Joyce Meyer - Your Life is What You Make It - Part 3

A few weeks ago, God said to me, on a day, when I was about to have a bad mood... How many of you can tell when you're about to have a bad mood? Well, you know, when you...that's the time to do something about it. Don't wait till you've been in a bad mood for a week but get it right away. 1 Peter 5 in the Amplified says, "Resist the devil at his onset. He roams about like a lion, roaring in fierce hunger, seeking whom he may devour: whom resists steadfast in the faith, knowing that the same identical sufferings are appointed to your brethren throughout the world". Everybody is going through stuff. So, we don't need to feel sorry for ourselves when we're going through things. We need to start doing what the Bible says.

"Submit yourself to God, resist the devil and he will flee". We have authority over the devil, but we have to use it. It's not gonna just be an automatic thing. And so, I knew, right away, that God was talking to me about my attitude, that if I wanted to have a bad day, I could certainly have one. But if I wanted to have a good day, I could have a good day. Trouble is a promise, but misery is an option. Spiritual maturity is only seen by how we handle ourselves when we're having problems. How many of you want to be spiritually mature? Wanna be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ? That should be our goal. Every Christian, we're not here just for God to give us everything we want, give us a nice cushy life.

We're here to serve him and every day I encourage you to ask God, "What can I do for you today"? Not just, "This is what I need you to do for me to keep me happy," but, "What can I do for you today"? The cross that we're to bear, "Take up your cross and follow me," Mark 8, is to live an unselfish life. That means we don't have ourselves on our mind all the time, but we actually make ourselves available to God for his use. We think that getting what we want is gonna make us happy, but I can tell you, it won't. Getting does not produce joy. Giving is what produces joy. Getting may make you happy for a little bit, but then you're gonna need to get something else to keep that going. Then you're gonna need to get something else. Then you're gonna need to get something else.

Things have no ability to keep us happy. Matter of fact, the Bible says that one of the ways that people are deceived is through riches, through thinking that, "If I can just get a bigger house," "If I can just have more money," "If I can just have this," "If I can just have that," and I can tell you things have no ability to keep you happy. Not that we don't want nice things, but God wants us to want him first. And if we keep him first, the Bible promises us that he will add the things. "Delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart". It's better than trying to get them for yourself. Amen? And so, I knew that I know what to do when I start to even remotely feel sorry for myself.

The Bible tells us what to do, "Be thankful". Start thanking God for everything you can think of that's a blessing in your life. Every person in here, no matter what kind of problem you have, you have more blessings than you have problems. Come on, you have more blessings than you have problems. But what we do, and it's satan's plan, he wants us to focus on the problem and forget about the blessings. The Bible says, "Looking away from all that will distract unto Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our faith". So, we don't need to be staring all the time at our problems. We need to pray about 'em, give 'em to God, cast our care on him, and go ahead and be a blessing to other people. I said, "Go ahead and be a blessing to other people".

See, I don't know you personally, I only know you through my relationship with teaching you and coming and seeing you in some of these conferences, but I just wonder, I have to wonder, how many of you are actually doing something purposely to make somebody else's life better? Or are we just looking at people saying, "What can you do for me"? What do you think would happen to marriages? Fifty percent of Christians are getting divorces, now. Not just the world, but Christians. And, you know, don't stone me when I say this, but the Bible only gives one valid reason to divorce.

Now, of course, God doesn't wanna see anybody abused, or, you know, there's issues sometimes that you can't get away from. But you can't just divorce somebody because they're hard to get along with. "We're", incompatibility, I love that one. Who is compatible? There's no two people that are compatible unless you are willing to adapt and adjust. But what would, I think we get married with the idea, "Okay, you're gonna make me happy". And then as soon as that doesn't happen, we get mad at them and start trying to change them. What would happen if we got married, and from the very get-go, we said, "God, I want to make this person happy that you put in my life"?

What if you focused on making the other person happy? You know what would happen? Then God would make you happy. See, if we do what God tells us to, then he'll give us the desires of our heart. So, I'm gonna say it and say it and say it and say it, today. "We overcome evil with good," Romans 12:21. And I tell you what, I had a huge, giant mess in my life. When God touched me in 1976, I was born again when I was nine years old, but it doesn't matter how born again you are, if you don't know anything, if you don't know the word, and if you don't put it to practice in your life, then nothing is gonna change. You can be saved and miserable. You can be a miserable sinner, or you can be a miserable saint. And it's usually because of a lack of knowledge.

And not trying to pick on any particular denomination but let me just say that there are many churches who teach people a lot of good, sound, solid doctrine, but they don't teach them anything about who they are in Christ. And you need to know who you are in Christ, what he's done for you, what belongs to you, what Jesus bought and paid for, and that you're a joint heir with him, and you need to start living the life that he intends you to live. "The thief comes only to kill, steal, and destroy, but Jesus said, I came that you might have and enjoy your life". Not just get up every day and breathe but enjoy your life.

And you're like, "Well, if I could just get rid of these problems, then I could enjoy my life". Uh-uh, no. You gotta learn how to enjoy your life in the middle of the problems. So, let me say it again. If you wanna be spiritually mature, which is really awesome, because when you are spiritually mature, all the things that bug you and make you unhappy now won't bother you at all. Because you trust God enough to know that he's gonna take care of it, and in the end, it's all gonna work out alright. So, you don't bother wasting three months worrying about it. You just trust God to take care of it. And you stay busy being a blessing to somebody else. You stay busy being a blessing to somebody else.

"Well, I don't feel like that. I've got problems of my own". I remember a story about a man whose son had cancer, and this man was in ministry, and of course, he was praying for his son to be healed. Turned out that the boy died, and he got mad at God and said, "Where were you when my son died"? And God answered him back. Said, "The same place I was when mine died". Amen? So, we don't need to feel sorry for ourselves. A positive attitude is a key ingredient to a good life. So, we're gonna talk about some attitude adjustments today, and the first one I wanna talk about is just having a positive attitude. Let's learn how to play "The Glad Game". You know, like Pollyanna, learn how to play "The Glad Game". Find something, just make the devil mad and find something good in everything.

Coming over here this morning, our rented vehicle stopped four times, just went off. And I thought, "I do not wanna walk to the church. Please get me there". So, thank God, we got here, and now the car's being exchanged. But instead of being upset that we had a problem with the car, I can be glad that we did get here, and now it's being taken care of. You know, maybe you had to go have an ultrasound, and an MRI, and an x-ray, and you had to get some physical therapy, but you could thank God that you work at a place where they provide you with good insurance. Maybe all of you don't have that, but you know, our ministry, we still give our employees full insurance benefits. I believe in treating people that work for me the way that I would want to be treated if I was working for somebody.

That's why we have so many people that have been with us 20, and 25, and 30 years. You might say, "Well, you know, I'm one of those people. I just, I can't help it, I just tend toward being negative". Well, when I ended last night, I said, "You know, I'd like to control everybody in the world, but I don't get to just because I want to". And you don't get to be negative just because that's kind of your natural bent. You can choose to have a positive attitude. And I'll tell you, if you just heard me say that and you went home and you put it to practice, it would be well worth whatever it took for you to get here. You cannot be negative and be happy and enjoy your life. Our attitude is connected to our thinking. An attitude is really just the posture you take toward life.

"How am I gonna look at my life? How am I going to look at the things that happen to me"? You know, I prayed for many years, like most of us do, for my problems to go away so I could be happy. You know, "Make this go away so I can be happy". And I wasted a few years thinking like that, and I finally realized that God wasn't gonna change my problems. If anything, things could get worse because of the way things are going in the world, but it was me he wanted to change. Good. One person agrees with that. Could anybody in here possibly think that maybe, just maybe, probably not, but maybe you're the problem? I love you.

You know, I was praying for Dave to change because I knew Dave was the problem. And I mean, I was after it. I mean, this had been 40 years ago, but I was like, "God, you gotta change Dave. I can't take this anymore. You gotta change Dave". And God said, "Dave's not the problem. You are". Yeah, well, don't get too happy. I can find another Dave story if you want me to. Our thinking! Ugh! The mind is the battlefield. Satan is a liar. And he plants thoughts in our mind, hoping we will take them as our own and continue to meditate on them and meditate on them and then even begin to speak those things into existence. But if we know God's word, and let me tell you, it's gonna take work. You know, it's not gonna just get transplanted on you. I know a lot of the word, but I've been studying the word for 45 years. Forty-five years, and you're thinking, "Sounds overwhelming".

Well, you have nothing better to do. You can either stay in a mess, or you can start going forward by carving some time out of your daily life to learn something about the word every single day. And if you have time to play on your computer three hours a day and watch television two hours a day, you have time to spend with God and be in the word. There's nothing that's more valuable than spending time with God. And I don't care if you do nothing, but just sit there and cry. Just spend time with God. It's not so much what you do when you spend time with God as it is that you actually take the time, to give it to him, to let him know that you know that you cannot do anything without him.

Now, satan is a liar, but if we believe his lies, then we are deceived. And it's amazing how many people go their whole life believing things that are lies. Wonder how many lies you believe, right now. Or I wonder how many I still believe that I still, I have to have light into some dark places. You know, the Bible says in Ephesians 4 that we are to have our mind and our attitude daily and constantly renewed. That means this is not something that we do one time and never have to do it again. You will have to stand against the devil concerning wrong thoughts the rest of your life. Amen? Romans 12:2, "Don't be conformed to this world". You're in the world but not of it. You're not like it. "Come out from among them and be separate," God said.

Now, that doesn't mean to act like we're better than everybody else or to have nothing to do with unbelievers, but we can't adopt the world's ways. Amen? I'll give you one example, and I always make somebody mad when I say this, but, you know, today, people just think it's very normal to live together before they get married. It's like, "Well, let's try this out and see if everything's gonna work".

Well, you know, what kind of a commitment is that? That's not scriptural. "Well, everybody does it". I don't care who does it. We don't get to do it. That's not the way God wants us to live. And I'm not trying to offend you. There's probably people in here right now that are living in that kind of a situation. But let me just tell you something. If somebody won't make a real commitment to you, you deserve more than that. You're better than that. And God's got a better plan for you than that. Amen?

Dave and I have been married 57 years, and we have 4 children, 12 grandchildren, 6 great-grandchildren, and I feel like sometimes all I do is write checks for birthdays and Christmas. Ya know, I get writer's cramps at Christmas. But I'm so grateful that God has taught me how to think in a way that can actually give me a happy life. And the more you learn about the word, the quicker you'll recognize wrong thoughts. See, before you learned this, you can just waste a whole day thinking junk all day long and not even realize you're doing it. I had no idea that I could do anything about my thinking. I just thought, "Well, I can't help what I think". But see, the Bible says that you can cast down a wrong imagination, and you can choose to think on something that agrees with the Word of God.

Well, let me tell you how to do it. Let's just say that you have a little coffee in the morning, sitting there trying to wake up, and all of a sudden, these thoughts come about everything you did wrong yesterday. Anybody get that? "Well, yesterday you did, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah". Well, if you know the word, you can say, "Well, thank you for reminding me of everything that God's forgiven me for. Thank you, God, that you've forgiven me for yesterday, and today's a new day. Your mercy's new every day, and I can let go of what lies behind and press on to the things that are ahead".

Now, the minute that you open your mouth and start speaking the Word of God, your mind has to quiet down because you can't think a bad thing and say a good thing at the same time. Come on, you can't think a bad thing and say a good thing at the same time. You have to learn to talk back to the devil. He talks to you plenty. You need to talk back to him. You say, "Well, I would just feel stupid going around the house talkin' out loud". You talk to yourself anyway. You might as well say something that makes sense, amen? Only, we do things like drop something and say, "Stupid. I'm stupid".

Let me tell you something that is so valuable. Don't ever say bad things about yourself out of your own mouth. Let me say it again. Listen, you are amazing. You are an absolute masterpiece. Just what it takes for our bodies to function properly for one day is absolutely astounding. I mean, when David said, it's recorded in Psalm 139, "We are fearfully and wonderfully made". I mean, we are. You have got so much potential: you don't even begin to use one little, tiny bit of that brain that God has put in you. You can do great things with your life. You can be a blessing. You can make a difference in other people's lives. And don't let satan ruin every day of your life by making you think about everything you did wrong the day before.

Romans 12, "Don't be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the [entire] Renewal of your mind [by its new ideals and its new attitude]". We're doing attitude adjustments today. Amen? Now listen, "So that you may prove [for yourselves] What is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God". You prove it out by learning how to think the way God wants you to think.