Joyce Meyer - You Can't Play in the Mud and Not Get Dirty - Part 1

The title of my message tonight is, "You Can't Play With Mud and Not Get Dirty". I like that, "You cannot play with mud and not get dirty". I think today, our moral standards have slipped. Sometimes to the point where we have certain things that we do that I call "Acceptable sins," we think that they're okay, but they're not okay with God. Now we need to get back to holiness. We need to get back to a reverential fear of God. A lot of what's wrong in the world today is because people don't have any fear of God. Maybe we've taught a little bit too much on God as your friend and your buddy and not enough on the fact that he also means what he says.

And if we don't do what he tells us to do, we will suffer for it. And God has a wonderful life planned for every one of us, and it's not too late for you to have yours. But Jesus did say, "If you love me, you will obey me". And well, we should get excited when we hear messages about holiness and obedience and the reverential fear of God. And I mean, the kind of books that I bought when I first got serious in my walk with God, if I tried to write some, you think I could sell a book on pride? Nobody would buy that. And yet, pride is one of the biggest problems that we have, and yet, somehow we think "That's okay".

The main message of the Bible is "Love," and I wrote a book called, "The Love Revolution," and it was the worst selling book I've ever written. It was terrible, sold awful. Why? Because people don't think they need that. But you write a book on how to make a million dollars overnight and everybody's gonna run and get it. Even like books on the end times, just sell like crazy. 'Cause people are interested in that, but I'm trying to sell you books that'll help you get ready for the end times. Amen?

So, be smart, and buy things that are gonna help you grow and mature in God. Let's talk about some of these, what I call "Acceptable sins," although they're not acceptable. Things that we do regularly that God condemns. They become acceptable to us, but they're not acceptable to God. Let's just say like maybe, gossip. I'm gonna go slow. We don't think too much about that, and yet it causes problems in our life. How 'bout judging other people? How 'bout, unresolved anger? The Bible says that, "You shouldn't even go to bed angry". I always say, "If I get angry, I'd rather get angry in the morning so I've got all day to get over it, rather than to get angry close to bed time and only have a little bit of time to get over it".

What you go to bed with, you're gonna get up with. But how serious do we take Ephesians 4 that says, "Don't let the sun go down on your anger. Don't give the devil any such foothold in your life". Let me tell you something. Satan is on the prowl. In 1 Peter 5:8 it says, "He goes around like a lion". We know who the real lion is, but "He goes around like a lion, roaring in fierce hunger, seeking whom he may devour". Well, don't open the door for him and invite him in. When he comes knocking on your door, let him find no open place to come in. How about complaining? Hmm... you know, we pray for God to give us stuff and then when he gives it to us, we complain about having to take care of it.

You say, "Well, Joyce, complaining is not a sin". Well, actually it is, because 1 Thessalonians 5 says, "It is God's will that we be thankful in all things, in everything". And in 1 Corinthians 10, there's a great group of scriptures reminding us of the example of the Israelites when they murmured and complained until God finally got so tired of it that he let serpents into the camp and 23,000 of 'em died in one day. And in 1 Corinthians it says, "This is written here so we don't make the same mistake that they made". Just complaining. And you know, we tell God we trust him and then we find so many piddly things to complain about.

I watched a documentary last week about the early Christians, the first 300 years of the church. And then I watched another one about a certain man, his name was Richard Wurmbrand. You may have read his story and he suffered terribly during communism in Russia in prison because he would not stop preaching the gospel. And when I saw what these early Christians went through and how they refused to give up their faith, I thought, "We don't even have a clue what it means to suffer".

We think we're suffering if our air conditioning goes out for an hour. And you know, I think that being thankful is spiritual warfare. And to be honest, the more we think about what we don't have, the unhappier we get. And the more we think about what we do have, the more thankful we get. I woke up, one morning, a couple of months ago and I could just feel it comin', one of those moods. Can you ever feel 'em comin'? It's kind of like, "Uh-oh". Well, see, I've been around long enough now that I know that I have to do something about it because if I don't, the devil won't stop. And if I didn't take some kind of action, I was gonna have one lousy day of feeling sorry for myself and thinking about everything that I didn't have.

And so I started just thanking God for everything that I could think of to thank God for. And I could almost feel that mood just backing off and leaving me alone. And I ended up having a great day. Don't just be idle and passive when you start to feel that. Do something about it. How many of you are tired of wasting your days feeling like that? You don't have to feel like that. Gosh, I spent so much of my life in self-pity. Mark 7:21-23: "For from within, that is out of our hearts, out of the hearts of men, come base and wicked thoughts". Many times in the Bible, heart and mind are interchanged. So, he says, "From within, out of your heart, out of your mind, come wicked thoughts, sexual immorality, stealing, murder, adultery".

You say, "Well, I don't do those things". Well, he's talking about things we think about. "Coveting (a greedy desire to have more wealth), dangerous and destructive wickedness, deceit: unrestrained (indecent) conduct: an evil eye (envy), slander (evil speaking, malicious misrepresentation, abusiveness), pride which is a (sin of an uplifted heart against God and man), foolish thoughts. All these evil [purposes and desires] Come from within, and they make the man unclean and render him unhallowed", which means unholy.

So, I want you to think with me for a minute. We live two lives. We live a life that people see, and sometimes it's kind of a put on, fake life. You know, we can act one way, on Sunday, in church, in front of all of our Christian friends, and then act another totally different way on Monday. I say, "Sunday morning saints, Monday morning sinners". Amen? And what people see us do may impress them or it may depress them, depending on how we act, but God cares about our heart. He cares more about what's going on inside of us than he really does about what's going on outside of us.

I went to church for years before I ever had any idea that my mind had anything to do with my behavior. I had no idea that I could think my own thoughts and I could control my thoughts. And if I was thinking a wrong thought, I could cast it out and choose to think on something better. I just got a testimony, it's on my phone, which I didn't bring or I would have read it to you, from a girl whose psychiatrist gave her, "The battlefield of the mind". And she said, she was delivered from years of addiction and drug addiction and just all, I mean, all kinds of horrible stuff. She said, "After reading and rereading and rereading that book and learning that I could do my own thinking, my life has completely changed".

And I want you to think tonight about your mind and your thoughts. And I wanna remind you or if you don't know it at all, if you've never heard anything like this, that you can choose what you wanna think on. I wrote one book called "Power thoughts" and gave people 12 things to think a month on each one, because sometimes we have to think things over and over and over and over and over until they become part of us. And you can choose to think on good things. Sometimes the devil puts something in your mind that is a poisonous thought and you may think on it for a while before you even realize what you're doing.

But as soon as the Holy Spirit makes you aware that it's wrong, that's when you need to take some action to get rid of it. And how do you do that? By thinking something good, by thinking something right. Every time that you catch yourself thinking something bad about somebody you know, you need to say out loud, "I am going to believe the best. I'm going to believe the best". How many of you find that your mind just gives you trouble day in and day out? Well, it's the same way for everybody. Every day I have to still choose to control my thinking and every day probably at some point I'll catch my thoughts going off in a direction that is just plain stupid. I know enough of the word now that I know quickly how to get rid of 'em, but it took a long time.

The Bible says in Romans 12 that, "God has a good plan for our life". But if we ever want to experience that plan, not just hear somebody preach about it, not just read about it, but actually prove it out for ourselves that our "Mind has to be totally and completely renewed". And how does that happen? By learning this. And it doesn't happen overnight either. I've been studying the word for 45 years, so, now, obviously, I know a lot of it. So, it's easy for me to meditate on the word because I've put the time in to study it. That's why we tell you all the time, "Spend some time in the Word of God every day".

And it is so easy to do it today. You can read it, you can listen to it, you can watch it on your iPad, you can, I mean, it's just, watch it on your TV, it's just all over the place. I think the word is just covering the earth. I found out just like one of the things that I like to do is just, when I'm putting my makeup on, I bring my computer and open up to somebody preaching something that I'm going to learn something from that day. Occasionally, I even learn something from myself. I don't watch myself too much because I get kind of critical, like, "Oh, I can't believe I said that," "I can't believe I did it," "Oh..." but I recommend myself to you because I think that you can learn from me.

I teach a lot of practical things that can help you in your everyday life. Amen? I believe we should all have good, sound, solid doctrine, but you need to know how to live. You need to know how to get along with people. You need to know how to love yourself in a balanced way, not be against yourself. You need to know how to prioritize helping other people. Nothing makes you happier than helping other people. You cannot be selfish and happy at the same time: it just doesn't work. It makes me so happy to be able to do the outreaches that we do. I love being able to help these people. I've been to Ethiopia, and I've seen these kids that are just so unbelievably skinny, you just can't even hardly believe it.

And it may sound like a story to you, but they're actually there. I've been there and seen them. And I remember somebody asking me one time after I came back from a trip like that, "Why do you go out and do that, no matter how many people you feed, there's always going to be starving people"? I said, "I don't care if I only help one person in my whole lifetime. It's still worth doing". Let me ask you a question. If you were starving and somebody said, "I'll give you one meal, but that's all I can give you," or "You can just go ahead and starve, how many of you would opt for taking the one meal"?

Well, that's the way they are too. You know, don't look at things like they're so big. Nobody's asking you to fix the whole problem. Nobody's asking me to fix the whole problem. All God is asking each one of us to do is to do something. And if each one of us does something, then together we can all do something big. Amen? Many times we think that we can think something sinful, and as long as we don't do it, it's not a problem. Or maybe we don't even think that, but we don't even realize that thinking it is a problem.

And you know, in the Amplified Bible, it says that, "We sin in thought, word, and deed". You know what happens when you think about something and think about it and think about it, pretty soon it gets you stirred up emotionally, and then your emotions move you to do things that you ordinarily wouldn't do. How many of you have ever thought about something that somebody did to you until you got yourself all stirred up and got mad again all over? Yeah. Well, you do it long enough, you'll end up doing something that you'll regret later on. We can solve a lot of our problems by getting our mind straight.

Matthew 5:27-28: "You have heard that it was said, you shall not commit adultery. But I say unto you that everyone who so much as looks at a woman with evil desire for her has already committed adultery with her in his heart". Let's just make up a parable. That's what Jesus did. You're married to somebody who is not very affectionate. They grew up in a family where there was not a lot of affection shown, and so they love you, but they're just not a very affectionate, complimentary person, and it bugs you because you grew up in a family where you got a lot of that, and you need that and want that.

Well, in a situation like that, you have to look at the good things about that person and not just focus on that one thing that they're not giving you, because if you don't, you'll end up doing one or the other, I think, that has become an acceptable sin for Christians, and that's getting a divorce when you really don't have proper grounds to get one. There are times when a marriage has to come to an end. I got a divorce when I was 22 because my husband was cheating on me. But today, it's just, "Well, we're not compatible," or, "I think I married the wrong person". And, you know, we have to remember that those things bring a consequence. When we don't do what God tells us to do, they bring a consequence.

So, if you think about what's wrong with a person long enough, you'll get mad enough to wanna do something about it. So, let's just say that you work with a lot of different people, and there's a man there that starts to compliment you, pay attention to you, and it just feels good because you don't get that at home. And so, you find yourself starting to dress up a little bit more when you go to work and make sure your hair is fixed nice when you go to work. And then pretty soon he's bringing you coffee and donuts in the morning, and boy, you sure like that. And then before too long, he asks you to go to lunch.

Now, you know, if you're really smart, you'll realize in the beginning that the devil is setting you up for total destruction. The Bible says, "If your eye offends you, pluck it out, and if your hand offends you, cut it off". Well, now, he really doesn't want us to pull our eyes out and cut our hands off, but what he's saying is deal with sin radically. Don't play around with it, but deal with it. So, let's just say in our parable that this is a Christian woman, and she kind of knows she shouldn't be doing what she's doing, but she doesn't intend to go too far. She's just gonna play around in the mud for a little while and hope she doesn't get dirty, but it won't work because you can't play in the mud and not get dirty. Amen?

So, she's really being tempted now. He asked her to go to lunch. She goes to lunch. Then the next thing he asked her to go to dinner. Well, now she'd have to lie to her husband if she was gonna go to dinner with him in order to get out of the house. You see how these things progress? The devil starts a little bit at a time, little bit, little bit, little bit, and boy, it starts to feel so good. Now, if she's smart and she realizes she is not going to be able to resist the temptation, what she should do is quit that job and get as far away from it as she can get. Come on. I can make up good stories too, just like Jesus did. But that's the kind of thing that happens. It happens to men. It happens to women. And when you're not getting something at home that you need, instead of going somewhere else to find it, you need to pray that God will give it to you.

And God can change anybody's heart. And he can choose to encourage you through somebody that'll be good for you, not somebody that's gonna end up stealing your life. I would imagine that somebody listening to this message right now, maybe in this building, maybe somebody who watches it on TV, you may actually be in that parable that I just made up. You're actually in that situation, and God's trying to speak to you to turn around and go in another direction. See, sometimes, here's our mistake, we think that we're stronger than what we are. "Don't think more highly of yourself than you ought to". Remember, we have "The spirit's willing, but the flesh is weak". And if you go too far, you'll end up getting in trouble.