Joyce Meyer - Why Should I Help Others? (08/20/2019)
Faith without works is dead—James 2 shows that true faith produces action, obedience, and care for others, not just hearing or profession. We're saved by grace through faith alone, but blessings, joy, fruitfulness, and eternal rewards come from doing: dying to self daily, being generous, helping the needy, and living to glorify God rather than seeking personal comfort here while preparing for forever there.
Faith Without Works Is Dead
Faith without works is dead. James 2:14, "What is the use of the prophet, my brethren, for anyone to profess to have faith, if he has no good works to show for it? Can such faith save his soul"?
Now, he's not talking about his spirit, he's talking about his soul. Your soul is different than your spirit. When Jesus comes to live in you, he comes to live in your spirit. It's our soul that needs a work done in it.
If a brother or sister is poorly clad and lacks food for each day, and you say to him, goodbye, stay warm, and well-fed, it kind of comes down to this, I'll pray for you. That's our out of everything that we don't want to do. I'll pray for you.
And I'm not saying that prayer is not important, but I already said last night, let's stop praying about things and asking God to do things that we could easily do ourselves and just don't want to.
Oh, I'm having so much fun. And it's only Friday morning. You know why I have fun? Because I know what this can do for our lives. I've got this thing burning in me. I want to see people have the life that Jesus died to give them.
That's what I want more than anything. And we have lots of people born again in our meetings, and I'm grateful for that. But to tell you the truth, I don't want to see people just born again and then stay miserable.
I want to see people learn how to live the way Jesus wants them to live so they can have what he wants them to have. And that is peace and joy and righteousness and power and a great life where we bear good fruit for other people.
That's why I get excited. I'll pray for you. No, God. I'm going to pray for them, but if there's something that I can do to help, show me.
See, you know, I don't expect to get a whole room full of claps. I'll tell you why. Because we're afraid God just might show us something. I might lose my bracelet. I might have to apologize. Come on.
Daily Dying to Self for Maturity
All right, I'm going to tell you something that I read yesterday morning, and I thought this was good. So we'll... I'll just see what you think about it.
This guy was basically talking about spiritual maturity and how we need to grow up, and it takes sacrifice daily to be able to do that. Paul said, I die daily.
And what he meant by that was every single day he had to say no to himself and yes to God. And every time we say no to self and yes to God, there's a little bit of what the Bible calls dying to the flesh.
All right? I'd love to write a book called Dying to Self and just see if I could sell even two copies.
So, he said, we all admire the martyrs of the past, people who have been killed rather than deny Christ. And I mean, who wouldn't? You know, you read books like, you know, Jesus Freaks or Foxes Martyrs, and you're like...
Some of us get nervous praying in a restaurant, so instead of praying, we act like we've got a headache. And then if we're out in public and we start to talk about God, we get quiet.
Like, the sinners are screaming and we're getting quiet, you know? And so we read these stories about the martyrs and people who were eaten by lions and sawn in half and, you know, went before the firing squad and were just like...
And they deserve honor and nobody's trying to say that they don't. But he just had a point that I thought was interesting.
He said, I know people personally, that if they were put to the test, would go before a firing squad before they would deny Christ. And I imagine there's a lot of people like that here in this room.
I think I would do that. Nobody knows what you'd do, I guess. You come right down to it. But I pray that if I'm ever put in that position, that I have the courage to be who God wants me to be.
He said, but those same Christians that would stand before a firing squad rather than deny Christ, if you talk to their families about how they are on a daily basis at home behind closed doors, that's where we need to die.
Because to be honest, I mean, a firing squad would be quick and done. You're going to do this thing God's way, it's a daily, all day long, day after day, after day, after year, after year. Come on, give God a praise.
Faith Backed by Obedience and Works
Verse 17, So faith, if it does not have works, deeds, and actions of obedience to back it up, by itself is destitute of power.
And we see this all the time. There are millions of people who go to church weekly and then do absolutely nothing to help anybody else. And I was one of them for a long time.
And I thought I was so spiritual. Go to church and then go out with my friends after church and gossip about the pastor. I had not learned one thing about bridling my tongue yet. Come on, you know exactly what I'm talking about.
And don't you leave here today and talk about me in a bad way. In verse 18, he said, But somebody will say to you, Well, now you, you say you have faith, but I have good works.
Now you show me your alleged faith apart from any good works if you can. And I, by my good works of obedience, will show you my faith.
Now, and this is a good one. You believe that God is one? That's good. Demons believe that. Wow.
Okay then. Are you willing to be shown proof, verse 20, you foolish, unproductive, spiritually deficient fellow, that faith apart from good works is inactive, ineffective, and worthless?
Let me say again, we are not justified before God by our works. I mean, Ephesians 2, 8, and 9 says, We are saved by grace, not by works.
Our salvation is not based on what anybody can possibly do. Nobody can take credit for their salvation. It's totally by the grace and the work of God. And we receive that by faith.
Our Job as Christians: Bear Fruit and Help Others
But we've got to care about somebody other than ourselves. I may be okay, and I may be on my way to heaven. But as a Christian, we all have a job.
And I'm not talking about your office job or your factory job. We all have a job. We all have a ministry, and a ministry doesn't have to be up here to be a ministry.
I have a ministry besides this one, if you want to know the truth. And I take part in it every single day of my life, everywhere that I go.
Because we are just fooling ourselves if we think we can get up in front of people and put on a show, or pretend on Sunday morning to be something special. But then behind closed doors and in our daily life, we're acting like the rest of the world.
I'm blowing the trumpet in Zion. Amen. Jesus is coming soon. And we all have a job to do.
People say, well, I don't know what my purpose is. You have a job to do. Get out in the world and act like a Christian. Behave like a Christian. Show the fruit of being a Christian.
When is the last time you did something for somebody else? And some of you are awesome. You know, I'm not just preaching to you. We got millions of people watching by television in many different parts of the world.
But there are people in here that you watch me every day. And it's maybe been a long time since you did anything for anybody else. I mean, just maybe one or two. I don't... Probably not many, though. I'm sure.
You know, the best way to fight greed and selfishness is to be aggressive in generosity. And I can tell you something. The more we have, the more tempted we are to just live our own little comfortable life and stop reaching out to other people in need.
And it seems like it should be the opposite way. But it's not. I'll tell you something. He talks in here, and I didn't read the scriptures, about how those of you that are rich and all you have is your wealth, you need to not be all excited about what you have because you could lose that in a second.
So if that's all you have and you don't have any faith, then you're actually a poor person. But people that are poor in natural things and they have a faith rich in God, they're actually wealthier than the person who has a lot of money.
Living for Eternal Reward, Not Temporary Comfort
And I'll tell you something that I've learned, and we know in our Western culture, we have so many blessings that sometimes we just don't. I mean, I think in the process, sometimes we forget how to treat people.
Now, I can be justified before God and go to heaven. And I can really believe in God and I can... If you want to know the absolute truth, I can probably mistreat people while I'm here. And I can still end up going to heaven.
But I'll tell you what I won't have. I won't be happy. I won't bear any good fruit. I won't take anybody to heaven with me. I might keep a few people out. Come on, are you out there?
And I'll tell you what else I won't have. I won't have any rewards waiting for me when I get there. And the Bible teaches us that there is going to be rewards waiting for us based on how we've lived our lives and what we have done while we're here in the body.
And I personally am big on rewards. I mean, this trip that we make through here, let's even say we've got 100 years, I mean, it's bad enough.
But when I get to heaven, I don't want to spend eternity without the best life that I can possibly have because I didn't do here what I was supposed to do.
I've been saying this, and I think it's a good statement. I think we need to spend here getting ready for there.
And so maybe we spend too much time thinking about our instantaneous comfort and not enough time thinking, it doesn't really matter if I'm comfortable here or not. I've got forever to live, and I want to make sure that I'm living now in such a way that when I stand before the Lord, I've got a full reward coming because I've been faithful while I've been here. Come on.