Joyce Meyer - When You Need A Miracle... Wiggle (08/20/2019)
When you need a miracle, wiggle—get up on the inside, obey God, and take responsibility instead of waiting passively for someone else to fix your life. The man at Bethesda's pool lay helpless for 38 years, blaming others for not helping him in, but Jesus simply said, "Get up, take your bed, and walk." Obedience, not excuses, unlocks miracles. Whosoevers who respond to God's ability with action receive restoration, healing, and victory—regardless of past pain or present limitations.
When You Need a Miracle, Wiggle
I am so excited about bringing you this message tonight. I've had this for probably six months and I want you to listen like you've never listened before, because I want to talk to you tonight about what to do when you need a miracle.
And actually the title of the message is, When You Need a Miracle, Wiggle. So we're all going to practice wiggling right now. Now, wiggling is not like walking. Wiggling is not like running. Wiggling is wiggling. So let's just practice. Come on, let's do it both ways.
Now, if you need a miracle, wiggle. Now we're going to get around to this pathetic man laying here. I tell you, Steve, you look worse than I thought you would. Thank you. You've really practiced looking pitiful.
This is the man that I preach about as often as I get an opportunity to out of John chapter 5 who lay by the pool for 38 years waiting for a miracle.
To me, it's one of the most amazing stories in the Bible. Thirty-eight years is a long time to lay in the same place and do nothing.
But first we're going to start in Ecclesiastes chapter 12, verse 13. Ecclesiastes was written by Solomon, who supposedly had more wisdom than anybody.
But somewhere along the line, he got a case of being very foolish and he did everything that anybody could possibly do to make themselves happy. And he said, it's all useless, it's all vanity, it's all basically chasing after the wind.
Then at the very end of the book of Ecclesiastes in chapter 12, verse 13, the next to the last verse, he said, All has been heard. The end of the matter is this, fear God, revere and worship Him knowing that He is, and keep His commandments.
For this is the whole of man, the full original purpose of His creation, the object of God's providence, the root of all character, the foundation of all happiness, and the adjustment to all inharmonious circumstances and conditions under the sun. The whole duty for every man.
Now I tell you, that's a long verse in the Amplified. I don't want to take the time to go over it and over it, but I want you to continue to look at this at home in an Amplified Bible.
And I want you to realize that God is saying that whatever problem you have, the way to fix it is to do what I tell you to. Whatever problem you have, the way to fix it is to simply, simply, quickly and simply do whatever God asked you to do.
Obedience Adjusts Everything
And I wish you were a little more excited about that than what you are, but I'll say it again. The way to fix any problem in your life, the adjustment to everything that's out of balance, the root of all character.
See, we develop Godly character when we do what we know is right, even when it hurts and we don't feel like it. When we do what we know is right, even when we're not getting an immediate right result.
We develop Godly character when we treat other people right who are not treating us right. Ooh, ooh, ouch, ouch, ouch.
We need to cooperate with the Holy Spirit to develop the character of God in our life. There's nothing more important than having Godly character.
And that always means that you choose to do what's right, no matter how you feel.
In order to enjoy restoration, which we're talking about this weekend, wholeness, healing, and renewed life, we must do more than just pray and wait for God or somebody else to do everything else.
We have to learn to be responsible or to respond to the ability that is in us. And I'm going to tell you an ability that you have. You have the ability to do anything that God asks you to do.
There is nothing that God will ask us to do that He won't give us the ability to do. Did you hear me? So there's no point saying it's too hard. There's no point saying I can't.
If you're going to say anything at all, tell the truth and just say, God, I just don't want to. And I'm just going to go around the mountain another dozen times and see if maybe I can wait long enough to get you to change your mind, which is not going to happen.
We have to learn to obey God.
Learn from the Ant
Proverbs 6:5 through 9. Deliver yourself as a roe or a gazelle from the hand of the hunter and as a bird from the hand of the fowler.
Go to the ant, you sluggard, you lazy person. Consider her ways and be wise, which having no chief overseer or ruler, provides her food in the summer and gathers her supplies in the harvest.
How long will you sleep, O sluggard? When will you arise out of your sleep?
Now, the reason why I like that scripture so much is because it tells us that the ant, the little tiny black or red ant that crawls around in the dirt all of its life, the little black ants, when it's harvest, they gather what they're going to need for the time when there's no harvest.
And it specifically mentions that they do it without an overseer. Now, this is the part I love. They do what they need to do and nobody has to make them do it.
The ant is smarter than a lot of people. That's a beautiful scripture.
When we can do what is right, when nobody is watching, and we do it just because it's right and because God said to, we are assured of victory in every area of our lives. Did you hear me? Did you hear me?
When you go home, you have a mission. And that is to live your life before God and God alone. Don't live to please people. Don't live to please yourself.
Find out what the Bible says and set your mind that with God's help, you are going to be obedient to everything that you find in the word and everything he puts in your heart as an individual.
And if you do that, you'll never have to be jealous of anybody else. You'll never have to want somebody else's victory because you'll have your own.
Well, Joyce, I go to church. I went to church for a lot of years before I ever got serious with God. And I loved God, not wholeheartedly, but I believed in Jesus.
I understood the grace of God and the forgiveness and the mercy of God. My goodness, I sat on the church board. My husband was an elder.
And I was so fleshly and carnal. I didn't put a premium on complete obedience. I did some things. There were some things that I did that were right, but I had no restoration in my life.
I still had the result of all the mess from my childhood. And I was kind of like this guy. Just laying around somewhere, waiting for a miracle, looking pitiful, and feeling sorry for myself.
Don't be deceived into thinking that you're a special case, unlike others, that your hands are tied by your past or present circumstances.
We all have some kind of problems. Admittedly, some people seem to have more than others. Some people have some very tragic things happen in their life.
But some people whose lives are in the worst messes don't have anywhere near the depth of problems that some other people do who have tremendous victory.
So what? What's going on? A lot of it's attitude. A lot of it is selfish, self-centeredness.
But it always comes back to the promises of God are for whosoever will. Not just whosoever will have the promise, but whosoever will do what God tells them to, and then the promise is assured.
If you want to know the truth, I don't think we hear enough teaching about obedience. I said, I don't think we hear enough teaching about obedience.
We hear a lot about the blessings. We hear a lot about getting what we want from God. We hear a lot about how to resist the devil.
But we need to hear about obedience. The promises in the Bible are for a certain group of people. And we're all in that group. It's a group called whosoevers.
And everybody in this room tonight is a whosoever.
Arise and Shine
Amazing scriptures. Whoever believes in Him shall be saved. Whoever calls upon His name shall be saved.
In Isaiah chapter 60, verse 1, we'd like to put that up and have you look at it with us. The Bible says, arise. And that word means get up and get moving. That's what it means. Get up, get moving.
Arise from the depression and the prostration in which circumstances have kept you. Rise to a new life. Shine and be radiant with the glory of the Lord. For your light has come, not will come, has come. And the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.
But in order for us to experience that in our lives, the first thing we have to do is get up. And I want to tell you something. If you never get up on the inside, you're never going to get up on the outside.
You've got to get up in your attitude and then your body will get up with you. Amen? Amen?
The Man at Bethesda's Pool
Now, John chapter 5, verses 1 through 8. And I'm not going to read them all. I'm going to start somewhere about in the middle of that. But I'll share with you what it says.
There was a man who lay by the pool of Bethesda waiting for a miracle because every year, once a year only, an angel came and stirred up the water that was in the pool.
So it was a pool kind of like this. We're going to pretend like we're in Bethesda. And by that pool, there would have been all kinds of people laying around all the time.
And once a year, an angel would come. And I don't know if the angel just put their finger in there and stirred around or what. But it created some kind of miracle water.
And whoever was the first one to fall into that pool or to get into the pool, while the angel, while the water was stirred up, would receive a miracle. And then I guess the water calmed down and that was in.
Only one person, once a year, could get a miracle.
Now, Jesus came. And there was a certain man, verse 5, who had suffered with a deep-seated and a lingering disorder for 38 years. A deep-seated and a lingering disorder for 38 years. It's this man right here.
And Jesus said a most amazing thing to this man. When Jesus noticed him lying there helpless, knowing that he'd already been a long time in that condition, he said to him, do you want to become well?
Well, what kind of a question is that? Do you want to get well? Sure. And then Jesus goes a little deeper. He says, are you really in earnest about getting well?
And then the most amazing thing, the invalid answered him and said, I don't have anybody to put me in the pool. Every time I try, somebody gets in front of me and they get their healing and not me.
So when Jesus said to him, do you really want to get well? He said, I have nobody to put me into the pool. He was waiting for somebody to do it for him.
You say, well, Joyce, give the guy a break. He was crippled. Well, I want to tell you something. In 38 years, I could have done a lot of wiggling.
I mean, in 38 years, if he only wiggled a little part of an inch every year. I mean, he had 365 days to wiggle. Just a little bit.
But the only thing he could say to Jesus was, there's nobody to put me in the pool. And when I try to get on, somebody gets ahead of me.
Now, Jesus didn't say, oh, you poor man. I cannot believe that you have been laying here 38 years and nobody has put you into the pool. That is really terrible. I know. It's really bad, isn't it? Yeah. Just really bad.
I'm glad you're starting to see things my way. He's getting this. He's actually got, I think, tears in his eyes.
Now, you know, Jesus being loving and kind, I would think that he would have just said, that is the most horrible thing I have ever heard. I am going to fix your problem tonight.
But here is what Jesus said to him. Verse 8, Jesus said to him, get up. And pick up your bed and walk. Go home with that mess you've made in the last 38 years. Get out of here and live your life. Get up.
And I tell you, I don't know how far you've come or what it cost you to get here. But that's God's word to a lot of you. Get up.
Quit laying somewhere, waiting for somebody else to come along and do it for you. Feeling sorry for yourself because everybody else always gets ahead of you. Nobody helps you.
You've got to get up on the inside. And the way you get up on the inside is you say, I don't care what happened to me in my past. Maybe I didn't have a good start, but I am going to have a good finish.
I am not going to live a miserable, retorned against me shall prosper. Every tongue that rises against me in judgment, I will show to be in the wrong.
I'm not going under because I'm going over. You've got to get a little fire in your belly and say, I'm a whosoever. And if anybody can be out of debt, I can be out of debt.
If anybody can drive a new car, I can drive a new car. If anybody can live in a nice house, I can live in a nice house. And if anybody can obey God, I can obey God.
We don't have to sit around and read books in our morning time with God about all the mystics who gave everything and served God. We can serve God with our whole heart.
We can seek Him. We can walk in His presence. We can know Him and the power of His resurrection. We can be world changers. We can be people who help people around the world. Every single one of us.
We can get ourselves off of our minds and have a life worth living.
He couldn't walk, but He could have wiggled. I don't care what you got wrong with you, you can wiggle.
I mean, I've thought about it. In 38 years, I would have made it over to the edge of that pool, and I would have been so close to the water that when the angel stuck their finger in there, I would have fell in and said, I'm drowning or I'm getting healed, but I'm not staying like this anymore.
Whoever... Jesus said, I myself am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me shall not perish but have everlasting life.
Whoever steps out on the Word of God shall never be disappointed and never fail. You got to step out sometimes.
We all reap what we sow in life, like it or not. We reap what we sow. And I'm not saying that all your problems are your fault. That's not what I mean.
But when you come into a time, and I come into a time where we begin to know God and we learn to do what's right, if you do what's right long enough, you will get a right result.
I said, if you do what's right long enough, you will get a right result. If you do what's right long enough, you will get a right result.
And that doesn't mean you won't have trials. That doesn't mean you won't have difficulties. That doesn't mean that people won't hurt you. That doesn't mean there won't be people to forgive.
That doesn't mean there won't be injustices and unfair times in life. The world is full of mean people.
But I'm here to tell you that every time you get hurt, the God who lives in you will heal you. Every time you get pushed down, the God who lives in you will lift you up.
Every time you get discouraged, that same God will encourage you. I tell you what, if you get up on the inside, how many of you know what I mean when I say get up on the inside?
If you get up on the inside, there ain't nobody keeping you down on the outside.
If we sow consistent obedience, we will change. Our lives will change for the good. If we sow disobedience, we're going to have every kind of misery.
But what is responsibility? It literally means to respond to the ability that's in you. It is respond-ability.
It means to be called upon to give an account of, to answer for, to be liable in case of fault, to answer for your conduct. And what do we do? We make excuses.
Well, why are you so grouchy? Well, I had a bad day at work. Well, why are you being so hard to get along with? Well, I don't feel good.
That's not being accountable. That's just making an excuse.
Why had he been laying there 38 years? Nobody had come along and put him in the pool. It wasn't his fault. It was that nobody else came along and did it for him.
Why hadn't he wiggled? Because he was too busy thinking about all the people that kept getting ahead of him and feeling sorry for himself because his life hadn't turned out the way he wanted it to.
This room is full of people probably whose lives haven't turned out the way you wanted it to. But that doesn't mean your life is over. That doesn't mean you can't have a great life.
It may not be what you thought it should be, but I've got news for you. God can make it something better.
Two Siblings, Two Outcomes
Now I want to tell you a story of two siblings. Myself and my brother David, we were both abused in two different ways. What happened to me was certainly way worse than what happened to him.
Mainly for him, he just had a pitifully pathetic example in my dad. My dad drank and he was mean and cussed all the time and told filthy jokes. And he was a mechanic and out in his garage he had all kinds of dirty pictures of women.
And so my brother grew up seeing all that kind of stuff. And my dad thought it was funny when my brother was 14, if he'd get drunk and do stupid stuff like that.
And he never went to a ball game, never went to a school function, never did anything. So we were both abused, but certainly the type of abuse that I had was very devastating.
However, he was 10 years younger than me. So at 57, his decomposed body in a warehouse, all alone. Nobody even missed him. He was dead 30 days before anybody even found him.
And then it was another transient street person that found him. And here I am at the age of 67, well 68 now, preaching the gospel to two-thirds of the world.
The promises of God are for whosoever. There was no reason for his life to turn out the way it did. It wasn't because there was nobody to help him.
It wasn't because everybody else always got ahead of him. It was simply because I wiggled and he didn't.
If you need a miracle, all you gotta do is wiggle. You shake that dirt off your back and you get up on top of it.
And you say, I'm walking out of this mess. If anybody can be blessed, I can be blessed because I'm a whosoever.
My brother was very irresponsible. We're gonna put up a couple of photos. I want you to see my brother.
This is him when he was about three years old. And that's him when he was 17 and went in the Marines.
Now, if you could just leave that picture there for a minute. I want you just to think about the possibility that was before him.
It's easy to see he was very good looking. He had a fantastic personality. Everybody loved him even though you wanted to wring his neck half the time.
You just couldn't keep from loving him. Some of you may remember him from the few years that he worked in our ministry.
At that age, and he had so much possibility in front of him. What happened?
Well, he went in the Marine Corps at the age of 17. And there his sergeant introduced him to drugs. They were in the jungles in Vietnam and very unpleasant and hard place to be.
And so he started taking drugs there. But he already had a lot of bad habits before he went just from the way that he was raised.
Our mother had a nervous breakdown when he was about 14. And she was not really present to take care of him. She was in the hospital for a long time.
And so my brother at the age of 14 was pretty much taking care of himself because my dad worked nights and he'd go off to work at night.
My mother was in the hospital so he could just run the streets and do whatever he wanted to.
And so he went in the Marines. And I know he went in the Marines at the age that he did to get away from all the stuff that was going on at home.
And when he came out, he was angry about all the injustices he'd seen. God only knows what goes on in a place like that and what it takes out of a person to live like that for that long.
He came home, came back to St. Louis. He got a job at a car manufacturing plant, got married, had a son.
And as responsibility mounted, he began to hide in drugs and alcohol. And blaming, blaming, blaming other people for all of his problems.
I beg you tonight, stop blaming other people for what does not go right in your life. Maybe you can't help what happened to you in the past, but you can help what you do about it now. Did you hear me?
And if you don't do what needs to be done, I can pretty much promise you that nobody is going to do it for you. People may try to help you, but there's a part that only you can do.
God will hold his hand out to help you, but God himself won't even do your part. He will give you the ability to do your part, but he won't do it for you. Amen?
When we become passive in our will, it is one of the most tragic things that can happen to us. God has given us free choice.
Constantly choosing right over wrong is what we're supposed to be doing. And the more we do that, the easier it is. The less you do it, the harder it is.
It's so easy to have a life that's just been a big mess and then just blame, blame, blame, blame. And lay by the pool and wait for a miracle and hope for the next well-known preacher that's going to come to town so you can get in the miracle service.
And I'm not saying that God doesn't help us. My goodness, he is a miracle-working God. He does great things. Prayer works. God anoints people to help us.
But how many of you know that I'm telling the truth when I say there is a part that only we can do? And if we don't do it.
But if you'll take these principles and you'll say, if God can do it for anybody, God can do it for me. If Joyce got miracles wiggling, then I'm gonna wiggle.
If the donkey got out of the pit wiggling, then I'm gonna wiggle. I'm a whosoever. A whosoever. And I'm gonna do what I can do.
It's not much. It was a little boy's lunch. Five smooth stones in a slingshot. But he killed a giant.
It was a rod in Moses' hand. A stick. But God filled it full of power. Moses kept saying, I can't, I can't, I can't.
And God said, what's in your hand? A stick, a rod. He said, throw it down. He filled it full of power.
God doesn't care what you don't have. What he wants you to realize is that with him, you can do anything.
No, it's not easy. But it's worth it. Every time you wiggle, you're making a little bit of progress.
Every time you forgive somebody that's mistreated you, you're making a little bit of progress. Every time you're the first one to say, I'm sorry, and make peace, you're making a little bit of progress.
Every time you keep your word when you don't feel like it, you're making a little bit of progress.
We don't, we don't get a pass on not doing what's right because it's hard. Well, my brother finally got divorced. He left town. Never paid child support.
When he worked, he worked for cash, so he wasn't in the Social Security system, otherwise the state who was supporting his child would have tracked him down and made him pay.
This is just one of the reasons why our country is in such a horrific mess. People don't take their responsibility, then the government has to keep people from starving, and then our taxes go up, and it's just an endless cycle.
And it all starts with people just not doing their part. And there are people who obviously need help. I don't mean that.
We help people right here in this city all the time and we will continue to do that. People need help. We need to help one another.
But even somebody that's in the most terrible condition in the world can be taught how to wiggle. Amen?
If you need a miracle, what do you need to do?
My Brother's Story
Alright, so my brother left town and he went to Arizona. And over about the next 15 years, I guess, he lived with one woman after another, never marrying any of them, never paying any child support.
Taking drugs, doing whatever he could do to get them. And then he called and got Dave on the phone one day and which we hardly never heard from him.
And he was sick and in a mess and had gotten the idea that he wanted to get his life straightened out. And he asked Dave if he could come home, if we would help him.
So, of course, Dave said yes. And we went to the airport and picked him up. And I was glad he was coming home because he's my only sibling and no matter what, you've always got a special place in your heart for family.
And so, for four years, he lived with us in our home. And when he came back, a lot of his teeth were missing and the ones that he had were rotten.
And so, we spent the money and we got all of his teeth fixed. And we took him to doctors and got him healthy and counseled him. And he got born again and filled with the Spirit.
And he was just, he would say things like, I love our life. I just love being part of the family. And so, he got in good enough shape that we could hire him at the ministry.
And, you know, a few of you might remember my brother David. He's just such a good looking guy. Let's put up the pictures of when David was working with us.
There he is next to Dave, worshiping God. That's me and him. He lived with us for four years.
Well, toward the end of that four years, I started really losing my grace to have him in the house and just be constantly having to take care of him.
And, you know, he went to work when I woke him up. He brought his laundry to the laundry room if I told him to. He cleaned up his mess at night if I told him to.
He did, he did what I would tell him to, but he wouldn't do anything without oversight. Come on now.
And, but he was getting to the point where I felt like he'd be okay on his own. And so, I talked to him and I said, we really feel like that God wants you to get out on your own and, you know, be a man, stand on your own two feet and we'll help you.
So obviously we had to sign for the apartment and we had to help him get the furniture. And in the process, we'd bought him a nice vehicle to drive and he had nice clothes.
We wanted, we wanted to treat him good. We wanted him to feel the love of God. We wanted God to use us to love him into wholeness.
But I can pretty much tell you that all that time, he didn't add to anybody's life. It was always take, take, take, take.
But I'll tell you one thing he said 20 times a day. I love you, sis. I can hear him saying that just as plain. I love you, sis.
And he did. Unless it was going to cost him something. Unless it began to hurt. Unless it required something out of him.
You know, just those words aren't enough. People have to put action to them.
And so sure enough, after he got in the apartment, it wasn't real long and he wasn't showing up for work on time and we'd call and he hadn't woken up.
It was always another excuse. And then he was having a girl there with him a lot of times and they weren't married and didn't take a Einstein to figure that out.
And so in the midst of that time, they'd also, because he'd gotten back in the social security system through working for us, they began to garnish his wages and he owed $60,000 in back child support.
Well, obviously that was devastating. He's like, well, you know, I'm trying to get my life straight now. Now I got to pay this $60,000. They're going to garnish you my wages.
I'll have to work for years and years and I won't ever have any money. So then he started blaming the woman saying the kid probably wasn't his to start with.
He was angry. He was mad. He was bitter. Well, he saw a lawyer and the lawyer was able to get the $60,000 reduced to $27,000.
I'm yet to figure out how you can bargain with those kind of things, but you can. So he got it reduced to $27,000 and he was still angry and mad and didn't want to do it.
And he didn't realize it, but Dave and I had already talked about it and we had prayed about it and decided that if he would just do it with a good attitude for about six months, then we were going to pay it off for him.
I wonder how many times God has somebody's deliverance already planned. But he's just watching them for a little while to see if they will wiggle.
What he should have said was, you know what, I deserve to pay this back. I didn't take care of my son for all those years. I was wrong. There's no excuse.
And he should have just manned up and did what he was supposed to do. You know what? If you've spent money like crazy for 30 years and you are deep in debt and God has been dealing with you and now you know the truth and it's time for you to just man up or woman up and get out of debt, you probably aren't going to be able to buy much for a long, long, long, long time.
And you need to keep a smile on your face the whole time. And you need to say, I lived riotously over here. Now I deserve to have to go through this and I'm going to learn a lesson.
I know, I know this is a little hard. Well, then we had to let him go from the ministry because of the way he was living. And so we sent him down to the Dream Center in St. Louis to go through the men's program down there and that turned out to be another nightmare because they couldn't keep him curtailed either.
So then he went to live with our elderly parents who I was already taken care of. So now I got two 80 year olds and this 47 year old guy that wouldn't work and wouldn't do anything.
And I'm like, God, can anybody do anything besides me? Anybody feel like that sometimes? Can anybody do anything besides me?
So after a while, he ended up leaving town again, going back to Arizona, didn't hear from him for another probably 10 years.
In the meantime, the girl that he was living with called me several times, giving me a rough time because I wasn't helping my brother.
And here I am, I'm this famous TV preacher and I'm helping all these people all over the world. And you should be, you should open a bank account for me and David and you should send money out here and put it in this account every month so I can take care of him because he's not able to take care of himself.
I said, no. And it was not easy to say. You know, I finally figured it out. If you've tried to help somebody for four years and they're not helped, then they just don't want to be helped.
And I'm going to tell you tonight that you are not doing yourself a favor or the person you're trying to help if you become a crutch for them.
Because all they'll do is drain every ounce of energy and life that you've got and then they'll go on to somebody else. Help everybody you can.
But even Jesus didn't go around saying, please, can I help you? Oh, please, can I help you? Oh, listen, would you please let me help you?
I noticed in the Bible that Jesus helped those who came to him. Come on. He helped those who came to him.
There's got to be a willingness on our part too. Yes, you cry out to God. God, come into every problem that I have. Help me. Do miracles in my life.
I'm going to show you what to do. Come on now, I'm telling the truth. He's going to show you what to do.
First thing might be, forgive all the people you hate. Well, I can't do that. They didn't treat me right. That's not fair.
Well, then just go ahead and go around and around the mountain.
So my brother finally called again. Well, the girlfriend called. She said, your brother's basically mentally ill now. He thinks he's got bugs crawling around in his body.
He's paranoid. He thinks people are out to get him. He really wants to get in a treatment program. Will you guys please help him?
I said, yes, if he'll get help, I'll help him. But I'm not just going to send him money.
So we sent one of our pastors out to Arizona to get him. And I want to show you what he looked like.
You saw the picture when he was worshiping God in these meetings. This is what he looked like 10 years later after the devil got done with him.
Now, when my brother died, they sent me his personal effects. By the way, we picked him up. We took him to the Dream Center in Los Angeles.
We didn't think it was wise to have him back in St. Louis. We took him to the Dream Center in Los Angeles. We're friends with the people out there.
And we partner with them. And they said, oh, yes, we'll work with him. We'll help him. And they pretty much already told me if he's willing to straighten out, he can live here.
We'll even give him a job here and really, you know, help him get his life back.
So he was there 30 days. He got off drugs, stopped smoking, got off of alcohol, got cleaned up. He knew how to do plumbing work.
So they put him to work doing plumbing work there in the center. And after 30 days, they were just getting ready to give him some spending money.
He was going to be able to have a little bit of free time. And after 30 days, he went to the, to the guy who leads the men's program there.
And he said, you know what? You guys are great. And I really appreciate everything you've done for me, but I'd like you just to take me over to the VA center and drop me off.
This is just not for me. Well, what is for you? Somebody do it for me. Somebody fix it for me. Somebody else make my life work.
Because I'm not even willing to wiggle.
Now, when they sent me my brother's personal effects, I didn't really understand the impact that that was going to have on me.
And I'm preaching this whole message tonight because many of you have a decision to make. And many of the multiplied, hopefully millions watching this program by TV, you have decisions to make in your life.
You can feel sorry for yourself for all the bad things that have happened. You can do that if you want to. It might even be understandable.
I remember having a little argument with God one time, and he told me to stop feeling sorry for myself. And I said, well, you know, I was treated like a dog growing up who wouldn't feel sorry for themselves.
And he said, you have a reason to, but no right to, because I'm willing to heal you.
So you may have a good reason to feel sorry for yourself, but you really have no right to, not if God is ready, when a holy God intervenes.
But God, but God will come and intervene in your mess, but you are going to have to wiggle.
I didn't know how it would affect me when they sent my brother's personal effects, but I got a deep message when they did because here they are.
This is what remains of my brother's life. My personal effects at this point are stored in a 218,000 square feet of space, almost a thousand teachings, 90 books, 14 offices around the world.
I'm not bragging. This is not what I'm trying to draw an analogy. We both basically came up in the same household, had the same blood in us.
I was treated worse than him. He died of his own choice in an abandoned building at the age of 57, looking like he was 75, when he could have been working with us, traveling around the world, being loved by millions of people.
He, God would have used him. He was a great guy. And this is what's left of him.
Now, I want to ask you tonight, when you go, what's going to be left of you?
I'm calling every person tonight to make a decision. What's going to be left of you?
Is this message coming across loud and clear? That's sad. I mean, that is so sad.
The potential, when you think about the 17-year-old boy that went in the Marines, the potential that he had. And this is it.
It's a dirty watch, a worn out pair of glasses, a package of business cards. He had his ID badge from when he worked at the ministry.
The few things in his life that he was proud of. That's what he had. Still carried his ID badge from the ministry and had been gone 10 years.
I'm sure there were times when he took that out and thought, I wish I would have. I wish I wouldn't have.
Don't end up at the end of your life with nothing but regret.
No matter what your condition is right now, you are a whosoever.