going to cost you somethin'. It's gonna cost you some time, some money, some pride. It's gonna cost you somethin'. And so, God will use things like that red dress or that bracelet. He'll use it to train you in obedience. Does anybody else ever have that kind of stuff happen to 'em? Oh, 12 of you, that's good. Does anybody else ever have that kind of stuff happen to 'em? Well, if you don't ever have it happen to you, it's because you just are deaf in the spirit. You're not, you know, we need to pray for you to have ears, to hear what the spirit says.

And so, I remember the first time that when God first started teaching me this, I felt like God wanted me to give somebody $10. Well, I didn't want to give him $10. I had tithed, that was enough. Oh, I'm gonna get you good tonight. You are gonna, next week, you just wait and see what happens to you next week. And so, "Now, God, if you really want me to do it, I mean, if it's really you". Come on. We want four confirmations to give away $10. "If you really want me to do it God, I will". And then this thought came to me, "Well, even if it's really not me, I won't get mad at you if you bless somebody with $10". See, we don't have to have a word from God and a prophecy, and an angel appear to us to be generous. It just becomes a lifestyle. That's just what you do because it makes you happy and because God is generous. Amen?

So, we have to stop reasoning out everything and having to have all these confirmations and just decide to live like Jesus lived. Amen? All right. I have not done any of my message yet so far, but we'll see what happens. Yeah, I have, I've just done it backwards. Proverbs 18:21, "The power of life and death is in the tongue, and those who indulge it shall eat the fruit of it [whether for life or death]". You've heard the phrase, "You're going to eat those words". Well, that comes right out of the Bible. And it's true. What we think and what we speak is what we feed on. So, it stands to reason if we're negative and complaining and gossiping and criticizing and judging and all that kind of stuff, that we're not gonna be happy. But I know none of you do none of that. Right? You don't, I got the wrong crowd here tonight. You don't need any of this, so. You're probably sitting there thinking, "Boy, I wish so-and-so would have come tonight". Who has thought that since you've been here?

See, look at that. Well, guess what? You're here! Job 6:25 says, "How forcible are right words". Well, if right words are forcible, wrong words are forcible too. Psalm 19:14, "Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, o God". "Let what I say and what I think be pleasing and acceptable to you". See, God has given us an ability. Do you know that you can change somebody's day by what you say? I mean, I have this happen all the time, and I'm sure that anybody that teaches the word has this happen. But I mean, I'll have people tell me, "On your program the other day you said blah, blah, blah, and it changed my life". Well, how can one sentence change somebody's life? Well, sometimes one word from God. I mean, just one word from God can completely turn your life upside down and around.

Can you imagine what would happen if just everybody in this room would call your mind and your mouth into God service? I'm issuing a call tonight. It's time for your mouth to get saved. God told me that one time, so I'm tellin' you. See, you can be saved and yet your mouth not be saved, or your mind not be saved. And we need to realize how important these things are. This is an important message that I'm bringing you tonight. And I don't care how many times you've heard somebody teach on the mind and the mouth, we need it over and over and over and over again. I need it. If you don't need this tonight, I'll listen to myself because I need it. Just studying for this reminds me. We get reminded. How easy is it? "Oh, did you hear"? "What"? Oh, we just wanna hear what everybody has to say about everybody. We need to get beyond that.

Somebody called me a couple of years ago and started telling me this story about another minister that I know. And I said, "I don't believe that. I do not believe it. I know her and I don't believe it". "Oh well, a very credible person told me". I said, "I don't care who told ya, I don't believe it and I'm going to call her and ask her". So, I got right off the phone, and I called her, and I said, "This is what I heard. Did you do that"? Well of course, she didn't. And so, I called the other person back and I said, "I called her and that is not true. And you need to call whoever told you". See, that's the way it goes: so-and-so told me, and I told so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so, and so-and-so. And all of a sudden somebody's reputation is ruined, and it wasn't even true.

You cannot believe everything you see on Facebook. I mean, probably, I shouldn't have to tell you that, but, people like to get on there and just vent their ugliness. And that's, you know, what a terrible thing it is to ruin somebody's reputation just by saying stuff that doesn't even, it's not true at all. I mean, not the least, but true. So, listen to this. Isaiah 50 verse 4, "The Lord hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary: he wakes me up morning by morning, he wakes me up to hear as the learned". So, he's saying God has given us the ability to encourage people that are weary. Do you know what people are going through out in the world, especially the ones that don't know Christ? And a lot of 'em that do because they don't, you know, there's so many people that are gonna be in heaven that are never going to have been happy while they were here, because they never really learned the Word of God.

What if just everybody in this room tonight, just those of you that are here, made a commitment? And of course, you know, we'd fail. And that's okay, though, long as you're going in the right direction, you keep at it. You'll form new habits. Amen? The way you break bad habits is not by fighting with the bad habits. It's by doing the good thing, the right thing, and do it over, and over, and over. And then pretty soon, there's no room for the bad habit anymore. So, if you have a tendency to judge people, just start saying to yourself, every time you find yourself judging somebody, say out loud, "Joyce, it's none of your business".

That's what I do. When I catch myself judging somebody, I say, "Joyce, it's none of your business". Dave and I live next door to a young man, a man that he owned a big house. And he just was there in it by himself. And now, we don't even know this guy's name. And we're leaving the subdivision one day, and we're talkin' about, "Why would that guy want that big house"? Well, Dave said, "Maybe it's an investment". And I said, "Well, there's a lot of other things he could invest his money into, and probably be", you know, so we're discussing this man's financial future and we don't even know his name! So, thank God I finally learned, "Joyce, it's none of your business how big his house is"? You know. Can you say that? Say, "It's none of my business".

How many of you have enough business of your own to manage without getting into somebody else's? You know how much happier we'd be if we would just stay out of everybody else's stuff? There's so much that we don't know that we think we know, but you see that's part of our problem, pride. I think I know what I don't know. Gotta see where I wanna go here. Romans 12:3, "For by the grace of God given unto me, I warn everyone among you not to estimate and think of himself more highly than he ought to [not to have an exaggerated opinion of his own importance], but to rate his ability with sober judgment, each according to the degree of faith apportioned by God to him".

Now, what that's really saying is, see, first of all, if we think more highly of ourselves than we should, we're always going to think less of somebody else. That's always what happens. If I think I'm real important, then somebody else has got to be unimportant. And so, the thing that this scripture is trying to get across is whatever you can do, you can only do it because God is giving you the ability to do it. Natalie can't sing as beautiful as she can because she got up one day and said, "I'm gonna sing". God gave her that gift and she's sharpened it and worked with it and done her part. But God gave her the gift, he gave her the voice. He didn't give me one of those. I have this voice. And of all the things I used to hate about myself, it was my voice. I thought, "I want to sound like a sweet little woman".

Ok, well, let me ask you a question, how many of you would, especially men, no man would listen to me on TV if I was like, "Well, you are just the sweetest little thing and I just love you so much". And I know, I mean, I get all the stuff. We were in Chicago one night gettin' ready, goin' to speak at a church and a guy pulled up next to our van on a motorcycle. Big ol' motorcycle guy, and tattoos all over him, and a big ponytail and he said, "Hey", he said, "Let me tell you something funny". He said, "I listened to you for six months before I knew you were a woman".

See, that stuff used to bother me, but once you know who you are in Christ, come on! When you know God loves you and you know he created you with his own hand and that you are not a mistake, you don't have to be like somebody else to be right. God's given us all different gifts. Natalie sings, I preach. Somebody else plays a musical instrument. Somebody else does something else. I mean, I couldn't do all the creative stuff that Ginger does. There's no way I could do that. She is so creative. But I've written 150 books. And, you know, the funny thing about that is my teachers realized that I had a gift for writing, and they wanted me to go to college for it, to try to get a scholarship for journalism. And I couldn't go to college because I had to get away from my dad.

And so, I don't have the degree, but I've written the books. Everything that we have is a gift from God. So, don't ever look down on somebody else because they can't do what you do. That was a problem that I had in the early days. And I'll tell you, it was a Godsend to me when I finally found out that God creates us all differently and he gives us all different gifts and he does it on purpose. And you're probably married to somebody that is the opposite of you. Come on. And the first thing you do, you start trying to change them. Well, we don't have time to go there. But I would say to Dave, "How could you possibly like that? I mean, how could you like that"?

I want everything to match and Dave wants everything to stand out. You should see the man's office. It's like, he's got a snow picture here and another sunshine over here. And he used to have hinds' feet hanging on the wall, and I finally got him to get rid of those. But I want everything to match, see? Well, there's nothing wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with him. We're just different. And when we can accept each other's differences and even appreciate them, and, you know, I used to wish I could sing. I just thought "Oh, it would be great if I could preach and sing". Man, then I could come out and I could sing a few songs and then I could preach and then I could sing another song.

Wouldn't that just be great? And you know what God put in my heart? He said, "I put, see, that gift that's in Natalie? That's not in there for her. It's for us". God gifts other people for you to enjoy their gifts, not to be jealous of 'em. My gift just causes me to work. She has to work to do what she's doing. She has to keep that voice in good condition. Practice, practice, practice, practice. Singing all the time, running the note scales, and taking voice lessons. Somebody comes and shares their gift with you and "Well, I wish I could do that. I wish I had a ministry like Joyce's". No, you don't. We want a lot of stuff that we're not willing to do what we should do to get it. "Be careful when you think you stand lest you fall". The Bible says, "Don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to".