Joyce Meyer - Where Can I Find Hope? (08/20/2019)
This message contrasts a lifelong pessimist with an optimist through a funny twin story, sharing how the preacher overcame deep negativity from past hurts by choosing hope in Christ. Hope is a deliberate positive attitude that refuses negativity, expects good from God daily, and brings joy, peace, and strength—declaring that something good is coming, breaking off depression, and living expectantly as a "prisoner of hope" until victory arrives.
The Story of the Optimist and the Pessimist
I'm going to start with a little story that I think is cute. There were two identical twins. And they were alike in every way but one. One was a hope-filled optimist who only saw the bright side of life in every situation. The other was a very dark-minded pessimist who only saw the downside in everything.
The parents became worried about the extremes in the children of optimism and pessimism. And so they took them to the doctor. And the doctor suggested a plan. On their next birthday, give the pessimist a shiny new bike, but give the optimist only a pile of manure.
It seemed a fairly extreme thing to do. After all, the parents had always treated their boys equally. But in this instance, they decided that they would try the doctor's advice.
So when the twins' birthday came around, the parents gave the pessimist the most expensive, top-of-the-range racing bike a child had ever owned. And when he saw the bike, his first words were, I'll probably crash and break my leg.
To the optimist, they gave a carefully wrapped box of manure. He opened it, looked puzzled for a moment, then ran outside screaming, You can't fool me! Where there's this much manure, there's got to be a pony!
From a Lifetime of Negativity to New Hope
Now, let me just share with you that I was, for a large part of my life, an extremely negative person. I saw what was wrong with everything. And I had been hurt a lot in my life. I'd had lots and lots of disappointments, and really, to be honest, when I married Dave at the age of 23, I could not remember ever being really happy.
And that's sad when somebody grows up that way, because sometimes the way you get started is the way you stay, if you don't let Christ interrupt the mess in your life, and give you a brand new beginning.
I believe that people that have had a tough time in life very often are afraid to expect anything good because they don't want to be disappointed. The pain of disappointment has been so prevalent in their lives that they just think, well, I'm not going to expect any good thing to happen because it's probably not going to anyway.
And I want to tell you, if that's you, today you need to make a change. You need to make a change. It's amazing how good life can get if you'll just refuse to stop hoping.
Hope Brings Real Joy and Energy
And I can tell you, if you hoped for something good your whole life and never got it, you'd still be better off than if you hoped for nothing and got it. Because when you're full of hope, you're happy. You're happy.
And the devil doesn't want us happy. The thief comes only to kill, steal, and destroy. He loves to steal our joy. But Jesus said, I came that you might have and enjoy your life and have it in abundance to the full until it overflows.
Many of the attacks of the enemy against us are not after him getting our stuff or keeping us from getting this promotion or whatever. He's after our joy. Because joy is energy. Joy is energy.
The Bible says the joy of the Lord is our strength. But I want to put it a different way. Joy is energy. I actually feel physical energy flowing into my body when I have a good attitude. And I feel everything draining down when I have a bad attitude.
Now let me tell you something. Your attitude is yours. And nobody can make you have a good one if you don't want to. And nobody can make you have a bad one if you don't want to.
Choosing Your Attitude on Purpose
I'm going to say that again. Your attitude is yours. Nobody can make you have a good one if you don't want to. There's not enough good stuff that can happen to a negative person to keep them happy.
And nobody can make you have a bad attitude if you don't want to. We think because circumstances have been bad in our life that we have to have a bad attitude, that we're just obligated to have a bad attitude.
I mean, that's the natural way of thinking. But you don't have to do that as a believer in Christ. Because He gives you something on the inside that is greater than anything that's on the outside. Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world.
And the Bible teaches us that right in the midst of all kinds of tribulations, we are to cheer up and to do it on purpose. Amen?
I know some of you have probably had a really difficult year. Maybe some of you have had a difficult five years. Maybe some of you have had a difficult life. But I want to tell you that you cannot assist the devil in destroying your life by getting down and discouraged and negative-minded and becoming a pessimist and refusing to believe that anything good is going to happen.
We get what we believe for. Be it unto you, even as you believe. I say this all the time. I'd rather believe for a lot and get half of it than to believe for nothing and get all of it.
Hope Is a Choice You Make Daily
Hope is very simply a positive attitude and mindset. The hopeful person absolutely refuses to be negative in any way. Although they recognize and deal with their problems, they remain hopeful in thought, attitude, and conversation all the way through to victory.
They remain hopeful in thought, attitude, and conversation. And conversation. And conversation. All the way through to victory.
Anybody can decide to be hopeful. If I can't get that across from you today, that I'm pretty much wasting my time. Because if we're going to let our feelings and our circumstances determine whether our hope is up or down, then the enemy's in control.
We've just turned over the keys to our life and said, here, do what you want to. But every person that's hearing my voice right now, whether it's on TV or some other recorded device, that you're watching on social media, you're here in the room, you're listening by radio, well, you can decide today to be full of hope.
And why would anybody want to decide anything else? If you can make yourself happy, why would you not choose to do it?
Your thoughts, your attitudes, your words belong to you. And you do not have to wait for some special feeling to be hopeful. We make decisions and feelings catch up with our decisions. We make decisions and feelings catch up with our decisions.
We don't wait to see how we feel, then make a decision.
The God of Hope Fills You with Joy
I love Romans 15:13. It says, may the God of hope fill you. The God of hope. He is the God of hope. He is not the God of hopelessness. He is the God of hope.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing. And believing really is a positive expectation. It's looking at the promises of God and saying, this is for me. And I believe that God is going to do this in my life.
Come on, fight for yourself. Don't be passive and just sit around and wish that something good would happen to you. Or even worse, sit around and be jealous of everybody else that's got a nice life. Well, I don't know why nothing good ever happened to me. Well, I do. It's the attitude.
You say, thank you, God, that you've blessed them. And by the way, I'm in that line, too. God is the author of hope. There would be no such thing as hope without God.
If you've had a little hope, I want you to have a lot of hope. If you've had a lot of hope, I want you to have radical hope.
Doubt and negativity steal hope. They block it. But when you feel hopeless or down in any way, you just need a resurrection of belief and a positive attitude.
Something good is going to happen to me. Something good is going to happen through me.
I don't care if you have to take one solid hour and march around your house and say over and over, something good is going to happen to me. God is good and something good is going to happen to me. If God can bless anybody, God can bless me. Something good is going to happen to me. Amen.
Breaking Off Negativity and Embracing Hope
I sense an anointing in here. Depression still being broken off of people. Negativity being broken off say goodbye to those bad attitudes. It's a new day.
Well, you know, Joyce, I just woke up this morning and I felt down. Yeah, well, I didn't feel too perky myself. Something good is going to happen to me today.
Although we cannot prevent negative feelings from showing up, we can drive them away through right attitudes, conversations, and actions.
All this down, discouraged, depressed, despondent, despair, all that stuff is from the enemy. And that's not the way that God wants us to live. That's not the destiny that Jesus purchased for us with His blood.
Hope deferred. Not having hope is what gets all that started in our lives. It makes the heart sick. The heart becomes sick.
So I'm declaring today that if you will be a prisoner of hope, if you will expect something good to happen to you every day, I can't tell you exactly what day it will show up, but I can tell you that you'll be happier every day while you're waiting than you would be if you waited with fear and worry and anxiety and frustration and works of the flesh and all kinds of misery and hating your life.
I'm expecting God to do great things. I'm expecting God to do great things.
You know, I get tired when I do these conferences. I wake up tired by the time Saturday morning rolls around and, you know, I always trust God to reward me in some way for my hard work. And so I'm kind of curious to see what God's going to do. I'm expecting God to do something today and every day. Amen.