Joyce Meyer - Can I Really Trust God?

TOPICS: Trust

Psalm 37, verse 1, "Fret not yourself". We have any fretters here in the congregation today? "Fret not yourself because of evildoers, neither be envious against those who work unrighteousness (that which is not upright or in right standing with God). For they shall soon be cut down like the grass, and wither as the green herb". In other words, we don't need to be concerned about all the stuff that's going on in the world today. I mean, we want to pray about it. We want to do anything that God asks us to do, but it's not gonna do us one bit of good to worry about it because God is still in control and he has a divine plan that nobody can put a stop to. God is going to take care of us as long as we do what verse 3 says. "Trust (lean on, rely on, and be confident) in the Lord and do good". Two things, trust God and do good.

Now, I think this is a very important message and I was so thrilled many years ago when God showed me this that trusting God is one thing, but we're partners with God and when we're trusting him, we don't just sit around passively waiting for God to do everything while we do nothing. We don't want to just make up stuff ourself and do it. Amen? We'll just say that was God clapping, okay? We don't want to just make up stuff ourselves and do it, but we want, as we trust God, we should say, "God, anything you want me to do, you show me and I'll do it". And many times you'll find that while you're waiting for your breakthrough, God is going to use you to help bring breakthrough in somebody else's life.

Now, I'm a say it again. Many times while you're waiting for your breakthrough, you're waiting for God to do something in your life that you cannot do, God wants to use you to help bring breakthrough to somebody else who cannot help themselves. It's always amazed me how I can be in a situation where I cannot help myself, but God will anoint me to go help somebody else. It's like, "Well, God if I can help them, why can't I help me"? Because that's not God's plan. He wants us reaching out to one another. It's so powerful when we grow in God to the point where we can get ourselves off of our minds and not just constantly be thinking about us and actually purposely look for somebody else to be a blessing to.

If you have a problem, I can give you a 100% guaranteed answer for breakthrough, trust God and do good. Trust God and do good. Now, I got this idea about these medicine bottles because I like visual things, and it's very clear that the Word of God is medicine for our souls. We know how to take medicine for our physical body, but we need to see the Word of God for how powerful it is. Don't ever just read a chapter in the Bible a day just to do your duty and check that off your list. Go to the Word of God like it really is. It's Jesus, it's the will of God. It's instructions for how to have a great life. Don't even bother reading it if you don't intend to do it. But when we want a change in our life, anybody in here who wants a change in your life, if you're serious about wanting a change in your life, that may mean that there's gonna have to be a change in you.

You see, we're welcome to have a miracle and get our life changed but what about when God says, "Well, I'd rather change you first"? 'cause you know a lot of our problems are our own fault. You know that? Last night I prayed for people that were sick or who had pain in their body, people who had something physically wrong with them, and there was 85% of the people that stood up. Now, it's obvious that it's not God's will for that many people in the body of Christ to be sick and not feel good. We need energy. Amen? We need to get up in the morning, and feel good, and be determined from the time we put our feet on the floor that the devil's not gonna walk all over us, and that God is gonna use us to help somebody else. So, when we prayed, we're trusting God. But then I said, "How many of you already know that you don't really take good care of yourself"? At least 70% of the 85% put their hand up.

Now, God is a miracle-working God, but we can't just trust him. We also need to do the right thing. Anyway, I'm not teaching on good health today but I'm just saying, we can't just trust God, we gotta say, "Now God, is there anything that you need me to change to cooperate"? So, it's trust God and do good, but the Word of God is medicine. It's no different than like if I have a headache and I go take an aspirin, when I have jealousy, or greed, or anger, I can go to the Word of God and I can take some medicine. And it's amazing, like if I'm really mad at somebody and I know it's wrong and I want to get over it, sometimes I can't just get over it. I have to take my medicine. And so, I will go and I know the word well enough, I can open it up to five, six, seven scriptures about anger and the word will literally calm me down. Amen?

And so, we have one prescription though, well, actually two, that fixes everything, and the first one is trust God. I don't care what kind of problem you have, the answer is trust God. No matter what your problem is. If you're worried about your kids, trust God. If you're worried about finances, trust God and do good. Tithe and give. "Uh-oh, I don't want to talk about that. I just want a miracle. I need a financial miracle". Well, what if you need a financial breakthrough and you say, "God, is there anything I can do"? And he says, "Yeah, give this and thus and so money that you've got set aside for this. Just sow that as a seed". "Well..."

All right, I won't talk about giving your money away very long. I know that makes the crowd nervous. Can I tell you something? Giving is one of the best things that we can possibly do for ourselves. I mean, it is the best thing that you can do for yourself. And let me tell you something, God's not ever trying to take anything away from you. He's only trying to put you in a position where he can get more to you. So, I'm gonna trust God and I'm gonna do good. We don't have a problem that trusting God won't fix and then follow it up with some do-good and you got a great package.

Now, just for the sake of those who haven't been here, maybe those who you haven't seen any of this on TV yet, this is a prescription for trust from Dr. Jesus and it's prescribed to whosoever. You can take as many as you need for as long as you need and you can have unlimited refills on this. You don't even have to call the doctor to get this one refilled. You can have as much as you want however, I do need to warn you there are side effects. The side effects are peace, joy, stability, confidence and just overall better health. And then after you take your trust, then take a good dose of do-good. Here they are right there, do good. Amen? Dr. Jesus, patient whosoever, take as many as you need. Side effects: extreme happiness and rewards in heaven.

But, you know, in order to trust God, there's something you gotta do first and that's decide to cast your care 'cause worry and trust just don't work. They kind of cancel each other out. Did you ever try to trust God while you worry at the same time? I have. Dave lives by the scripture, "Cast your care". Everything for him is cast your care. And he didn't just learn that overnight, he learned it by going through things and finally coming to the point where he just realized that worrying was not gonna solve anything. Have any of you ever solved your problem worrying about it? So, I wish that I had a little magic thing that I could preach to you and say, "Now, if you hear this, you'll never worry again," but the truth is is I don't think we will ever stop worrying until we come to the point where we realize that we are just not smart enough to solve our own problems and that no matter how much we worry about them, which means to revolve them over and over and around and around in your mind, that no matter how much we do that, it's not gonna solve our problems.

You say, "Well, I can't help it, I just worry". Don't say you can't help it. Just say, "With God's help, I can do whatever he wants me to do". If God tells us not to worry, then there must be a way that we can learn how to live and not worry. Some parents think it's their duty to worry about their kids. You don't even think you're a good parent if you don't worry about your kids. Well, if you just spent 25% of the time worrying, trusting God, he would take care of 'em. We have 4 grown children and 11 grandchildren, and I spent time worrying about my kids. And you know what? It's really comical when I look back now and see how God just worked everything out that I thought was such a problem. I mean, they're all serving God, all 11 of my grandchildren are serving God. Five of my grandchildren are here this weekend.

I'm just telling you every time you're tempted to worry, open your mouth. Everybody say, "Open my mouth". Open your mouth and say, "I trust you God. I trust you. Show me something I can do to be a blessing to somebody else". You know, the best way to keep your mind off your problems is to look for somebody else that you can be a blessing to. I can tell you while I'm here preaching to you today, I'm not worried about anything. I got something better to do. I'm trying to help other people learn how not to worry. Cast all your care on him, for he cares for you.

1 Peter 5:6 and 7 says, "Humble yourself unto the mighty hand of God that in due time, he may exalt you casting all your care on him". So really, the way we humble ourselves is by saying, "I'm not gonna worry because nothing I do is gonna fix my problems. Instead of worrying, I'm gonna cast my care on God". Amen? Now, can you really trust God? Yeah, some of you are saying, "Yes". That's the spiritual answer to give, you know? But you know what? We all have times where we wonder, "Is God really gonna come through for me? Can I really trust God or do I need to have a backup plan"? Anybody know what I mean by the backup plan? "And if God doesn't come through quick enough, how long am I prepared to wait"?

See, this is our big problem, we pray and oh, we're gonna wait for God to help us and after 2 weeks now, we've taken back over again. And we spend our whole life just casting our care and taking it back, casting our care and taking it back. We ask God to save our loved ones and then next week we're trying to find nifty ways to save 'em. Can we really trust God? Well, I've got a good answer for you, at least I think it's good. Whether or not you can trust God depends on whether or not you're trying to get him to give you what you want or what he wants. Yeah, it'll take a while for that to sink in. Let me say it again, whether we can trust God or not depends on whether we're trusting him to give us what we want or trusting him to give us his perfect will in his perfect timing in his perfect way.

We're very good at telling God what we want, and there's not a problem with that. The Bible says, "You have not because you ask not". Ask for what you want, ask for what you need. But there are times in my life where I found out that what I thought I wanted, really wasn't what I wanted at all, and I would go through times of being really upset because God wasn't giving me what I wanted and then later on I found myself thanking God that he didn't give me what I wanted. So, you can trust God if you will trust him for his perfect will in your life and say, "God, if that turns out to be what I want, yippee, yippee, I'm happy, but if it's not what I want, then I want what you want more than I want what I want".

Come on, are you at that place today? No matter how bad you want something, are you willing to say, "God, if what I want is not what you want, then please don't give it to me"? Come on. I'll teach you a new way to pray. "God, if what I'm praying for is not your will". Now, there's a lot of things covered in the word that we already know. You don't need to pray, "Well, God, is it your will to save my child"? We know that's God's will. But there's a lot of things that aren't specifically covered in the Word of God. You can be asking for a promotion on your job and it may be not what God wants for you. "Well, why wouldn't he want it"? Well, I don't know. I'm not God.

You know, my husband years ago was offered a promotion on his job and he turned it down, and I thought he'd lost his mind. "Well, why would you turn it down? Don't you want to be promoted"? I didn't say it like this but I was thinking, "Don't you want to be more important? Don't you want to have a title"? He said, "Listen, I've watched guys who have that position and they don't make that much more money, and they're gone from home all the time, and all they have is a lot more responsibility, and I don't want that". That's not what he wanted.

Well, it's a good thing he didn't take that because God had another plan for him which was what we're doing now. Just because God doesn't give you what you want when you want it. We need to trust God every step of the way and some of you are in some situations right now where, man, you do not understand. You just don't get it. And I said last night and I'll say it again, we live life forward, but we understand it backward. Amen?

When God first called us into ministry or called me to teach, I quit a full-time job that I had so I'd have time to study. Our bills were more than our income and I was petrified. I mean, I had that little devil sitting on my shoulder screaming in my ear all the time, "What have you done? What have you done"? We needed a miracle every month just to pay our bills. And I was so sure that because I'd made this great sacrifice that just amazing, miraculous things would happen in our finances. Surely if I make this sacrifice, surely if I'm so good, then God will do miracles. It's really hard for us when we're doing what's right and even sometimes sacrificially doing what's right, and it still doesn't seem like God's doing anything.

For 6 years, not 6 weeks or 6 days, for 6 years, we had to have a miracle every month just to pay our bills. I was shopping at garage sales for my kids' clothes, studying the word, teaching my little home Bible study, and telling people how God wanted to bless them financially. Kept tithing, kept giving, kept serving year after year after year after year. I did not understand. It did not make any sense to me at all. And I bet some of you are right there right now. Some of you are giving more than you've ever given in your whole life and it looks to you like you've got less than you've ever had. Don't you back off of your commitment. That's exactly what the devil wants you to do. Sometimes you have to do what's right a long time before you get a right result.

"Well, I don't understand". Well, you know what? I didn't understand either why it took so long for God to give us a breakthrough in our finances, but I know now. I didn't understand then, but I know now. God was teaching me how to trust him for every little thing that I needed. And I didn't know then. I mean, everybody claps and cheers when I say I'm on television in two-thirds of the world, but do you have any idea what that costs? They're not just saying, "You're a nice lady. We're gonna give you this time free". And those 6 years is when God taught me how to do these years.

Come on, you don't know what God has planned in your future, but I can tell you whatever you're going through now, you're getting experience for what you're going to do later. Amen? And boy, I look back now and I'm so glad that I didn't throw in the towel and say, "Well, this is not working. This is not fair. This is not right. I'm just gonna go back to work and get myself a job and if I don't have time to study, then I just won't study". I needed those years of study, study, study, study, study, and I needed to have to apply the word practically to my life.

Come on. It doesn't do you any good to just know something in your head, you gotta know it by experience. Jesus is looking for workers with experience. We need to have experience. We need to experience the faithfulness of God. We need to experience God providing for us miraculously. Some of the best times in my life, some of the things that I treasure the most is looking back at some of the things that God did for us during those 6 years. I wouldn't even bother trying to tell you right now, but they were just like so sweet and so amazing, and all I can tell ya is I didn't get everything I wanted, but I got everything I needed. God is faithful. He's faithful. And trusting God is often a stretch.

And I said last night, do you have stretch marks? Are there any marks in your life of having to stretch yourself to hang on to God? It's good for us. You're never really gonna know for sure if you trust God till you step out in faith and have some experience with God. How are you ever really gonna know if you can trust God? You gotta step out. How are you ever gonna know if God will take care of you financially, if you never do the part he asks you to do? "Well, I'm trusting God to take care of me". But, are you doing good?