Joyce Meyer - Are You Emotionally Healthy? (08/20/2019)
Emotional health suffers when past wounds create roots of rejection, shame, or fear in the soul, leading to out-of-control emotions, bad behavior, and broken relationships. God wants to heal those deep roots through His unconditional love, helping us separate our identity from our actions, take responsibility for our happiness, and become rooted in the truth that we are loved, valued, and secure in Christ—no matter our performance or past hurts.
Are You Emotionally Healthy?
Today, now, we're going to talk about emotional health. Emotional health. Yes. Good. Two people are happy. That's alright. I'll preach to the two of you. Are you emotionally healthy?
Well, to be honest, there's a lot of people walking around that are not emotionally healthy. And sometimes our emotions are out of control. We're wounded in our soul from things that have happened to us in the past. And we get out in life, and we get into relationships, and we try to function, and things just don't work out.
Tempers out of control, self-pity, discouragement, depression, all these different things. When we have bad behavior that we can't control, when we have emotions that are out of control, there's always a root somewhere.
We hear people say a lot, well, we just need to get to the bottom of this. Have you ever had a problem with somebody repeatedly and over and over, and you've said that? We just need to get to the bottom of this.
Well, what you're really saying is, there's more to this than what's appearing on the surface. And we need to get down to what the real problem is here.
Getting to the Root of Relationship Struggles
I'll give you one example. For years and years in my marriage, I just felt like that Dave and I could not talk about anything and not argue. And so I would always say, which just infuriated him, we just can't talk about anything.
And finally, he said one day, you know, Joyce, we don't talk, you talk, and you want me to listen. Well, the Bible says that God will guide us into all truth. And that can sound so lovely.
But let me tell you something. It's not going to help you to know the truth about somebody else. He wants to reveal truth to you about you.
And we worry way too much about what other people are doing or are not doing. And we need to just open our own lives up to God and say, you deal with me, and I'll pray for everybody else, and you'll take care of that too.
Well, Dave and I would start to talk about something. And honestly, unless he agreed with me, the fight was on. And we would get into these big arguments, and I would get so confused.
I mean, I would think, I don't even know what we're talking about anymore. It was a simple thing. How did we get from there to here? And then I would yell, I can't talk to you. We can't talk about anything. Does anybody recognize that?
Taking Responsibility for Your Emotions
Okay, I'm about to help you. Free counseling. And all I asked for was a little offering. I'm not even going to send you a bill, you know.
And so, I did not know what my problem was. I mean, I just didn't get it. So, because I didn't know what my problem was, I blamed it all on him. And that's what we do a lot.
Instead of trying to get to the root of our own problems, we blame everything that doesn't go right on somebody else. I mean, even if you're unhappy, you're sure it's somebody else's fault. They should be making you happy.
And it was a big change for me when God told me, you need to take responsibility for your own happiness. Nobody else can keep you happy, and nobody can make you unhappy if you really don't want to be unhappy.
Well, see, we don't like taking personal responsibility. It's far too easy to just blame, blame, blame on everybody else.
So, I started praying about what the real problem was. And it didn't take God very long to show me. And that's the way he goes.
The Root of Rejection
And the essence of what the problem was, was I had a root of rejection in my soul from the way I was raised. And until that root was dealt with, the fruit in my life was never going to change.
So, when you are a rejection-based person, or you're afraid of rejection, if everybody doesn't agree with you, you feel rejected. And so, if Dave and I were trying to have a conversation, if he didn't agree with me, then I didn't know how to separate who I was from my opinion.
And so, I had to learn that just because he disagreed with my opinion didn't mean he was rejecting me. He could reject my opinion and still love me. And that was such a major thing to me.
So, maybe you need to think about that. If you can't seem to talk to people or a certain person without blowing up in anger all the time, then ask God to help you get to the root of it.
And maybe ask God, do I have... You know, how do I feel when somebody disagrees with me? Do I feel insulted? Do I feel like they think I'm stupid? Do I feel like they don't respect me? Do I feel like I'm being rejected?
And learn how to be a person in Christ who is loved and valued and separate that from what you think and what you do and all those other more exterior things.
Does anybody in the building think that maybe you're still dealing with a little root of rejection in your life? That was a lot of people, but you know, if you stick around, we'll have something for everybody.
Roots Produce Fruit
Roots. Where there's rotten fruit, there's a rotten root somewhere along the line. And sometimes you've got to go before the Lord and say, I don't care if you have to completely tear my life apart. I want to get to the bottom, to the root of why I'm angry, why I get so angry.
Why do I get mad every time I don't get my way? Why are my emotions out of control? Why do I waste so many days in self-pity? Amen?
Matthew 12:33 says that if the tree is rotten and diseased, then the fruit will be rotten and diseased. Either make the tree sound healthy and good and its fruit sound healthy and good, or make the tree rotten, diseased and bad and its fruit rotten, diseased and bad. For the tree is known and recognized and judged by its fruit.
As believers in Christ, we're not recognized by our bumper sticker. You can put the biggest, most sparkly cross around your neck that you can buy in any store. And to be honest, that doesn't tell me anything about anybody anymore.
I used to think that meant something. But I've learned that you've got to be a good fruit inspector. Amen?
Avoiding Problems Makes Them Worse
Now, my mother had emotional illness. She actually had a nervous breakdown, took shock treatments for two years because that's what they did with people back in those days. And it was just bad.
Now, she had a situation that was far to the extreme. But the root of her problem was she spent years avoiding dealing with what my father was doing to me, even though she knew it and had actually caught him.
You cannot avoid your problems. Buried things will eat you alive. Our secrets make us sick. Amen?
And so that's why it's good to talk to God openly about everything in your life and if need be to talk to someone else.
She also was overloaded with guilt all of her life because she didn't deal with what she should have dealt with. And so guilt can even make you emotionally ill.
If you would ever go to a mental institution, which I've done as part of ministry years and years ago, we would go try to visit the people, and it was amazing to me how many people walked around in almost a catatonic state, and most of them were saying, well, not most, but many of them were saying, it's all my fault. It was all my fault. It was all my fault.
So I'm telling you, going around with guilt all the time is not the way God wants you to live. When you do something wrong, you need to repent, ask God to forgive you, and then let go of what lies behind and press on.
And if you have problems in your life, now listen to me, if you have problems in your life that you're trying to avoid and you're not dealing with them, they are going to just keep hurting you until you get the courage you need from the Holy Ghost to face these things and deal with them.
Hurting People Hurt People
My mother let my dad abuse her. He would go out and drink. He would come home and beat her up. And she'd get up the next morning and cook his breakfast, and I wanted to throw up.
And I came out of that thinking, nobody is ever going to push me around again. And so I had a bad attitude that had to be corrected by God. Yeah, come on. Some of you are feeling me out there. You get it.
Nobody's going to tell me what to do again. Nobody's ever going to push me around. The problem for me was then that I was so out of balance that if anybody even wanted me to do anything that I didn't want to do, right away, I thought they were trying to control me and all my walls went up.
Come on. You know, we'll say sometimes, well, you're just a control freak. Well, you know, it's very possible that they've got wounds in their past and they're literally just trying to protect themselves from getting hurt again.
And so people feel like, I felt like if I didn't work really hard to keep everything in my life and it's where I knew everything that was going to happen, that somebody was going to take advantage of me.
Can I tell you something today? And I don't want you to forget this. Hurting people hurt people. And so many of the people that we deal with in the world, that we judge and criticize and shut out of our lives, they have been hurt and now they're hurting somebody else.
The Church as a Hospital
Now, that doesn't mean that you have to stay in relationship with somebody that is abusing you and hurting you. My mother should have gotten away from my father. She did not do the right thing for her, for myself or my brother who ended up several years ago committing suicide because of all the terrible things that had gone on in our family that nobody ever dealt with properly.
But just because you have to get away from somebody physically doesn't mean that you can't pray for them and trust God for them to change and it doesn't mean that you even have to say a lot of bad things about them.
So many people are hurting inside. And boy, we are great in the church world about coming together and wearing our church face. And man, we are always, I'm fine, praise the Lord.
And if you are, I think that's great. But if you're not, be honest, church is just a hospital for a bunch of messed up, wounded people. And if we'll just quit pretending that we're all okay all the time.
I mean, even leaders sometimes have got serious problems and they especially don't know who they can talk to because boy, then they're really going to be judged and criticized.
And what we don't need is a bunch of wounded healers. We need people in leadership to really get their issues straightened out with God because the blind can't lead the blind.
And I'll tell you, I still got issues and problems, but I'll tell you one thing. If I do, I'll tell you. And when I tell you what Jesus can do for you, I'm telling you because He's done it for me.
And many times, many times when I teach, all you're doing is eating off my plate. It's what God has fed me first. And you're getting it firsthand.
Rooted in God's Unconditional Love
So, I want to talk to you for a little bit this morning about the roots of your being being planted deep in a knowledge that God loves you. And that He loves you unconditionally.
God is love. It's not just something that He does. He doesn't turn it on and off. It's who He is. God is love. He doesn't like everything we do. He probably despises some of the things we do. But you have to learn to separate your who from your do.
I have four children. I always love them. But boys, sometimes... How many of you feel what I'm saying and I don't even need to go any further? Amen?
You need to know that you are loved and that you are valuable. And I know you didn't all get to hear John McFadden's testimony on Thursday night, but if I can just give you a quick download.
He was a man who had an alcoholic mother. His father died when he was young. Is that correct? Or did he leave the home? He left. Was left with an alcoholic mother who was violent. Had a brother. They were told all the time they were trash.
The one brother was... Mother actually packed up his stuff, took him outside and sat him in the trash and said, you're trash and if your father doesn't come and get you then the trash men can take you away.
And she threatened him all the time. I'm going to put you in the trash. I'm going to put you in the trash. Finally, when he was 14 she ran him off and he was left as a 14 year old to try to fend for himself.
Well, because he felt like he was trash he went into the cycle that I'm going to talk to you about here in a minute that I was in and many of you are in of trying to prove by the world's standards that he had worth and value.
And so when the Bible says that Jesus comes to set us free, I'll tell you something, you are not free at all until you no longer feel a need to impress people.
The Trickle-Down Theory of Conditional Love
See, you can't even get up and like... I mean, with me, pretty much what you see is what it is. And thank God I got over the need to try to get up here and impress people many years ago because that is exhausting, hard work. Amen?
You can't fall apart when somebody doesn't like you. You can't fall apart if somebody doesn't want you in their life anymore. Don't always assume that you're the one with the problem. Maybe they got a problem. Amen?
And so, he just went through all kinds of crazy stuff and then finally got a hold of the word and God's been healing him and now he uses his pain to help other people.
And so I know as I know as I know as I go through this thing that I'm getting ready to go through here, he's going to recognize a lot of this stuff.
But many, many, many years ago, somebody that attended my conferences got this little thing from God and wrote it down as a chart and she's given us permission to use it. And it's actually called the trickle-down theory of conditional love and the trickle-down theory of unconditional love.
So what that means is that how you're raised, to be honest, has a lot to do with the rest of your life. And if you were raised wrong, then you have to unlearn some things at the same time you're learning some things.
And that's why it's so important to have your mind renewed. Because when you've been mistreated, you always have a shame-based nature and you feel bad about yourself.
And I listen to what I'm going to say, and I say this all the time, but this is the morning to say it again. If you don't love yourself and value yourself, there is nothing else in your life that's going to be enjoyable or in the right order.
How do you feel about yourself? How do you think about yourself? How do you think about how other people think about you? What kind of a relationship do you have with yourself? You're one person you're never going to get away from. Because everywhere you go, there you are.
Oops, it's me again. And I think we don't even think about our relationship with ourself. You can't love somebody else if you don't love yourself. You can't get along with somebody else if you don't get along with yourself.
And so, when you don't love yourself, when you don't know that God loves you unconditionally, and that you're in a healing process in your life, and that although you're not where you need to be, thank God you're growing, you're not where you used to be, you can enjoy the journey, then here's some of the stuff that happens.
Believing in God's Unconditional Love
Now, this is a little long. I'm going to take time, though, to stop and do a little teaching along the way.
So, I believe, for example, from the time I was a kid, I always had an awareness of God. And when I was nine years old, I actually sneakily went off to church with some relatives that we were visiting. And I went with the intention of being born again.
I don't even really know how I knew. All I can say is God was just helping me and guiding me. And so, I did receive Christ as my Savior as a nine-year-old child.
The next day, I cheated in a game of hide-and-go-seek, and the devil told me that I'd lost my salvation. And from then until I was a young woman in my 20s, I never had any kind of active relationship with God.
But I can look back now and say, when I was about nine years old, and I didn't connect the dots for a while, but I always thought, when I was about nine years old, a strength came into me to overcome the situation that I was in.
And so, even though God didn't get me out of the abusive situation, He did give me the grace to go through it. And I'll be honest with you, I'm not even sorry now that I did go through it, because going through it is part of what has made me who I am.
And it's definitely what enables me to be able to help other people with their stuff.
But because I... So I knew God, and I knew... I even believed that God loved. I don't know how much I believe that He loved me, but if I did believe at all that He loved me, I believed that His love was conditional.
Because all the love that I ever was told that I was getting, which really none of what I got was love, but any little favor that I did get, or any privilege that I got, I had to pay for it.
And it was all conditioned on my works and my behavior. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Okay, are you still okay out there? You're not, you're... You're getting it, all right.
You know, this may not be a funny day, but it's gonna be... You're gonna really learn some things that are gonna help you in the future.
One of the greatest things that you can do is teach your children that they're loved unconditionally. And even when you have to correct your children or take a privilege away from them because of some bad behavior, always reiterate to them, I'm only doing this because I love you.
I will never stop loving you. No matter what you do, you are loved unconditionally, but I do have to help you deal with the bad behavior.
And it's very good to love other people unconditionally. That doesn't mean you like everything they do, but you can still love them.
From Conditional to Unconditional Love
So, here's kind of the way it goes. If the root of your life is, well, the love I get is based on conditions, then I might think, well, Jesus loves me, but he loves me conditionally.
Therefore, his love is based on my performance. Now, you see, right away, I'm taking all the responsibility for making this relationship work. And I'm thinking now, everything that I get from God, I've got to buy it with good behavior.
And I have a good piece of news for you today. God is not for sale. You can't buy him with five hours of prayer every morning, reading half the Bible every month, doing good works.
Everything, now listen to me, everything that we do for God should always be done because we love him, not to get him to love us. Come on.
So, whether you like it or not, you are loved. And the good news is, is we're loved and we're probably not even worth being loved apart from Christ. But he loves our lives back from the pit of destruction.
My goodness, how good is that? He loves my life back from the pit of destruction. Boy, people need to know that they're loved.
And if you can believe that God loves you, then you can begin to love yourself. And when you begin to love yourself, then you can begin to love other people. And you can have healthy, good relationships. And you can enjoy your life. Amen?
So, if I think that God's love for me is based on my performance, then I feel like I have to earn his love by pleasing him. Therefore, when I please him, and I love this part, I feel loved. And when I don't please him, I feel rejected.
Now, you see, this is where the crazy emotions come in. Because everything we feel is not true. Come on. Matter of fact, a lot of what we feel is not true.
So, if I get up in the morning, and I pray for an hour and a half, and I read five chapters in the Bible, and then I feel good about myself, and I feel that God loves me that day.
And we do. We get into that, don't we? But see, God is pleased with us because we believe.
In John chapter 6, some of the disciples said, what must we do to please God? What's the work that he requires of us? And it says so plainly, I think it's verse 28, this is the work that God requires of you that you believe in the one whom he has sent.
And see, then my mind thinks, yeah, and? I mean, I don't think like that anymore, but it took me so long to think, it can't just be that.
Now, yes, there are other things that God wants to teach us, and other things he wants to work into, our behavior, but believing is the most important thing.
I believe in you. I believe you love me. I believe your word. I believe I'm made right with you through the blood of Christ. Believing.
You know, just because you feel guilty doesn't even mean that you are. And boy, I had to learn that because I was addicted to guilt.
I mean, I didn't feel right if I didn't feel wrong. I mean, I just really had a bad case of guilt because I grew up rooted in feeling guilty about what my dad was doing to me. I had a shame-based nature.
And you know, you don't, you don't have to have gone through some kind of terrible abuse to have these kinds of problems. For some reason, because Satan is the accuser of the brethren, I mean, he starts out with everybody trying to make us feel guilty about every single thing that we do.
So if I feel like I'm pleasing God, then I feel loved. And if I don't feel like I please Him, then I don't feel loved. But the truth is, is He always loves me.
God will never, ever, ever, ever stop loving you.
A Life-Changing Testimony
Now, I want to read you a testimony that came in just this past week. And I had them printed out for me because it fits in so well with what I'm teaching today.
Let me say first that when you begin to know that God loves you, then it sets you free to be able to begin to love other people.
And here again, I know you weren't all here, but when I read in 1 Peter or 2 Peter, I forget now if it was 1 or 2, that list of, you know, things that we're to make an effort to do and it's this leads to this and this leads to this and this leads to this and finally we end up with Christian love.
You see, our goal is to get to the point where we can be not selfish and self-centered, not absorbed with our own self and our own problems, but we can deposit ourself with God knowing that He loves us, knowing we're not where we need to be, but God is working with us and then while He's working with us, we can offer ourselves to Him for Him to work through us to be a blessing to other people.
And I found all this out from the Holy Spirit. Took me 40 years to do it. So you're getting a good chunk of my life here this morning.
Okay, this came from Sarah and she wrote in initially on Facebook. She said, I was sexually assaulted and now I'm pregnant and I'm trying to decide whether to carry the baby or to abort it. That was it. That was what she said.
Now, because we have great people that work for us that have been trained properly and that is the people at our office know not to ignore any kind of request that comes in from somebody that's hurting.
It just annoys me when people say, I wrote to seven ministries and yours was the only one that answered me back. That is not right.
The ministry replied by email with prayer and scriptures to encourage me. But then two days later they followed up with another email letting me know that they would like to actually call me if I would send my phone number.
Her one sentence reply before giving the number was I am stunned that you cared enough to email me back and that you even want to talk to me.
God worked through that phone call in a miraculous way and Sarah gave her life to Christ.
From Despair to New Life
Oh, this gets better. This gets better. Then, it says, we followed up again by email. See, follow up. People need discipling. They don't need a little pat on the head. Well, bless you.
You are in ministry. If you are a Christian, you are in ministry and the world is full of people that just need a kind word and somebody to act like they care. Amen?
And everybody can do that, but you won't do it if you're still sick inside yourself. I believe we all get hurt and I believe that God wants to heal all of us and then the next step is He wants us to be ready to help all the other hurting people out in the world.
Every day when you go out your front door, you've got a ministry and a world full of people to minister to. Every single day.
God worked through the phone call in a miraculous way and Sarah gave her life to Christ. We followed up again by email. I love this. We're now in our fourth communication with this girl to celebrate her new life and we provided links to the Everyday Answers section of our website and other online resources.
She responded now by saying I've been I had been suicidal the night that I felt compelled to click onto your Facebook page. I had my death all planned out.
Then you emailed me and you emailed me again. For the first time in my life I felt loved. People are desperate to feel loved.
And if we could just get our minds off ourselves long enough to reach out to somebody else our own healing would come a lot more quickly.
Even though you are a complete stranger I could no longer go through with my plan for suicide. I was still confused and certain I would be aborting the baby but then you sent more scriptures emailed again and even called again.
I love the people that work for us. I mean I love the fact that they're sincere about helping people and it's not just to get a paycheck and put in some hours.
She said my world changed forever. Now listen to this as I prayed on the phone to become a Christian I felt what I can only describe as a blanket of peace in my room.
I know that sounds crazy but a heavy feather like blanket descended on me then when the lady who called prayed for the Holy Spirit a cool breeze swept through my room now you got to keep in mind this lady didn't know from nothing she couldn't be making this up
I have no idea what it was she said the windows weren't open and it's 95 degrees here yet a breeze came over me with the blanket it was as if God was in the room is that crazy or what come on my gosh
she said because I've never experienced anything like Well, all capitals, I feel like I can live now and that my baby will live.
You showered me with love and acceptance and honestly saved my life and the baby's life. Thank you so much.
I ask that you continue to pray for me as I learn how to be a mama. Joyce Meyer Ministries has since sent Sarah a Bible. We're providing her with free tickets to come to the women's conference in St. Louis.
And see, to be honest, if you're partnering with our ministry, this kind of stuff happens because of your faithfulness.
She said, I'm so excited to get my own Bible. I've never had one before. I've been reading the links that you sent to me over and over. I can't get enough. I'm reading them to my baby too.
I had a doctor's appointment today and I saw my baby for the first time. A very healthy baby due December 25th.
I had to share this because if it wasn't for people like you, I wouldn't even be here today.
Now, oh my gosh. This is what God wants us to do.
You Are Loved Unconditionally
And so, I'm trying really hard today to get you to understand how much God loves you. And maybe you've been mistreated in life. Maybe somebody's been abusing you and saying all kinds of bad things to you.
But you need to listen to what God says about you and not what people have said about you. You are precious. You are valued. You are loved.
And God loved you so much, he sent his only son to die a terrible, painful death just for you. And if you would have been the only person on the planet, he would have still done it just for you.
Well, I'm about as happy as I can get this morning. My, my, my. Lord help me, I've not even gotten to my first scripture yet.
Therefore, if God who is all loving does not always love except and value me, how can I be expected to believe that I'm valuable and lovable?
Therefore, I don't believe that I am basically a lovable, valuable person. Therefore, I'm not able to trust other people who say they love me.
I suspect their motives or I figure they just don't know the real me yet. See, when John was talking on Thursday night, he said even though he was married for many years, every day he kept expecting his wife to figure out who he really was and to leave him.
The night that Dave asked me to marry him, I kept wanting to get home because my dad went out and got drunk every Saturday night and I wanted to get back in the house before he got home and pretend to be asleep.
And Dave said, I need to talk to you about something. I want to talk to you. And I thought with everything in me that he was going to break up with me.
Because that was just where my mind always went. It always went to the negative. It always went to somebody not wanting me or here it comes again, more rejection, more pain, more disappointment.
But God surprised me that night. And he said, I love you and I want to marry you. And I thought... And you know, Dave knows this and he understands. I didn't even know what love was.
I mean, I couldn't really say I loved anybody because I didn't even know what it was. And I didn't know what it was because I'd never seen any of it.
Do you know how many people there are out in the world that don't even know what love feels like?
Deflecting Love Because of Fear
So I can't accept love from other people. I deflect it. I try so hard to prove that I'm right, that I'm not lovable. Because I'm afraid they will eventually reject me.
Therefore, they usually do. See, here's the thing that is so crazy about all this. Because what you believe is what you produce.
So, just to put it plainly, if you believe you're a jerk, you're going to act like one. If you believe you have no value, then you're going to act as if you have no value.
So the very thing that you want from other people, your own behavior keeps you from getting. But it's all because of the way you feel about yourself inside.
Now, maybe there's a few people out there today that you got it all together in your life and you don't need this. But you can just be patient with the 90% of us that do need it.
How many of you, it would help you a great deal if you had a better relationship with yourself?
I'll tell you something, and I don't say it in any kind of pride. God, I have a really good relationship with myself now. And it just feels so good.
I like to be with myself. I get along with myself. I like to be alone with myself. I know I'm not perfect. I know my faults. Trust me, I know my faults.
But you know what? I like myself anyway. You say, well, why are you telling us that? Well, because I want you to feel the same way.
And I want you to know that it's okay to say, I like myself. Oh, Jesus, help me. I'm telling you what, it makes religious devils so mad.
When you start saying you like yourself. Up on the East Coast, one time I did a meeting years ago, and I said, I like myself.
And there was an article in the newspaper the next day, Meyer says she likes herself. Now, see, if I would have said, I just hate and despise myself, wretched person that I am, they would have thought that was holy.
See, if you're not careful, religion will teach you that you need to see yourself as some filthy, rotten sinner that's not worth anything.
Well, we sin. There's no doubt about that. It doesn't take me very long after I get out of bed to do something wrong. I can lay in bed and make my plans for holiness, but it only lasts till I put my feet on the floor.
But even in the midst of all that, I still know that I am the righteousness of God in Christ. I'm nothing in myself. I'm nothing by myself. Apart from Him, I can do nothing.
My life has no meaning, no value, but in Christ, me in Him and Him in me, I can stand and say, God loves me. He loves me unconditionally.
I love myself and that enables me to love you. I'm having so much fun.
Be rooted and grounded in the love of God. Don't let anything take the love of God away from you.
Neither life nor death nor things impending nor things coming nor threats nor anything else in all the world can ever separate me from the love of God which is found in Christ Jesus.
And you know what? When you make the dumbest mistake that you could possibly make, if you want to really give the devil a black eye, you stand there and say out loud, God, I know that I really messed up and I am sorry, but I know that you love me.
And it will give you power in your life. Do you think that hating yourself is going to help you change? It will actually just keep you stuck right where you're at.
Planted by the Waters
Let's look at Jeremiah 17:7 and 8. Most blessed is the man who believes in, trusts in and relies on the Lord and whose hope and confidence the Lord is.
For he shall be like a tree planted by the waters that spreads out its roots by the river and it shall not see and fear when heat comes but its leaf shall be green it shall not be anxious and full of care in a year of drought nor shall it cease yielding fruit.
Wow. Trees of righteousness the planting of the Lord that's the promise.
Jesus said he came to heal the broken hearted. A person who's broken hearted is broken in personality. You can't... Your life is fragmented.
You can't have good relationships with people and it all goes back to the wounds in your soul. And only God can get to those deep places in us and heal us and the balm of Gilead that he uses is his love.
You know what? We all just really want to be loved unconditionally.
You know one of the things that I appreciate so much about my husband and he told me this just recently it blessed me.
I mean you know I still got a little fire in me and I can be a little well you know I don't even know what to call it just me and I can still kind of have a quick quick answer you know right back and Dave just laughs at me he thinks I'm funny
And sometimes I'll, you know, I'll say, oh, I know, I pray. And he's like, you know what? I love you just the way you are.
You know, if I get really out of line, they will tell me, okay, knock it off. But you know why he feels like that? Because he knows me.
And he knows my heart. And he knows that I want to be a really good girl. Not sure I'll ever get there, but...
And see, God knows that about you. You think that God doesn't appreciate the fact that you took your Saturday, and for some of you, you've been here Thursday night, Friday morning, Friday night.
Now, Saturday morning, you've paid to stay in hotels. You may have flown here. You've driven here. You've spent money to get here.
You've taken your time to get here. And then you think, if you make one little silly mistake this afternoon, that now God's not going to love you anymore?
No! He sees your heart. And he knows that you're on your way to becoming all that he wants you to be.