Joyce Meyer - Asking God for Bigger - Part 1
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Ginger Stache: Hi, everybody. Thanks for joining us today on, "Enjoying Everyday Life". I have a question for you. How big are your prayers? Are you boldly asking God to do big things in your life or are you praying just barely enough to get by prayers? We can all get in that rut. So, today, we're gonna break out of it. Recently, Joyce shared on this topic with me and with Erin Cluley on our talk it out podcast. And we would love to share it with you. It's inspiring, it's encouraging, and I think it's going to make your prayers bigger. So, get ready and you're gonna pray some big prayers after this is over, I know, take a look.
Ginger Stache: Well, we really are talking about something that's been on your heart this year, and that is really encouraging people to pray bigger prayers than we have. Just tell me how that's kind of come up in you.
Joyce Meyer: Well, I don't like to hear people pray what I call "Just prayers". Like the word, J-U-S-T. So often, we just say, "God, if you'll just do this, and if you'll just do that". And if you look at the definition of that word. It pretty much means "Just barely enough to get by". And so, I think there's a part of us that's afraid to ask God for big things because we think we don't deserve it. Which is probably true. But God doesn't give us anything because we deserve it. He does it because Jesus deserves it. When we pray in Jesus' name, that's what we're saying, "I'm presenting unto you all that Jesus is". Plus, the Bible says that he does "Exceedingly, abundantly above and beyond all that we could ever dare to hope, ask, or think". And so, we're encouraged in Ephesians 3 to pray big prayers. And so, in James 4:1 and 2, it says, "What causes fights and quarrels among you? Don't they come from your desires that battle within you? You desire but you don't have, so you kill. You covet but you cannot get what you want, so you quarrel and you fight. You do not have because you do not ask God". And that scripture really meant a lot to me at a certain time in my life. And, you know, so often like, we'll look at what somebody else has and be jealous and get mad at them because they have it and we don't, but we haven't even bothered to ask God. So, I always tell people, you can ask God for anything, but you need to be happy with what he gives you. Because if God doesn't give you what you ask for. It's not because he's holding out on you. It's either not the right time, or the Bible says here, you're asking with a wrong motive.
Erin Cluley: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: You know.
Ginger Stache: Can I ask this?
Joyce Meyer: Yeah.
Ginger Stache: What was that time in your life that that scripture was so important?
Joyce Meyer: I think I was just into a lot of works of the flesh trying to make things happen myself. And...
Ginger Stache: I've been there.
Joyce Meyer: Yeah. Well, you know, that's a huge thing when you can learn what works of the flesh are. Because the Bible talks about it a lot. If you learn the difference between that and grace, you can save yourself so much agony because, you know, I was trying to change myself. I was trying to change Dave. I was trying to change my kids. I was trying to make my ministry grow. You know, I was tryin', tryin', tryin', tryin'. And I needed to learn to ask God for things and then trust his timing, his way, and his will. But there's somethin' that's, I think it's important to say here today. We can ask God for anything. We can ask him for big things, you know. But we do not want to get caught up in just asking God for things.
Erin Cluley: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: So, when we're talking about asking God for bigger things this year, I'd like to flip this for a few minutes and say, first of all, ask God for big spiritual things...
Ginger Stache: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: That really are much more important than getting' a bigger house, or you know bigger, I mean, like...
Ginger Stache: Yep.
Joyce Meyer: "God, I pray that I'll be content with what you do in my life".
Erin Cluley: That's a big one to ask for. It is.
Joyce Meyer: "I pray that I'll be able to trust you more," you know, you seek first the kingdom and God adds the things. And many times, when we ask for things we don't get 'em because we're not spiritually strong enough to handle them.
Erin Cluley: Because we haven't asked for the other parts first.
Joyce Meyer: Right.
Erin Cluley: Yeah, that makes sense.
Joyce Meyer: So, I wanna say that again. A lot of times, when we ask for "Things" God can't give them to us because, I mean, like, you wouldn't give your ten-year-old the keys to your car.
Erin Cluley: Right. They took them once. But...
Joyce Meyer: Yeah.
Ginger Stache: That's a whole different story.
Erin Cluley: That's a different problem.
Joyce Meyer: And that's out of love, because you don't want 'em to get hurt. So, many times, God can't give us. We may see something somebody else has. And we might even judge that they're not mature enough to have it, which is none of our business. But God will, unless we're praying for something that we specifically got scripture, in verse 4, we need to pray, "God if it's your will". Something I've learned to pray is, "If what I'm asking you for isn't your will, please don't give it to me".
Erin Cluley: Yeah.
Ginger Stache: That's the last thing we want.
Joyce Meyer: Because there's nothing worse than to have something that you manage to finagle on your own. God told me one time, he said, "I want you to remember that what you start in the flesh, you'll have to maintain in the flesh".
Erin Cluley: That's really good. I was gonna actually ask you about what you just said. Because growing up in the charismatic church, a lot of what we were taught was you expect God to come through, which we do. But you expect that he's going to do this specific thing for you, and you expect him to heal, or all sorts of things. But as I've grown, and even being married to mike, because he sees it differently, he's always said, "I'm gonna ask God for what his will is and then just trust that". And it sounds like semantics, but there's like a heart thing to it too. Like, am I not trusting God enough for those big things if I'm just saying, "Whatever you want, God, it's up to you"? Is that not asking with faith?
Joyce Meyer: Well, what I believe, with all my heart, that if God is first in your life and you want his will more than you want anything else, and I might just add, if you don't have a bad attitude when you don't get "The thing."..
Ginger Stache: That's a key.
Erin Cluley: Good point there, huh?
Ginger Stache: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: That you want. I mean, that shows a lot about where your heart's at.
Erin Cluley: Sure.
Joyce Meyer: You know, if I ask for a promotion at work and somebody else gets it, that I don't think should have it, you know, "What kind of an attitude am I gonna have? How am I gonna treat them? How am I gonna feel about them? How am I gonna talk about them behind their back"? Or can I be mature enough to trust God's providence and say, even though, "I don't feel like they deserve it, God, I wanna have a good attitude". And you know, many times God will test you and check you out.
Ginger Stache: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: And so...
Ginger Stache: That's a hard one.
Joyce Meyer: We wanna encourage people in this new year to pray for big things and bold things, but you also need to be honest about your level of spiritual maturity, and are you ready to handle that thing that you're asking for? You know, God put this on my heart, one time, he said, "There's two tests concerning money. How you act when you don't have any, and how you act when you've got a lot".
Ginger Stache: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: How many people when they don't have any money say, "If I had a million dollars, I'd do this, I'd do that, that and somethin' else"? And then if they got that million, they wouldn't do any of it. Because money actually can be dangerous if you're not spiritually mature.
Erin Cluley: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: And so, a big lesson that I learned in my life is, I felt like, one time, God told me, "Study and look at how Jesus prayed," he didn't go around asking for stuff all the time, you know. "And study the prayers of Paul". And so, Paul never prayed, one time, for the Christians to get rid of their problems. He prayed that they would endure them with good temper, that they would have a good attitude while they had them. And he prayed for spiritual things like, "I pray that the eyes of your heart would be flooded with light so you can know and understand the hope to which he has called you and how rich is his glorious inheritance in the saints. And so, you can know and understand what is the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of his power". See, God wants us to know how great his power is in us and what we can do. I mean, you can handle anything that comes into your life, and you can do it with peace and contentment if you understand how great the power is. So, instead of praying for all of our problems to go away, wouldn't it be a greater prayer to pray that I would be able to handle whatever comes with good temper? I remember one time I was doing...
Ginger Stache: That's hard. That's really hard.
Erin Cluley: That feels way scarier to say. I would rather ask that he just take it away.
Ginger Stache: Yeah, I'd like it to go.
Erin Cluley: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: I was doing a meeting one night and we'd advertised it. And it was pouring down rain. I mean pouring. And I started praying that God "Please stop the rain, please stop the rain," because I thought it would keep people from coming. And he said, "What would be a bigger miracle for me to stop the rain or to fill the house while it's raining"?
Erin Cluley: Oh, that's good.
Ginger Stache: Yeah.
Erin Cluley: That's really good.
Joyce Meyer: And sure enough, the house was full that night, and it was pouring down rain. And so, you know, a lot of times we just, we ask for things to be, that we don't like to be moved out of the way without realizing that God is great enough...
Ginger Stache: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: You know, to handle them.
Ginger Stache: I have an example of praying a big prayer: and I was young enough not to know what I was doin'. You know what I mean? You get older and you start to think, "Well, maybe God will work this way". But when you're young, you've just got big faith. "God can do anything". And I wanna hold onto that, that childlike faith. But anyway, so I was working at a television station there. And we had a problem, and the transmitter went down. So, we were live on television, transmitter went down. So, we were dead in the water. And I said, "Well, we just need to pray". 'cause they were working on it, they weren't having any luck: they didn't know what to do. And I said, "We just need to pray that God will bring that back up". And they had stopped working on it 'cause they tried everything they knew to do. And my boss, at the time, the station manager said, "Well, there's no point in praying because nobody's working on it right now. So", and I said, "Well, can't God do it even if no people have their hands on it"? And he looked at me and he's like, "Yeah, you're absolutely right". But that's how we get. You know, we always think about how God could work in our physical world. And we prayed, and honestly, that transmitter came back up, out of nowhere. And so, there's kind of that boldness of God can do it if we let him.
Erin Cluley: And even thinking to even ask.
Ginger Stache: Yeah. And having that faith that he can do anything, but not always, 'cause this is more where I am now, this is how it should work, 'cause this is what I've normally seen happen. So, there's that boldness that we need to somehow stick with.
Joyce Meyer: Well, that "Have not because you ask not," I mean, I still find myself, sometimes I'll be dealing with something for three weeks and then I'll think, "Good grief, I haven't even prayed about that".
Erin Cluley: That makes me feel better that you still do that, Joyce.
Joyce Meyer: I mean, how can we forget to pray when we know that that's the doorway into...
Erin Cluley: We know that's the answer.
Joyce Meyer: "You have not because you ask not". And you can ask for "Exceedingly, abundantly above and beyond," but I just wanna make sure that people realize that the spiritual needs to come before the physical. And I spent years and years, to be honest with you, and I'm ashamed to say it, but I spent years and years praying for stuff, for things, and for my ministry to grow, and for Dave to change, and you know, all these things that were gonna make me more comfortable. And I didn't have the spiritual maturity. I wasn't praying for that. And I think one of the things in the charismatic movement that was missed was getting what you wanted by faith was talked about a lot. But I remember God putting on my heart, one time, he said, "Well, now that I've taught you about faith, I'm gonna teach you what faith is really for".
Ginger Stache: Oh, that's big. We're gonna take a listen to a short clip from a teaching from Joyce saying that we really do all need to renew that boldness in our prayers take a look.
Joyce Meyer: In Ephesians 3:12, the apostle Paul said, "Because of our faith in him, we dare to have the boldness, the courage, and the confidence of free access (an unreserved approach to God with freedom and without fear)". Now here's Paul who says, "I'm the chief of all sinners". But yet he's also saying, "In Christ, because of knowing who we are in him, we can have boldness and access to the throne of God to go boldly before the throne and ask God for radical things in our life that we don't deserve and probably shouldn't have but we can ask him because he's good". Maybe some of you are not asking for enough. I'll tell them: you didn't like it. Maybe some of you are not asking for enough. You know, several years ago I got this urge one day and I believe we get Holy Ghost urges, amen? Don't push those down. If it's a fleshly urge, push it down, but if it's a Holy Ghost urge, let it come up. Let it come out. And as I was praying one day, I got this urge to pray that God would let me teach the word to every human being on the planet. Now, just hang on. My mind said, "That is crazy. Nobody can do that". And then the devil said, "And who do you think you are"? The enemy does not want you to pray bold prayers. You ought to pray something so big that you're not even sure God can answer it. And I guess that's kind of the way I felt about that that day. God, I wanna teach the word to every person on the planet. Well, we're not gettin' 'em all yet but there's a whole bunch. I don't know how in the world God does it. This is what I do. And he gives us all these wonderful people that make all this other stuff happen and all these wonderful ministry partners around the world. Even, like, other ministries who partner with us in getting these translations and making these things happen. It's important for people to hear the gospel of Christ in their own language. Even if English is a second language for them, they need it in their own language because they can relax and receive it that way. So we're on television across the Middle East, Africa, India, asia, Mongolia. I mean, places that I wouldn't even know how to get to. And the word works in people's lives no matter what language they speak or what culture that they're from. Everybody needs Jesus. So through the internet, through satellites, through television, through radio, through printed material, through books, the gospel is available to pretty much the whole entire planet now and I'm not foolish enough to think that they're all watching me every day. I'm not that full of myself but I would, let me tell you one thing. I would rather pray big prayers and get part of it than to pray little prayers and get all of it. C'mon. So I'm challenging you to know you don't deserve it. That's the first qualification to go boldly before God. You know you don't deserve it. "I don't deserve what I'm getting ready to ask you. I don't deserve it and I'm not coming in my name, I'm coming in Jesus' name, and I know that I've done a lot of things wrong but you said that you forgive me and you forget them so I'm not even gonna bother talking to you about my past". C'mon, stop talking to God about something he forgot about a long time ago. You don't need to be talking to God about your past. You need to talk about your future. How we begin in life is not nearly as important as how we finish. And I had a lousy start but I'm determined to have a good finish. How about you? Yes.
Ginger Stache: You said so many...
Joyce Meyer: Amen!
Ginger Stache: So many important things in that, that you'd rather get part of what you pray for and pray big prayers than pray little things and get all of it. That is huge. And knowing that it's not about deserving it, none of us do. I mean, so many key points in that.
Joyce Meyer: But you notice in that prayer, not that you can't do that in things you want and need too, but I asked for something that would increase the Kingdom of God.
Erin Cluley: Mm-hmm, it wasn't what you wanted for yourself.
Joyce Meyer: I just really felt as I was pondering, getting ready for this, you know, like another thing that people need to pray bold prayers about is that they will have the money to help other people, not just have it for yourself.
Erin Cluley: Mm-hmm, yep.
Joyce Meyer: You know, like in James, it says, if you ask and you don't get, it's because sometimes you pray with selfish motives: you intend to use what you get on yourself. And so, really for all intent and purposes, the more we can forget about ourselves and do for other people, the more God will do for us.
Erin Cluley: I just had this conversation with Caden. So, he's eight. And there's this girl in his class, and he's struggling with her. She's having a hard time, and so she doesn't listen. She talks a lot. She never has her stuff. It makes him very mad because he is prepared.
Ginger Stache: It upsets the eight-year-old. I love that.
Erin Cluley: The eight-year-old is so upset. He was very upset about this last night. "Mom, she doesn't ever bring her stuff. She reads out loud: she's supposed to be quiet". So, it's a really big deal to an eight-year-old. And so, mike and I were talking to him, and we said, "You know, buddy, you don't know what's happening at home. You don't know what she's going through. There's probably other stuff that we'll never know. So, let's pray about it, and let's ask God". And he said, "You want me to pray for her? Mom, I can't do that. I can't do that. That's too hard". I said, "I know it's gonna be so hard. But we're gonna pray for her. And we're not gonna just pray that she brings her stuff, we're gonna pray that God is with her in whatever she's going through in her house. And that God is with her at home, and whatever else is going on that we can't see". And he said, "Well, that could take forever".
Ginger Stache: "I don't have time for that".
Erin Cluley: No, he came back the next day and he said, "Well, God hasn't done it yet," and I said, "You know what buddy? We're just gonna keep asking and praying that God is with her". And that lesson to me, in teaching him, was the same that you're saying to us, "We need to focus more on how God can work in her life, and not how he can fix her because it's impacting me".
Joyce Meyer: Right.
Ginger Stache: Yeah.
Erin Cluley: And I think that, it's easy for me to tell Caden that: it's not as easy for me to accept that for myself but that's a big flip to notice this.
Joyce Meyer: Like, even when women, I'll use women: it could be men, pray for their lost husband's to be saved, one time, God put on my heart, "Are they praying for him to be saved so they'll be more comfortable? Or are they really concerned about his soul"? I mean, you know, motives...
Erin Cluley: Yeah, it's huge.
Joyce Meyer: Boy, if you wanna get a quiet crowd, you just start talking about motives, because I wonder how many of us really know the motive behind what we're doing.
Ginger Stache: Oh, it's painful when you really start praying about it and looking at it. I mean, even the nice things that we do for other people, we can have the wrong motives, so that they think we're nice or so that we get some sort of credit. I mean, really exploring our motives is so important and it can hurt, it's ouchy.
Joyce Meyer: When I look back at some of the things that I prayed for when I first learned about faith, I am so ashamed of the stuff...
Erin Cluley: Of what you were asking for?
Joyce Meyer: That I asked for. But God did say, "Now that I've taught you what faith is, I'm gonna show you what it's really for". And it's, you know, "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give me the grace to be able to forgive that person who hurt me". We need to pay more attention to the spiritual. Here's just, I love this part of Paul's prayer in Ephesians. "May he grant you out of the rich treasury of his glory to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man". You know, because see, if you're strong enough, the strong spirit of a man sustains him in bodily pain and trouble. It's amazing what a human being can endure and go through in their life, and still really bear good fruit for the kingdom if they're strong enough inwardly. Need to think more about our spiritual life and our inward life. And then, this scripture that we're talking about, I think about this a lot, that "God is able to do exceedingly abundantly", that was part of Paul's prayer. "Above and beyond all that you can ever dare to hope, ask, or think". But the part we leave out "Is according to the power that worketh in you".
Ginger Stache: That is a key phrase, isn't it?
Erin Cluley: It's gotta be working in us.
Ginger Stache: Yeah.
Joyce Meyer: But you see what he's really saying there is, "God will do great things, but he'll do them through you".
Ginger Stache: Wow. You think of how some of the things that we pray that we take for granted really are miraculous, big prayers. Just something as simple as, "God, forgive me". I mean, what kind of power that took, all that God went through to send Jesus, to be on the cross, to die, to take our sin, to be resurrected. And it's so hard for us sometimes to accept that forgiveness. And I think that's part of it too. It's like, we don't feel worthy, we feel guilty. And it's not about our feelings anymore. It's about God is so big that he already has taken care of it.