Joyce Meyer - Do It Afraid

TOPICS: Fear

Well, welcome to the program today. I'm so glad that you've joined us. You know, I've had the privilege in my ministry career to write over 100 books. I think now the total is about 116 and I'm always writing more. And one of those books is called "Living courageously".

You can face anything if you'll just do it afraid. You know, there's a great big wonderful adventurous life waiting for each one of us but it's not just gonna fall on us. And to be honest, we can't just pray it into existence.

Very often when we pray what happens is God shows us something to do. I don't want you to forget that. We're partners with God. He has a part and we have a part. We cannot do His part and He will not do our part. So we have to be ready to be active and to be obedient and do the things that God asks us to do.

Fear is a factor in everybody's life. But "God has not give us the spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind and a spirit," the amplified bible says, "Of discipline and self-control".

Well, we know that fear comes first to our mind and then when we receive fearful thoughts they begin to affect our emotions. So fear can make you shake. It can make you nervous, all kinds of lies come to our mind.

You can actually feel so weak and incapable that you're not sure that you can put one foot in front of the other. But that spirit is not from God. And many people spend their whole life running from things that they're afraid of or maybe as you become a believer in God and you learn that you can pray, you spend a lot of your time praying that God will take the fears away, "God, help me not to be afraid. Take away the fear, take away the fear".

Well, I learned something about 25 years ago that was a little bit of a new way to look at fear and I learned it through a story that I read about a woman who had been controlled all of her life by fear. She wouldn't drive, she wouldn't go out at night.

She basically was trapped inside of her house, was just afraid of absolutely everything. And she was a christian, she was a believer. She was talking one day with a christian friend and moaning, complaining, murmuring, which we're all pretty good at, about all these fears that she had in her life.

"Well, I'm just so afraid, I'm so afraid, I'm so afraid. I'd love to do this but I'm afraid. I'd love to drive but I'm afraid. I'd love to go out at night but I'm afraid". And her friend just looked at her and gave her one little piece of advice: "Well, why don't you just do it afraid?"

See, the thing is, is when God tells us, "Fear not," or if you take, like, Joshua chapter 1 when he was called to finish what Moses had started, how would you like to have that in front of you, to take over Moses's job?

And just several times, just in the first chapter, God tells him not to fear. "Be bold, courageous, don't fear". And the only reason why God ever gives us in the scripture for not fearing is "For I am with you. Fear not for I am with you".

And in 1 John 4 the Bible teaches us that "Perfect love casts out fear". Well, that perfect love is talking about the perfect love that Christ has for us. And so when we know how much he loves us, you know if somebody loves you that they're not gonna let you get hurt, they're gonna take care of you and even if you go through something that's difficult they're gonna work it out for your good, then you can begin to live on the other side of fear.

But no matter how old you get or how many scriptures you know or how much experience you have in life, there's going to be times when fear is gonna come against you.

So the thing to learn is to feel fear is one thing; to be afraid is another. We can feel a lot of things but we don't have to be what we feel. And so that was, to me, just such an eye-opening thing and it's become kind of a hallmark of my teaching that fear means to run from. When He told Joshua, "Fear not, fear not," He was basically telling him, "Fear is going to come but when you feel it, don't run".

So the key is, is wherever you're headed in life, all along the way there's gonna be different fears, fear of failure, fear of being rejected by people, fear of losing your friends, I mean, just fear, fear, fear, fear, fear. And today we're gonna talk about a few of the fears that we wanna try to avoid in our lives but I just wanna tell you a cute story.

This past weekend I was in Washington doing a conference and a lady was there that was 102 years old. Now, her first Joyce Meyer conference she attended when she was 100. And she liked it so much she came back to this conference. And she had her daughter with her who obviously took care of her but the woman was actually really in great shape.

And so she was there on Friday night. She was back on Saturday morning at 9:30. She stayed for the Saturday afternoon 1:30 session. I mean, she didn't look worn out. She didn't look tired. She was taking notes. I mean, she was engaged, she was listening.

Well, I know that there were probably 25-year-olds that woke up on Saturday morning, when they went to bed on Friday night they thought, "Well, yeah, I'm gonna go back tomorrow," and then they woke up on Saturday morning, "Ah, I'm too tired. I don't think I'll go". And so, for her, she came because she'd made her mind up that was where she was gonna be.

And see, we have to make our minds up what we're gonna do and stop letting how we feel determine whether we carry through or not. Well, they did a little interview with this lady and somebody was telling me about it on the trip home. She watches my TV program every day and they said, "Well," her name was Louise. "Louise, why do you like Joyce so much?"

And she said, listen to this. She said, "I just feel like she has such a sense of adventure". And I just thought that was so amazing that 102, she is interested in adventure. So obviously, she's taking chances, she's not just in this inactive, my-life-is-over-type attitude.

How many people at 102 would be looking for some adventure and something new to do? So surely, if she can do that, we can all get a little better attitude today. And you know what? I believe with all my heart that one of the reasons why she looked as good as she did and felt as good as she did was because of her mindset that she was really not too old to do anything.

Now I know most of you in here today, you're real young but let me tell you something, you'll get to the point where the enemy will suggest to you, "Well, you're just too old for that". And I believe that if we keep this sense of adventure that we can do a lot of things that we would have never even imagined that we could do.

But every time, every time, you try to take a step to do something more, something better, something bigger, fear will come and try to stop you. So you have to make a decision today that you're gonna live courageously, you're not gonna live fearfully.