Joyce Meyer - Dealing with Stress - Part 2

Causes for stress, I have 16. And I could've kept going, so you know. I'll try not to get hung up too much on these points, so we'll just go through them pretty fast. Guilt, that's a bad one. Hidden sin. Poor diet. I decided yesterday, I was tired, I've been working a little more than I like too lately. I was real tired. You know, sometimes when you're real tired you wanna do something you shouldn't do. Anybody ever noticed that? And so, I decided that I wanted dessert and I wanted a lot of it. And to maintain my size, I have to be, you know, pretty strict. And so I decided I was gonna eat dessert and not eat food. I didn't tell you, I didn't tell you 'cause I knew you wouldn't like it.

So, I got a cookie and I put all this icing on it. Then I had a little ice cream. It was a little bowl of ice cream but put chocolate sauce on that. And I ate that dessert and didn't eat any food, and I got so nervous. It just, the sugar just made me nervous, and I felt terrible after that. Well, how many people are stressed out all the time, just because they have a lousy diet? They don't do something like that occasionally, they eat junk every day. Boy, you got a good church. They don't have a problem with anything. I have never seen so many people that can look innocent as this group. I mean, they're all just... How many of you don't get enough sleep? You know what? I've got an answer for you. Go to bed at night. This really isn't rocket science.

How many of you don't drink enough water? Drink some water. You know, we look for all these complicated answers to what we think are all these complicated problems and to be honest, it's really not that hard. I was having stomach problems: every single morning I was being sick to my stomach. Not like throwing up sick, but just nauseated, and just, blech. So, I've learned that if you ask God, he will tell you some things. And so, I was asking God to give me a word of knowledge, "Show me what's wrong". And I had these, I have a little bit of irritable bowel syndrome and so I looked on the internet to see what irritated it. And the number one thing on the list was xylitol. And I had these mints that I ate, probably a package and a half of every day, and the number one ingredient was xylitol. So, I quit eating the mints and I quit having the stomach problem. So, just some of you, not all of you, but some of you that feel bad, even stress. You know, one of the things that will give you stress is doing things that God has not anointed you to do.

Now, my husband is, sometimes, I wonder if Dave even knows what stress is. I mean, he's just very peaceful, you know? Easiest guy in the world to get along with. Very patient, very generous in forgiveness, kind. He just, he's very, just not stressful. And he was having what he calls "The yips". Which was really just, he felt stressed. He was shaking, inside, you know, like inside. Well, he found out he was doing something that he'd been doing for a long time but God didn't want him doing it anymore. And it took, our daughter recognized it and shared with him, and he stopped doing it. Yips went away. So, maybe, you're just doing some things that God's no longer anointing you to do, and that's giving you stress.

Now, I was abused sexually by my dad from the time I was, a little bitty. So, I grew up with stress. I had stress all my life. I had so much stress I didn't even know it was stress. So, I was always goin' to the doctor, because when you have stress it'll affect your health, trying to find out what was wrong with me, and then they would tell me it was stress and that would make me mad because I didn't even understand what stress was. I thought stress meant you couldn't handle life. And "I'm a strong woman. I can handle life. I do not have stress. Don't tell me I have stress. This is not stress". I even had one doctor tell me to go see a psychiatrist. I had one ask me if I wanted to come to these classes that he was doing on changing your thinking. I thought, "I wrote the book"! He's "You're having a battle in your mind". I thought, "I've sold 6 million copies of that book".

Well, if nothing else, you're getting a good laugh tonight. Not enough exercise. "Oooh, don't talk to me about exercise, Joyce". Okay. Unresolved issues from the past, you know it's our secrets that make us sick. You know that? No wonder the Bible says, "Confess your faults to one another that you may be healed and restored to a spiritual tone of mind and heart". Sometimes you just need to sit down with somebody you can trust and just say, "I just need to get some things out in the open". It's not, I mean, you don't need to go to a person to get forgiveness. But sometimes we do just need to vent: we just need to talk to somebody, not to complain or grumble, but just to get rid of it. Fear. Being codependent.

If you're a person who's married to somebody that's hard to get along with, and you have to wait to see what kind of mood they're in before you decide what kind of mood you're in, that's being codependent. I had a lot of problems when Dave and I first got married from being abused, and Dave tried for a long time to make me happy, and I didn't know how to be happy. And he finally said, "I don't care what I do, you're not gonna be happy, so I'm finished trying". But he said, "I am gonna enjoy my life". And oh, that made me mad. Made me so mad because people that aren't happy don't want other people to be happy. But you know, that was one of the best things that he ever did for me. He didn't become codependent on me. He didn't let my mood ruin his mood. He didn't let my lack of joy take his lack of joy.

And you know, I don't have time to get into all these things that I would love to get into because it's taken me a lifetime to learn 'em, but if you are in relationship with somebody whether it's a real good friend, or a parent, or a spouse, or a child that is determined to be unhappy, don't let them steal your joy because you are not helping them by doing that. Actually, what eventually happened was, when Dave persisted in being happy, he finally made me hungry for what he had. So, it actually, really helped me in the long run, same way with his peace. He modeled peace in front of me, and I finally thought, "Well, if he can have that, I can have that".

So, it doesn't help a person with problems if you let their problems determine how you're gonna live your life. He loved me. He said, "I love you, but I'm not gonna let you make me unhappy". Come on, somebody here needs to hear that. Now, I always say, "Dave kinda got what he deserved," because when he met me, I was washing my mother's car in short shorts, and he pulled up to pick up a guy he was going somewhere with, that rented my mom and dad's upstairs flat, and he tried to flirt with me, and I didn't trust men, didn't like men. And I said, well, I liked men, but I didn't trust 'em. And he said, "Hey, when you're finished washing that car, you wanna wash mine"? I said, "If you want your car washed, buddy, wash it yourself". Well, he'd been praying for a wife. And boy, he made a mistake. He said, "God, make it somebody that needs help". Honestly, that's what he prayed. So, you know, I don't feel sorry for him. He got what he asked for.

Another real stressor is people. You know, I used to be, you know, I can be really happy 'til the people come. You ever feel like that? I mean, when I first got into the things of God, I would play my Christian music all day. And, you know, pray in the spirit, and listen to my teaching tapes. They were tapes back then, now there, something else, I don't even know what they are. Downloads. That's what it is, downloads. And I was just so spiritual. Then all my kids would come home from school and I was like, "Aaah"! It's easy to be peaceful when there's no people around. Sickness can give you a lot of stress. Just circumstances, the world today, just all the negativity in the world today.

So, the bottom line is, is if you wanna have peace, you're gonna have to want it really, really bad. 1 Peter 3:11 says that "If you want peace, you have to seek it and pursue it". "Seek" means "To go after with all your strength". Pursue it, seek it, and pursue it. It's not gonna fall on you like ripe fruit fallin' off a tree. You have to really want it and you have to be willing to change. Is there anybody here that would be willing to change anything you need to change just to have peace? Okay. Well, God saw your hands. So, get ready. But I love what it says in the Amplified Bible, in 1 Peter 3:11, it says that if you "Want to enjoy life and have good days [good, whether apparent or not] turn from evil and do good, seek peace". Well, the Amplified says, "Seek it eagerly. [do not merely desire peaceful relations with God, with your fellowman, and with yourself, but pursue, and go after them.]"

And so, you know, you're never gonna have peace with other people or even peace with your circumstances if you don't have any peace with yourself. And that's really where most of our problems come from. A lot of people just don't like themselves. I know 'cause I lived through that. And you know, when I first started hearing preaching and hearing how we all need to love each other, I wanted to love people, but I just couldn't. And I didn't know what the problem was. And God taught me, he said, "You can't love anybody else because you don't love yourself. And if you don't have love in you, you can't give it away". You can't give somebody something that you don't have. God's love is shed abroad in our heart by the Holy Spirit when we're born again.

So, we have love in us, but if you don't love yourself, you're not receiving that love. And I'm not talking about being in love with yourself and selfish and self-centered. I'm talking about loving the you that God created you to be. Amen? And if you start to love yourself and have peace with yourself, you'll be amazed at how easy it is to love other people and have peace with them. A lot of our problems start at home base, amen? I started paying attention to what my peace stealers were. You should do that. If you wanna have more peace, start paying attention to what it is that upsets you. What upsets you? What drives you to that point where you lose your peace? I don't do well if I have to hurry a lot.

So, I've learned to leave a little more time. I don't like being pressured. I don't like to feel like, "Oh, I've gotta preach in three days and I don't have my messages yet". So, I stay way ahead on all that stuff. And so, if you get stressed out in the mornings trying to get out of the house, then go to bed a little bit earlier and get up a little bit earlier. Do a few things the night before that will help you the next morning, so you have a little more time. The book that pastor showed you is based out of Philippians 4:6 and 7, and it is the whole answer to anxiety. You say, "The whole answer in one scripture"? Yes. "Don't be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving".

The more thankful you are, the less anxiety you have, because the more thankful you are for what you have, the less upset you are about what you don't have. Amen? "Present your requests to God. And the peace that passes understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus" unto life everlasting. So, in that book I do it in four parts. And I talk about the anxiety that every situation be thankful, pray about everything. Your first response to everything should be to pray. And then peace, how valuable peace is. Amplified Bible, it says in Colossians 3:15, that we should "Let peace be the umpire in our life". And we all know what an umpire is. He decides whether something's in or out. And we should let peace be the umpire in our life deciding whether something is in or it's out. If I can't do it with peace, then it's not from God. Amen?

"A foolish person recognizes his problem and refuses to do anything about it," the Bible says. They want somebody else to do it for 'em. "Somebody else should fix this". Don't blame the world or the people in your world. Take responsibility for your own peace and start asking God, "What can I do about this"? Let me remind you about what I said in the beginning. Make a list of everything you're doing. And then, honestly, look at each one and say, "What kind of fruit is this bearing in my life"? And even better, ask yourself what your motive is for doing it. If you're doing it just to keep somebody else happy, you know what I found out? I lived a portion of my life, there was a church that we were going to, and I wanted to be in with this certain group of people. In order to do that, you had to have favor with this one certain woman. And in order to get that, you had to do everything she wanted you to do.

And you know what I found out? When push came to shove, she didn't care anything about me. People who wanna control you don't love you. They don't. Anybody who really loves you, if you say to them, "You know, I would like to be able to do what you asked me to, but I just can't. I've got too much of my plate right now," or "I don't have peace about doing it". If anybody really loves you, they should honor that and say, "I don't want you to do anything you don't feel right about". Not get mad because you're not keeping them happy. You're alive to obey God and love him, not to keep everybody else on the planet happy. And you can't be a God-pleaser and a people-pleaser. You have to be one of the two. There's four things that Jesus did to manage stress. He trusted himself and everything to God.

1 Peter 2:23. "When he was reviled and insulted, he did not revile or offer insult in return: [when] he was abused and suffered, he made no threats [of vengeance]: but he trusted [himself and everything] to him who judges fairly". He prayed about everything. He'd walk away from a crowd and go pray. I guess if he was just feeling too much pressure, he'd just walk away from 'em and go pray. Many times, in the Bible, we see Jesus do that. And I love this. He knew when to be quiet. Seriously. John 14:30, he said to his disciples, "I will not be saying much more to you, because the prince of this world is coming. And he has no hold over me". He knew that it was just about time for him to go to Jerusalem and suffer, and apparently he knew that it was not a good time to say the wrong thing.

When you're under stress, that's a good time to make a decision, "I think I'm just goin' be quiet". Like, some days, if I just don't feel real good or something, I'll just tell Dave, "You know, I don't feel real good today, I'm probably goin' be a little quiet," and I'm sure he's glad. He's like, "Yeah, just be quiet". Listen to Matthew 27. "When Jesus was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer". Why? Because he knew his own heart. He didn't have to try to convince them that he was a good guy. "Then Pilate said, 'don't you hear the testimony they're bringing against you'? But Jesus once again made no reply, not even to a single charge," did he make a reply. You know, God has had to teach me that "You don't have to try to prove to people that you're right. If you need to be proven to be in the right, I'll take care of that". Amen?

And the last thing that Jesus did was he always forgave, always, always. He forgave Peter. On the cross, he prayed, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do". And that's about half of my message, but sadly, I'm out of time. So, you still got a lot, right? Did you get what you wanted? Okay. Okay, listen, let's all stand up. We're gonna pray a prayer together. I don't want anybody to leave here tonight that doesn't know Jesus, so, we're going to do this a little different. We're going to all pray this prayer together. And then anybody who has never received Christ, get ready. Let's just pray:

Father, God, I love you. Jesus, I believe in you. I believe that you are God. The Son of God. I believe you died for me. You paid for my sin. You took my guilt, and you set me free. Forgive my sins. And help me to live for you. Jesus, I receive you now, and I surrender my life to you. Now, I believe I'm saved. This is a new beginning, and I wanna live for you. Help me do that. Amen.