Joyce Meyer - Can You Help Me Do The Right Thing In Spite Of How I Feel?

So there really is an answer for every one of these feelings that torment us. There's an answer for every one of them, whether it's fear, or rejection, or loneliness, or anxiety, or worry.

Ginger: Emotions, they can be fun. They can be great. Or they can be our worst enemy. So today on "Everyday answers," we're tackling a question from social media about an emotion we've all had to face. This is from Joshua. He says, "How can you overcome negative emotions and anger"? Well, sometimes we really do all want to do the right thing, but we just don't feel like it. We're too angry, or anxious, or annoyed. Without God's help to manage our emotions, so many things in life become more difficult, for you and for everyone around you. So Joyce is going to explain what you can do as she answers the question, "Can you help me do the right thing in spite of how I feel"?

Well, you know now that you can't just depend on your emotions. Those emotions will lie to you. They will make you feel things that aren't necessarily reality. So Joyce is here with us to help us to get a little bit deeper in how to manage all those emotions that are just, it seems like sometimes are just bouncing around in our heads and making it so hard. But so if we can ask you a few questions.

This comes from Ira, and he says: "Joyce, what was the most challenging for you when you began the process of believing God's word more than your feelings"?

Joyce: Well, the most challenging thing for me, I guess, is maybe when people were coming against me, maybe not treating me the way I thought they should, and it seemed like it just went on and on and on. And you know, there were times when I actually felt like God was dealing with me to treat them right, but he wasn't necessarily dealing with them to treat me right.

Ginger: So you're like, "Wait a minute. That doesn't seem fair".

Joyce: Now, whether he was or not, I don't know. But it didn't appear to me like he was. And you know, God just had to teach me that it was, my job was to do what I felt like he was telling me to do. Whether anybody else was doin' what was right or not, I needed to do what I believed was right before him. And that sometimes, we have to do what's right for a long time before we start getting the right results. And that's all part of trusting God. Now, you know, as far as the emotion is concerned, just because you decide not to live by how you feel doesn't mean that you're not gonna feel anything. So if somebody mistreats me, probably my natural reaction is going to be anger. But the difference for me now in knowing the word of God is I know which emotions that I should, I don't wanna say, "Suppress," but control, which ones I should start praying about, "God, help me not to act on this". And so I know that even though I feel anger, and it could even be justified anger, that it's not gonna be good for me or my witness for the Lord, or anything else, if I stay angry and get upset, and then I begin to act out of that anger. So here again, it's not getting rid of emotions. It's learning how to manage those emotions and to know which ones are godly and which ones aren't.

Ginger: Right. There are many serious reasons why we feel the way that we feel. But recently, at our conference in Denver, we asked you, "What is your most difficult emotion to deal with"? And here are a few of your responses. Take a look and then we'll talk about them.

Female: The most difficult emotion that I have to deal with is fear.

Female: Loneliness because I've been a single mom for 19 years.

Female: From the get go was rejection. My adopted mother and I didn't really bond at all so I went through my whole childhood basically wanting to die.

Female: Since I was a child, fear just is something that just came upon me because of what everything that I went through.

Male: Really, an anxiety over how people will respond to me.

Female: The most difficult feeling that I had to deal with was shame because of my childhood and because of my past.

Female: I didn't wanna go out of the house. I didn't wanna do anything. I was always afraid. And I knew I couldn't live that way forever. I just didn't wanna live that way.

Ginger: So we appreciate people's honesty. And we're gonna dig in and help them with some of the things that they're talking about that all of us face in different ways. And one person said that the most difficult one to deal with is fear. And fear, sometimes you wonder, "Is it really an emotion"? Or you know, because it's just so big in our lives at times.

Joyce: Well, I think fear is actually a spirit. It's certainly not from God so it must be from the enemy. The Bible says that, "God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and a sound mind". And I think that the more we learn to trust God, the less fear we actually experience in our lives. Now, that doesn't mean that you're ever gonna be just totally free from ever feeling fear in any kind of a situation. But when I look back, you know, at one time in my life I was bothered a lot more with fear than what I ever am now. And you know, learning how to trust God is a journey, and it's something that takes time. And it's really just not something that people can ever have without having any experience with God. You know, part of gaining experience with God is being afraid of something, but stepping out anyway and seeing how God works in your life in that situation and how he helps you. Then the next time fear comes, it's a little bit easier to do it again. And so all I know, and I know this more and more and more the longer I live, trusting God is pretty much the key to everything.

Ginger: Yeah. And that takes us right back to what you were sayin' about those emotions will lie to us. Because so often the fears that we have become real in our mind that we may never have to face those things in reality.

Joyce: Feelings are fickle. You know, they're not, I don't even think we need to say they're good or bad. They're, you know, sometimes they're good. Sometimes they're bad. But a lot of times they're not there when you need 'em, and they disappear when you do need 'em. And so you really just have to learn to say, "You know, I hope I feel great about everything. But if I don't, with God's help, I'm still gonna do what I need to do".

Ginger: Another one that was mentioned is something that we can all relate to on different levels. And that's loneliness. And that's such a difficult thing for all of us. And usually, at different seasons in our life, maybe we're dealing with loneliness. But it hurts.

Joyce: Well, you can be alone and not be lonely. And you can be in a room full of people and still be lonely. So I think part of loneliness comes from feeling misunderstood. You don't feel like that you really have anyone to share things with, to share your life with. I'm sure that a lot of single parents feel that. They feel like that they're goin' through a lot of different things and maybe have a ton of responsibility. I've had to deal with loneliness in my life. Not now, but I did in the past because I'm on the road a lot. I don't have a, I have a great life, but it's not, quote, "A normal life". And so I've had to learn to get a lot of my what I need from God. Now, that doesn't mean we don't need people. But you know, I think a lot of times you feel like nobody really gets you, nobody really understands you, nobody really understands what you're going through. But I love Hebrews 4:15 and 16. It says that: "We have a high priest who understands". And it talks about our weaknesses and our, you know, the different things that we're liable to get ourselves into through sin. But I think that it's just, it's comforting to me to know that Jesus understands me, and that I can always go to him. And then, of course, you know, one of the things you can do if you are feeling lonely is you can go and help somebody else. You know, there's always somebody that feels a lot worse than you do. And I think too, one of the things that I've tried to train myself to do and I'm still, you know, workin' with God on it is just realizing that he's always with me. To even stop once in a while and think, "God is here right now. He's here right now". We have to be so careful that we don't just look at all of our problems and everything that's not goin' right, and what we don't have, and remember that whatever you don't have, you do have God. And that makes up for everything else.

Ginger: Yeah. I remember one time years and years ago, going through the Bible and just underlining all those little places where Jesus dealt as a man on earth with the same emotions that I was dealing with. I mean, there were times that he was lonely. And there were times that he dealt with rejection. So he understands. He's felt those hurts, and that was very comforter, comforting.

Joyce: Even on the cross, "Why have you forsaken me"? And yet, he said, "Into your hands I commit my spirit". So we can feel one thing, and actually believe something else. I think that feelings are more exterior. And so it's not so much about what I feel, but it's what I know in my heart. And I love what job said when he was goin' through all kinds of stuff, and no tellin' just what he felt. He said, "I know that my redeemer lives".

Ginger: yeah. And so many different emotions, really, that is the answer, isn't it?

Joyce: learning what emotions, I mean, the Bible really talks about a lot of different things. Like, I think you mentioned one of 'em was the feeling of rejection. Well, Jesus was rejected. And the Bible says whenever we are rejected that we're actually, people are rejecting him, not us. And so I have to remember that for me because when I started teaching, if somebody would get up and leave the room while I was teaching, I automatically thought they didn't like my...

Ginger: yeah, "Well, why are they walking out"? You start thinking things.

Joyce: and so you start feeling rejected. But the key is, is even if they didn't like me and they were leaving because they didn't like what I was saying, according to the Bible, they weren't really rejecting me. They were rejecting God. So there really is an answer for every one of these feelings that torment us. There's an answer for every one of them, whether it's fear, or rejection, or loneliness, or anxiety, or worry, or whatever it is. The answer to every problem in life is found in the word of God. And then learning what that promise is, and then trusting God that what he gives us in that promise is greater than what we're feeling. And nobody can do this for somebody else. It's something you learn by studying the word. And I mean, that's really why people have the program on today is to learn how they can begin to react to situations differently. I think sometimes we keep waiting for somebody to make all this stuff go away. And it's not going to. We have to learn how to deal with it effectively by standing on the word of God.

Ginger: Well, that's exactly why we love it when people share their own personal stories online also. When you go to the "Everyday answers" page, you'll see what people are saying. And they're sharing those victories over their feelings, or their answers to their tough times in life. And so, you know, it means a lot when we see what God does in someone else's life because it means he can do it in ours too.

Joyce: Yeah, that's exactly right. You're encouraged by, I mean, how many times have people said to me when I share about my abuse, "Well, knowing that you got through it makes me believe that I can get through it"? And so that's what happens when you share a testimony of victory with somebody else. It's not that you don't understand what they're going through. It's really, you do understand because you've been through it. "But look, here I am now. I'm out on the other side of it, so c'mon, you can get through it too".

Ginger: "Come with me". Well, here's a great example. This was posted on our Facebook, Joyce Meyer Ministries' Facebook page. And talking about the emotion of fear, which we were just talking about, Joanne says: "My dad was sick off and on for a couple of years and it was on my heart to talk to him about salvation. But I waited and waited because my dad hated people preaching to him. In my mind, I rehearsed what I would say to him and meticulously planned to approach him but I was too afraid. Last year, he got very sick. I told him I was going to pray for his salvation and if he was in agreement, all he had to do afterwards was say, 'i agree.' I don't remember what I said, but it was nothing like what I'd rehearsed. When I finished, my dad opened his big blue eyes and said, 'i agree.' he lived for 50 more days with his family by his side, and now we know that we'll see him again".

Joyce: That's good. You see, God, her heart was right even though fear was coming against her. So God led her in kind of a unique way, but it was just what he needed at that time. It was something she could handle, and it's something he could handle. So we gotta be careful sometimes about getting these set ideas in our head of how things have to be done, and really let God guide us.