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Watch 2022-2023 online sermons » Joyce Meyer » Joyce Meyer - What Do You Think of Yourself? - Part 2

Joyce Meyer - What Do You Think of Yourself? - Part 2


Joyce Meyer - What Do You Think of Yourself? - Part 2
Joyce Meyer - What Do You Think of Yourself? - Part 2

Each time you think a good or a bad thought about yourself, it becomes more and more a part of you. And what you think is ultimately what comes out of your mouth, and it gets into your attitude, and then it gets into your emotions, and then you begin to portray that to other people. I had an assistant one time, she was so smart and so good, but she just had no confidence. And I eventually couldn't work with her anymore because it just, she just got on my nerves. You know, like when somebody gets on your last nerve. It's like, "I can't do your job. I can't give you your job and then give you the confidence to do your job".

So, because she didn't have any confidence, I lost confidence in her. And then I would find myself doing things myself instead of giving them to her because I wasn't sure she could do 'em. So, you better do some thinking when you go home about how you do feel about yourself. What do you think of yourself? Do you believe that with God's help, you can do whatever you need to do in life? Or do you believe, "Well, that's just too much for me. That's just too hard". No, God never gives us anything to do that's too hard. And that's our biggest excuse, "Well, it's just too hard. I tried to study, Joyce, and I don't understand the Bible".

Well, then get another translation and keep digging until you find one you can understand. And pray that the Holy Spirit will teach you while you read. Amen? Do you know, they say that insecurity is now like an epidemic. The world is full of so many insecure people that it's considered to be like an epidemic of insecurity. And so, insecure people, they're hard to manage because you have to be so careful. They're easily hurt and easily offended. Because they don't feel good about themselves, don't ever dare try to correct 'em about anything because that will cause a breakdown. Amen? And they imagine things. They imagine they're being rejected. When nobody is rejecting 'em. They imagine people don't like 'em, when the people really don't even know 'em. Oh, I used to be so insecure. I didn't know I was. I thought I was just like...

So, you even get a facade on the outside where, "I'm tough and nobody's going to walk all over me". And yet inside you're falling apart. We have two lives: the one we showed everybody else and the one that we know about inside. And that's it's that inside man that's got to be, the soul has got to be healed. And I remember when, if Dave and I didn't agree about something I would always get hurt and feel rejected, like he didn't love me. And God had to teach me, "Just because he doesn't agree with your opinion doesn't mean he doesn't love you". See, you have to give people the freedom to have a different opinion than yours and not fall apart because they don't feel exactly the same way you do about something. Otherwise, we have no freedom, it's just all control. It's so wonderful to like yourself.

And, you know, if you get in religious circles, I'm talking about, you know, religious circles and you dare say you like yourself. I mean, good grief. "What"!? I was in Pennsylvania one time, and I said that on a Friday night and Saturday the paper came out and said, "Meyer says she likes herself". But, you know, if I would have said, "Oh, I'm such a miserable worm. I'm a wretch. I'm such a terrible person". Then they would have thought I was good. I'm telling you what, you got to know the difference in religion and having a true relationship with Jesus Christ. Because whatever faith you got, religion will suck it right out of you, if you don't know Jesus. I'm talkin' about just that old, dead dry pharisee type religion that Jesus himself was so against. He said, "You're like a bunch of whitewashed tombs, full of dead men's bones. You tell everybody else what to do and don't do it yourself".

We desperately need a healthy self-image. You're never going to reach your God ordained destiny if you don't learn how to have a good attitude toward yourself. That's why it's so important to let go of your mistakes and trust God. Not that we're not sorry for them. Of course, we're sorry for them. It breaks my heart when I do something that I believe God disapproves of. But I've learned by experience I can't drag it with me. You can't drag yesterday's mistakes into today because it all becomes too heavy to carry. You have to let it go. God's got a job for you to do and you can't do it draggin' around a sack of guilt. Amen? It becomes a heavy burden. "Come unto me, all ye that are weary and overburdened, and I will give you rest". We cannot go beyond God's will for us. You can't do just anything you want to, but you can do anything he tells you to do. Anything God gives you, no matter how crazy it sounds to everybody else, if you really feel sure that God has spoken to you in your heart, then go for it.

And you know what? If you find out you're wrong, don't let that throw you off base either. Just say, "Well, I know not to do that again" and go on to the next thing. You know, failure is part of being a success. We fail our way towards success. I made mistakes. I tried to go on TV before God called me to go on TV. And, you know, sometimes you'll have something in your heart and it's from God, but it's not the right time. And that gets kinda hard to discern sometimes, especially as a young Christian. You know, a lot of people, even in the Bible, made that same mistake. They just got a little bit ahead of themselves. And so, I thought, "I'm gonna go on television".

So, we rented a studio at a cable station in Saint Louis, where we live, and I took four or five of my female employees, and I was gonna have a talk show. And I was gonna ask them questions and let them answer them. But there was a problem: I would ask the question, then I would answer the question. Because I'm not a talk show host. And if you notice, we don't do a lot of interviews on our TV program, like bringing people in and interviewing them. Like, I'm going next week to Daystar and to TBN to do a couple hour interviews for my fall books. Well, that's what they do. They have people come in all the time. They interview them.

But I tried that, and we had people writing letters to us saying, "Will you please tell Joyce to let the guests talk"? I mean, when they first came and told me that, I was like, I didn't like that at all. Because if you're on my show and you're not saying the right thing... I'm gonna take over and we're gonna get right back on the right track. So, I just said, "You know what? That's not me". We can only do, you can't just do something because somebody else does it well. You can only do what God has called you to do. Amen? And so, in six months, we got one piece of mail from that TV show. I said, "This isn't workin'". Well, then, when God told us to go on TV, we were like shocked. We don't know how to do that. Well, that's what God was waiting for, for us to be humble enough to realize we couldn't do it by our self, instead of just thinking we could just go do it because we wanted to do it. Amen?

And then, something else, I feel like I need to share. You know, sometimes you can be doing something for a long time and then all of a sudden God's done with it. And that's a hard one too, because you kinda like what you're doing. You've gotten good at it, you're enjoying it. Then all of a sudden something's not working. It's not working. The anointing just isn't there. You're not enjoying it anymore. It's like, "Blah". I worked at a church in Saint Louis for five years. Five years, I had home Bible studies and five years, I worked at this church, and I liked my job. I got to do a lot of preaching, taught in the Bible school, had a huge women's meeting every Thursday morning about 400 to 450 people came. That's a decent sized congregation.

Did most of the teaching when the pastor was out of town and didn't have to believe for my paycheck, he did. And it was good. And then, but I started just, didn't wanna go to work, didn't wanna go to the meetings, the board, you know, the weekly meetings. I didn't know what was wrong with me, I was like, "What's wrong with me"? Didn't want to go to prayer meetings. We had church every Tuesday night and one Tuesday night, I sat in my seat. Of course, you know, I had a seat on the front row with my name on it. We all loved that. That makes us feel important, don't it? I had my own parking place with my name on it and my own seat with my name on it. It's amazing the things we think are important, then when we get older, we realize just had no importance at all.

I look back now and the things that I thought were important when I was 35, I realize now is just nonsense. The only thing that's really important is that we live before God the life that he wants us to live. And so, I heard God speak to me, "What are you doing here"? And I thought, "Well, goin' to church, it's Tuesday night". And God actually said, "I'm finished with you here". Well, I was insulted. I mean, how are you going to run the church without me? Come on. But God, God didn't need me there anymore. I had done my part and he wanted me to take the ministry and he said, "Go north, south, east, and west". Well, I won't get into that whole story 'cause it's long. But my point is, is I feel like somebody is here that needs to hear that you may even be good at something, but when God's done with it, you don't need to keep trying to push a horse uPhill that's been dead ten years. Amen?

And, you know, I've had to give up some things in the last few years. I used to love to go on our mission trips out of the country. Three times a year, I'd go out for three weeks at a time and we'd go to four or five or six countries and be involved in all these outreaches. And we had such favor, I mean, every door was opened to us. It was amazing. And then things started not working out. Our visas would get canceled and their, the grounds that we rented would get canceled. And just stupid, it just wasn't working.

How many of you know what I'm saying when I'm saying, "It's just not working"? And it was wearing me out. I was getting too old to be doing that. I needed to be giving myself to things that didn't take quite as much out of me. You know, sooner or later, you gotta compare effort to fruit. You know, are you getting enough fruit out of the effort that you're putting into something to make it worth doing it? And I didn't like giving that up.

Now, Ginger gets to go, and I don't get to go. But thank God she's there to do it. You know, we can't be all full of our self and never let anybody else do anything, because if you do, you'll just get written off, period. So, be ready to do something when God says, "Do it". But be ready to let it go when God says, "Let it go". Amen? And just because you let go of somethin' doesn't mean that God's done with you or that you were not valuable, it just means it's a new time in your life.

You know, it's difficult to be in relationship with an insecure person. They need continual affirmation, lot of compliments, otherwise they become discouraged and even get depressed. They never feel like they look good unless you tell them five times, they look good. This out of balance need frequently becomes too much of a burden for those attempting to have a relationship with 'em, and they prefer to sever the ties rather than deal with the moods of the insecure individual.

Come on, is there anybody here that, I mean, the person you're thinking of is not here so it's okay to raise your hand. Is there anybody here that's dealing with somebody like...? They are just wearing you out! Phew. Pretty soon you may just, you may not have any choice. You know, you can't let somebody just drain all the life out of you because they won't get with God and let God heal them. And to be honest with you, a lot of people don't want help. They want to just sit and tell you their problems all day long, day after day after day. They don't really want help. God'll help anybody that wants help.

People like that are easily offended. They're prone to comparing themselves with other people. They continually have to be first in everything and try to prove that they're worth something, or they go to the other end of the extreme and become excessively introverted and they're so shy you can't get two words out of 'em. An individual with a poor self-image can sometimes be excessively clingy. It's like if you pay any attention to 'em at all, all of a sudden you've got a new shadow. It's like, "Ew, you're there again".

My mom, bless her heart, she was like that. She never really experienced real love because my dad was such a mean man. Thankfully, he did get saved three years before he died, and he changed. But, I tell you, he was not fun to live with. And my mom was like that. You know, if I would call her, which I wanted to be a good daughter and pay attention to her, but if I'd call her, then she'd be calling me three times every day for the next, I don't know how many days. And I didn't have time to just sit on the phone all day and chat with her. And so, then you tend to back away from somebody like that because you don't want them to swallow up your life.

Now, you know, I'm talking to you today. I'm not talking to the person that you wish was here. I mean, just in case you're wondering. I am speaking to you. I want you to take a look at yourself and ask yourself, what do you think of yourself and how do you talk about yourself? I said this last night, but I'm gonna say it again today. Do not, and I repeat, do not, and I am old enough to tell you what to do. Do not say bad things about yourself out of your own mouth. You'd be better off for somebody else to talk bad about you than for you to talk bad about you.

And I remembered last night I started a story and then got off in another direction. So, this is a good place to finish it. I was talking about when God was teaching me that I was the righteousness of God in him. That was so hard for me to get through my head. And one morning, I was feeding my baby and Dave and I had an argument and he left for work. Anybody remember when I started this last night and then didn't finish it? And maybe you didn't even know that I didn't finish it, but I didn't. And so, I'm sittin' at the table sayin', "That's righ, I'm just a jerk. I'm just a total mess up. Everything I do is wrong. It's always my fault. It's always me. Always me".

You ever...? And what I'm gonna tell you is the absolute truth. And I'm not saying that to be spooky. I'm just telling you the truth. There are angels, but there are also demons. And just 'cause we can't see them don't mean they're not there. And when I was sitting there sayin' all these bad things about myself, I felt, literally felt, an evil force coming across the room at me. Scared the livin' tar out of me. I started saying, "I am the righteousness of God in Christ. I am the righteousness of God in Christ. I am the righteousness of God in Christ"!

And the more I said that, the more I felt that evil presence backin' away. Come on, don't open a door for the devil in your life. Don't say bad things about yourself out of your own mouth. Just say what the Bible says, even if you're not fully living it out right now, it still legally belongs to you, bought with the blood of Jesus. See, I think one of the places where we get confused is there's a legal side to our redemption and there is an experiential side to our redemption. Legally, I'm holy, but experientially I don't always do the holy thing. It's almost like God gives us a coat that's way too big for us and gives us time to grow into it.

The important thing is, is that you're growing, if you're growing. God's not so concerned as to whether or not you've arrived, but are you growing. Can you look back last year and say, "I'm different this year than I was last year"? Hopefully nobody has to say, "I'm different, I'm worse". Well, what is a healthy self-image? First of all, you don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to. Because the minute you start thinking that you're really important, you're gonna automatically start thinking somebody else is unimportant. And there is nothing, I don't think, that hurts God's heart worse than if we treat somebody as if they're beneath us or not as good as we are.

And sometimes, the people that are the most guilty of that are the ones that are in charge. So, I make it my business when I'm in these arenas, I talk to everybody sitting back there that I run into, greet them, and thank them. And, you know, look, look for the person nobody's paying attention to and talk to them. Don't go trying to just get to the most important person in the room. Look for the person that looks lonely. Look for the person that looks needy. "Well, Joyce I'd rather hang out with my friends".

Well, who wouldn't? You know, let's just quit being in our little groups, my little Christian groupie friends, and I don't talk to anybody else. The world is so full of hurting people. And we are not too important. I said, we are not too important to pay attention to them. Amen? We're not even too important to pay attention to a sinner. They don't have to become your best buddy, but you need to treat 'em right. I always say hang out with sinners, as long as you're affecting them and they're not infecting you.
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