Joyce Meyer - Your Life is What You Make It - Part 2

You are in charge of your life now: you oversee your life. And you can have a good life if you want to. And I hope I'm shaking some things loose in some of you that, you know, you've just, man, I don't want you to just settle in and say, "Well, this is, you know, just my cross to bear". The cross that we're to bear is to live an unselfish life. Jesus said, "If anybody wants to follow me, let him take up his cross and follow me". And the Amplified Bible says, "Forget yourself, lose sight of yourself and all your own interests and follow me". If I'm on the throne of my life, then I'm gonna be sayin' "No" to God a lot. We don't have enough messages on dying to self. That's not a popular one. I'd love to write books and just call 'em: "Obedience," "Dying to Self," "Dying to Live".

I mean, you couldn't even sell a book on humility now. I gotta hide my books under other titles. Every book's gotta have a promise. I'd like to promise you something, if you don't start doin' what God tells you to do, it ain't gonna be pretty. Because Romans 14 says, "Every man will stand before God and give an account of his life". And if anybody's watching by TV and you think you're an atheist and don't believe in God, you're gonna get a surprise. Jeremiah 29:11, "For I know the thoughts and plans I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil, to give you hope in your final outcome".

Do you know what hope is? Hope is an expectation that something good is about to happen at any moment. Maybe you were raised by people that didn't know how to keep the devil out of their life and they did things that hurt you, but you can give your painful past to God and ask him to take it and make something beautiful out of it. Well, when trouble comes, how do you handle it? What kind of attitude do you have during trouble? This is really, right here, where the rubber meets the road. A mature Christian, a really mature Christian, when they're hurting and having trouble, you normally don't even know it. Because they just continue to do everything they would do if they weren't hurting. Thank you for your great response. I think I'm skipping pages here. Yeah, I can't forget this one. The biggest non-negotiable is you must completely forgive those who have hurt you.

You say, "Well, I've tried, and I just can't". No. No, here's the thing. You may be mixed up about what forgiveness is. Forgiveness is not a feeling. It's a decision about how you're gonna treat somebody. If you sincerely pray and say, "God, I choose to forgive them". And you do what the Bible says, you "Pray for them, you bless and do not curse them. If your enemy's hungry, feed him. If he's thirsty, give him something to drink". That means if he's got a problem and you can help him, help him. You know what my dad said to Dave the day that he finally repented, which he was 83 when he did? He looked at Dave and he said, "You know Dave, most men would have killed me". But he said, "You've never done anything but love me and be kind to me".

My dad got saved that day. You must forgive. I get that in somewhere into every message that I preach now because there are so many Christians that are angry. And I've never asked any congregation anywhere how many of them have some kind of unforgiveness in their heart and had less than 80% of the whole room lift their hand. So, no wonder we're not very powerful as a body of Christ. You give away your power. You poison your own life. It's not hurting your enemies for you to stay mad. It just makes the devil happy. Because he hurt you and now, he continues to hurt you every single day that you keep holding on to it. Turn 'em over to God. Pray for 'em.

You think, "Well, I don't want them to be blessed. I'm not gonna pray for them to be blessed". Don't worry about it. God's not gonna give 'em a new house and a new car. But he might bless 'em with some truth. Amen? Well, what about people who had a good childhood? You were raised right. You don't have any huge hurts in your life, but you still have trials and tribulations: Sickness, loss, rejection, abandonment, divorce, failure. "Well, why do those bad things happen to me"? Because they happen to everybody. Jesus said, "In the world you will have tribulation". Trouble is a promise. And every scripture that I can find on trials and tribulations always tells us to be joyful in the midst of 'em.

Now, what sense does that make? Because if we keep the right attitude, and that's where I'm gonna go tomorrow is, maybe a little bit tonight and tomorrow. We're gonna talk about some specific attitudes. You've heard the saying: "Your attitude determines your altitude". Well, I want you to listen to what I'm gonna say. Your attitude belongs to you, and nobody can make you have a bad one if you don't want to. The devil will invite you to have one. Oh yeah! We'll think about how good we are and the trouble we have, and we see somebody else we know that's not nearly as good as us and they're blessed. And we don't understand, but the thing God's really after in us is the pride. See, he's got a different idea than we do about things.

James 1:2-4, your favorite scriptures, "Consider it wholly joyful, my brethren, whenever you are enveloped in or encounter trials of any sort or fall into various temptations. Be assured and understand that the trial and the proving of your faith bring out endurance and steadfastness and some patience". Well, I'll tell you, they brought a lot of stuff out of me before we got around to that. I mean, I was up and down and up and down and up and down. If my circumstances were good, I was a happy Christian. And if I had any kind of problem, I would, come on, we're not supposed to live by what we feel, we're supposed to live by the Word of God.

Now, I wanna say what I said again. If you wanna be spiritually mature, which the Bible says that we are all called to be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ. That's our goal. "I wanna be like Jesus. I wanna handle things the way he handled 'em. I wanna have his attitude. I wanna treat people the way he treated people". That's our goal. And, you know, we fill our prayers with stuff that we want and things we want God to do for us.

And if you study the apostle Paul's prayers that he prayed, he never asked for one material thing for himself or anybody else. Everything he asked for was something spiritual. And we need to forget all the stuff because if we're doing things the way God wants us to do them, we don't have to chase stuff, it'll chase us. Amen? I mean, and that's just the truth. I've lived it, I know. Patience, wow. Well, you know, patience comes from a Greek word that says that patience is a Fruit of the Spirit that only grows under trial. That's why nobody wants to pray for patience because you know what you're gonna get.

Now, my husband is a very patient man. I have found a place for the Dave story. Brand-new Dave story, startin' the year off right. My husband is a very patient man. I mean, he can put me to shame, I'll tell ya. But the other night, I pushed him over the edge. Now, Dave has a pillow fetish. He has six pillows in our bed. Yeah, you do. You've got the one pillow that your head lays on. You've got the big pillow stuffed beside the bed that your other pillows prop up on. And then he's got all these little pillows. He hugs one, he puts one between his knees. And, but, he's... Dave and I feel differently about decorating. He's real eclectic. He likes everything to stand out, and I want everything to match. So, one of his pillows is green, one is blue. Our bedspread is burgundy. Then he's got a white pillow, and I think, I don't know, what color's the third one? Huh?

Dave Meyer: Green.

Joyce Meyer: No, you got green and blue and...

Dave Meyer: Green and blue and maroon.

Joyce Meyer: Maroon. And maroon one. And so, he needed some new pillowcases for some other pillows he's got upstairs in his office. He has about six pillows upstairs in his office. And I don't know, I mean, I just, I don't get it. And so, he wanted her to order him some bright red pillowcases. So, I'm layin' in bed watching tv, and he comes in the bedroom with this bright red pillowcase. And he starts to put it on his pillow, you know, the one pillow that he should have. And I said, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no". I said, "Dave, the bedspread is burgundy". And, you know, it's a comforter, we pull it up, and then we lay the pillows on top of it. I said, "You're not putting a red pillow on my burgundy bedspread". He said, "Yes, I am". I said, "No, you're not". He said, "Yes, I am". I said, "If you put it on there, I'll take it off". He said, "I'll put it back on". I said, "I'll take it off".

And we went back and forth like that, and pretty soon Dave goes, "Eeeeeerrrraahh"! I'm like, and he stomps out of the room, and he says, "You grouch! You are just an old grouch! You grouch"! I thought, "Well, maybe I should just let you have a red pillowcase". So, he waited about five minutes and then he came back. Now, he didn't say he was sorry 'cause men don't do that. That would have been too much, but he did say, "Oh you sweet darling, lovely... I know you're not eclectic, so I don't have to have the red pillowcase". And I'm like, "Have the red pillowcase, I don't". "No," he says. I said, "Oh yeah, have it". "No". Man!

James 1:12, "Blessed (happy, and to be envied) is the man who is patient under trial and stands up under temptation", you notice the word "Under". You gotta be patient while you're still havin' the trial. And you gotta stand firm and hang on to your faith while you're still havin' the trial. "And after you have stood the test and been approved, you will receive the victor's crown of life which God has promised to those who love him".

Now, we have things happen that we don't understand. And I've had an interesting couple of years. Last year, in April, I went for a little back procedure called a laminectomy. They just cut about a one-inch opening and they clean out junk in your spine that's pressing on nerves and making your back hurt. Not supposed to be any big deal. Well, I had a problem, and I developed a blood clot at the surgery site. And it did something to the nerves in my right leg. And I couldn't pick my leg up that far off the bed. So, I had to go back to the hospital. They had to operate again, take out the blood clot. And then I had to go to a rehabilitation hospital for two weeks to try to get that leg working again. Well, they finally got it enough to where I could go home on a walker. But I still couldn't hardly put any weight on it at all. And I got home and in "Joyce fashion," thought I could do more than what I could do. And I ended up falling and breaking my other leg. So, now, I had two legs that wouldn't work.

So, long story short, I spent two and a half months in a wheelchair, on a walker. And the first thing that I prayed when it all started was, "God, help me do this right". And I want to encourage you, the next time you have a trial that starts in your life, pray that, "God, help me do this right". Because when you're hurting, I mean, we had to cancel conferences. Somebody had to be with me 24 hours a day for a whole month. My kids had to take shifts staying with me because I couldn't do anything by myself. Well, that leg never did get completely well. My back still just kept hurting and hurting. So, I had to have what they call a nerve ablation, which means they burned the ends of the nerves goin', so anyway, my back still hurts, but my brain doesn't know it. So, it's not bad. Then they announced on our Facebook that, "Tomorrow we're going to tell you about 'The Fall of Joyce Meyer'".

Well, we had more viewers that day than we've ever had at any other time 'cause they thought I fell into sin. People love to hear about it when you've been bad. And so, then about five weeks ago, my legs have been good, I've been doing my conferences, everything's okay. I still don't know what happened, but I got up in the middle of the night. I was very, very sleepy. And I woke up, thought I had to go to the bathroom. Went to the bathroom, and I think I fell asleep standing up. And I fell over backwards, on a marble floor. Now, you have two choices when things like this happen. I could think, "Well, I don't understand why this stuff keeps happening to me. I mean, I'm preaching the word and trying to do what's right and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah". Well, I've been around a long time, I know that don't help.

So, I just thought, "Well, thank God I didn't hit my head. Thank God I didn't break my tailbone". I mean, I could have hit my head on the bathtub and been dead, right now. And so, another thing to do that's very helpful when you're having trials and trouble, don't just think about what did happen, think what could have happened that didn't happen. I want you to think about that, because it could always have been worse than what it was. You know that? No matter what's going on in your life right now, it could be worse. So, you find something in your mess to thank God for, and that's one of the ways that you can be blessed in your mess.

So, while I was in the rehab hospital, I wrote a really good book called, "Don't Overthink It". That won't come out till next fall. But that was good, I got some mileage out of that. I wrote another one called, "Something needs to change". See, I love when the devil attacks me to just turn around and turn it into something good that's gonna help a few million people. So, I can be mad and bitter and sour and get into all kinds of reasoning and get mad at God because "I'm trying so hard to be so good and all these bad things happen to me".

See, you may think that people like me just live a charmed life, and we just, phew. Well, I'm walkin', and my back, from where I fell, is just about well. Still hurts just a little bit, but not too much. And so, I'm on my way. And I can't wait to see what good thing comes out of all this, 'cause see, I really believe that God works all things out for good. Now, listen. It won't happen that way if you don't keep a good attitude. So, you pray, "God, help me have a good attitude. Help me, God, have a good attitude". Exodus 14:14, "The Lord will fight for you, and you shall hold your peace and remain at rest".

Now, you gotta get it. God will fight for you "If" you hold your peace and remain at rest. Don't get into reasoning. Proverbs 3:5 and 6, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and mind and lean not to your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your path". All reasoning does is get you confused. Psalm 34:19, "Many evils confront the [consistently] Righteous". Just because you're havin' trouble doesn't mean that you're doin' somethin' wrong. "Many evils confront the [consistently] Righteous". You can be doin' everything right, and the devil will stand on his head tryin' to stop you, tryin' to confuse you. And all over the Bible, it tells you when you're having trials and tribulations to rejoice. You know why? Because somethin' good's gonna happen.