Joyce Meyer - Do Not Let Your Heart Be Troubled (08/21/2019)
This sermon focuses on John 14:1, where Jesus instructs, "Do not let your hearts be troubled." The key point is that refusing to worry is a responsibility and a decision, not just a feeling. The conclusion is that we must actively guard our hearts, trust in God's unwavering character, and cast our cares upon Him to experience true peace.
The Choice to Trust: Don't Let Your Heart Be Troubled
Let me ask a question: does anybody here ever worry about anything? I'll tell you the truth, there are so many things in the world and in our own lives that we could worry about. If we don't decide not to and get help from God in learning how to not let those worried thoughts into our heart, that's all we're gonna have day in and day out. In John 14, Jesus said, and I love this, "Do not let your hearts be troubled." It sounds right off the bat like He's giving us a responsibility. A lot of times we like to think, "Well, I can't help it." But He says here, "Don't let your hearts be troubled, distressed, and agitated. You believe in, and adhere to, and trust in and rely on God; now believe in, and adhere to, and trust in and rely on Me."
One of the things I've had to face in my life, which is a bit unpleasant, is the truth that believing God brings us into rest. So, if I say that I'm believing God, if I say that I'm trusting God but I'm worried all the time, then the truth is I may be trying to trust God. I may want to trust God, but it's obvious that I'm struggling with it. The psalmist David did say, "What time I am afraid, I will put my trust in you." So, there are times when you can not feel so great about something and still say, "Well, God, this is how I feel, but I'm going to put my trust in you anyway." Trusting God is a decision, not a feeling we wait to have.
Where Are You Placing Your Trust?
You're gonna put your trust in something. If it's not God, then it's gonna be yourself, your friends, the government, the world, your bank account, or your employer. All those things are shaky and very unstable, but God is not. He is the one thing that is never shaken; that's why the Bible refers to Him as the rock. He's a rock that cannot be moved. It's important to maintain a peaceful heart. Something God speaks to me really often, and I need to hear it often, is to stay relaxed in your soul, even like our physical body. You know, you right now you could say... come on, let's just see.
Maybe because you're here in the studio and you know you're likely to get on TV, you may be tense. I could be the same way here because I'm preaching, and this has gotta be good, and I gotta pull it off, and I have timing and everything is just so. I can be all tense. That is our temptation, but really, we can choose to relax. I have found for me, I really need God's anointing, which is His presence and power in my life. The more we have of God's anointing, the easier everything is gonna be.
The Power of a Relaxed Heart
The more we're gonna be able to enjoy life and the greater God can use us. So, let's just say, for example, whether it's what I'm doing today or a big conference somewhere, if I get all tense, God is not gonna be able to flow through me like He could if I stayed relaxed. Staying relaxed proves that we're trusting God to do what needs to be done, rather than us trying to make it happen. I think as soon as we start trying to make something happen, we just tense up all over the place. So, it's important to learn how to relax, breathe, relax in your soul, relax in your body, and guard your heart.
Now, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that you're not gonna have a fight on your hands because the Bible tells us in 1 Timothy that we are to fight the good fight of faith. That means we have an enemy, satan, and he's gonna come against us. The enemy roams about like a lion roaring in fierce hunger, seeking whom he may seize upon and devour, and we're to resist him steadfast in faith. He's always gonna try to get us upset about something, but listen to this: everything that the enemy tries to do to us, Jesus has given us an antidote for that.
The Antidote to Worry and Fear
It's like satan wants to poison our minds and poison our souls, but for everything that comes against us, there's an answer in the Word of God. In the world you will have tribulation; it's a promise. There's no point in praying you'll never have trouble because I can tell you that is a prayer that will not get answered. You can pray that God will help you navigate your trouble, that He'll give you wisdom, that He'll guide you and show you what to do. But it's useless to pray that you'll never have any, and it doesn't matter how spiritual you become.
Matter of fact, I might even say that the more spiritual you become, the more you grow in God, the more the enemy is going to try to come against you to stop you. You have to understand if there's anything satan despises, it's progress. Any kind of progress in our life, he's gonna come against us. The thief only comes to steal, to kill, and destroy, but Jesus said, "I came that you might have and enjoy your life." Well, we can't enjoy our life if we're worried all the time and stressed out. So, you have to guard your heart, and that means you have to pay attention to what you're thinking.
What Are You Thinking About?
One of my biggest problems in life was I never thought about what I was thinking. For years and years and years, I mean even something like the next time you feel depressed or discouraged, don't just talk about how you feel. Stop for a moment and ask yourself, "What have I been thinking?" I can promise you that you cannot get discouraged without thinking thoughts that don't line up with the Word of God. Maybe you're just under pressure and you think, "Well, what's been in my mind?" Maybe you're worrying too much about a mistake you made yesterday that only God can fix now.
There's no point in being stressed out over something that you did that you can't undo. Even like my past and all the abuse that I went through, and other people have gone through a lot of things like that, you know, we can spend our whole life wishing that wouldn't have happened. But the truth is you can't wish it away; it already did happen. You can't do anything about that now, but what you can do is learn from it and be determined that you're still going to have a good life. However, you will have to be careful about your thoughts, for as a man thinks in his heart, so does he become.
I think I said this in another show, but I don't know if it's because we're not fully awake early in the morning or maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm the only one that has this problem, but I have to be really careful about my thoughts when I first get up. It's almost like there's a little bidding war going on for who's gonna have you for the day. I think especially when you first wake up, you're a little tired and not fully awake. You've got the whole day in front of you and maybe a lot of things you're not really looking forward to.
Guard Your Heart with Diligence
If you've got a few years on you, your body maybe is not wanting to cooperate with you so well; a few things are stiff. You don't feel real good just yet. So, especially early in the morning, I want to encourage you to guard your heart. The Bible says, "Keep and guard your heart with all vigilance and diligence, and above all that you guard." We're to guard what we let into us more than anything else in our life. If our physical heart is unhealthy, it affects many other areas of our body and life. If our spiritual heart is unhealthy, it also affects pretty much every other area in your life.
One of my favorite scriptures is from John chapter 14. We started with John 14:1, "Don't let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me." But then Jesus continues this point, and in John 14:27 He says, "Peace I leave with you, My own peace I now give and bequeath unto you, not as the world gives do I give to you." See, there's a type of peace you can have if you function on the world's system, where if everything's going the way you want it to, there's nothing to worry about; you're good. But He wants to give us a peace that functions in the middle of the storm.
Your Inherited Right to Peace
That is your inherited right. He said, "This is what I bequeath to you. This is what I give to you." As a child of God, you have a right purchased by the Blood of Jesus to calm down, not have to worry, and not have to try to figure everything out, no matter what is going on in your life. I tell people frequently, and I think this is good to hear, when you have a problem, it's okay for you to go ahead and enjoy your life. I'm gonna say that again: when you have a problem... hmm? See, for some reason we think it just wouldn't be right.
I mean, if you've got a kid that's in trouble, you can't enjoy the day; you gotta worry and figure it out. If you've got a financial problem, you gotta try to figure this out. I remember in our younger years when I first started studying the Word, my husband, of course, is not a worrier; he's calm about everything. It actually would make me mad because when you're upset, you want somebody to be upset with you. It seemed like every month we didn't have enough money to pay the bills, and I would be with the calculators and the bills.
I'd figure it all out, and sure enough we were short. Then I'd figure it all out again, and sure enough, we were short. I don't know why we think if we count it again and again that something may change, but it just serves to keep irritating us. I can remember Dave would be playing with the kids and watching TV, and I would get so mad. It's like, "You need to come out here and do something." I remember saying, "You need to do something." He said, "What do you want me to do? We tithe, we give, we're obedient to God to the best of our ability. We're doing the best we can. God will take care of it."
Looking Back at God's Faithfulness
You know what? How many things have you worried about in the past that now you look back and see God took care of it? All of your worry and all your stress certainly didn't do any good, but it did do harm because all it does is hurt you. "Not as the world gives do I give unto you. Don't let your hearts be troubled." This is what I want you to see: "Don't let your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid. Stop allowing yourselves to be agitated and disturbed, and don't permit yourselves to be fearful, cowardly, and intimidated."
So, wow, I'm getting four big instructions here right in a row: "Don't let yourself, stop allowing yourself, don't permit yourself." Now, we can't do it on our own by willpower alone. However, we do need to use our will. God has given us free will, and it's up to us if we decide to worry or to trust God. I do believe the longer you're in a relationship with God, the more experience you have with God, and the more you see Him bring deliverance into your life, the easier it becomes to not worry.
It is more challenging for a young believer, especially one that has a lot of problems, because you're just learning about God. But, boy, when you know God... there's a difference between learning about God and knowing God. No wonder the apostle Paul prayed, "My determined purpose is to know Him and the power of His resurrection that lifts me out from among the dead even while I'm in the body." So, Paul, this great apostle who wrote two-thirds of the New Testament, says this is more important than anything else: to know Him.
The Health Benefits of a Peaceful Heart
And to know that no matter what's going on in my life, He will deliver me from it. I was looking this morning at Proverbs, and this is such a great scripture, Proverbs 14:30: "A calm and undisturbed mind and heart is the life and health of the body." Wow. You know, my husband is so healthy and always feels good, but he also never worries. He's never upset; he's never frustrated about anything. I even asked him a couple weeks ago—I'm still having a little trouble not being annoyed about it—I said, "Do you ever have a bad thought about anybody?" He said, "No, not really."
I'm like, "God, could I just get a personality transplant here? Could you just, maybe, take a little bit of Dave and give it to me?" I do believe it's one of the reasons why he feels so good all the time. Now, I'm not saying that everybody that has a health problem has it because you worry or think bad thoughts about people. But we do know that a lot of health issues are created by stress; that's a known medical fact. Nothing puts more stress on us than thinking bad thoughts and worrying all the time. Can anybody agree with that?
So don't let yourselves be troubled. I've found out that the Bible says to resist the devil at his onset in 1 Peter 5:8-9 (Amplified). I like that because I think the longer you put up with something, the harder it is to get rid of it. If the moment you start to be worried or concerned, you would say, "Nope. That's not God's plan for me. It's not going to do me any good. I cast my care on You." The dictionary online defines worry as "to give way to anxiety or unease, to allow your mind to dwell on difficulties or troubles, to brood over or to overthink an issue." I love this: worry also means to torment yourself.
Worry is Self-Torment
So really, worry does no good. I'm going to end with a list of what it does and what it doesn't do, but I can tell you none of it's good. It doesn't do you any good, and the devil just laughs. He loves it because you're tormenting yourself; he doesn't even have to bother you because you're doing it yourself. So, guard your heart. Don't let upsetting feelings and thoughts get into your heart, and if they do get in, the moment you recognize them, cast down those wrong thoughts. One way to not worry when you're having a problem and fear comes is to purposely think about something God has done for you in the past.
Think about some other problem you had that now you've been delivered from. Even if you have an opportunity, talk to somebody about that. One of the things we do is we talk about our problems and talk about them and talk about them. Everybody we see for five minutes, we want to tell them everything that's wrong and everything going on in our life. I don't think there's anything wrong with sharing with a friend and asking them to pray. We all want empathy; we want people to know what we're going through.
But how about following that up, at least, with: "But you know, I remember a time... when I think about everything God has delivered me from..." You know, it's helpful to me. I told Dave the other day, I said, "You know what? Ultimately, everything does work out. You don't exactly know what you're going to have to go through to get to the working out part, but it does ultimately work out." If you want God's help with your problems, here's the way to get it: 1 Peter 5:6-7. "Therefore, humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that in due time He may exalt you."
How to Humble Yourself and Cast Your Cares
Here's the simplicity of what I think that means: don't even begin to think that you can solve your own problem. Humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that in due time, He might exalt you. If I were you, at least ten times a day I would tell God, "I know that I'm nothing without You, and I cannot do anything worth doing without You." I love to quote what Paul said in Romans: "In me, that is, in my flesh, dwells no good thing." The only good thing in us is Christ in us, the hope of glory.
So humble yourself under the mighty hand of God. Then verse 7 tells us how to do that: "Casting all of your care, all your worries, all your concerns, once and for all, on Him, for He cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully." I like to say sometimes: either I'm going to take care of it or God's going to take care of it, but we're not going to both do it at the same time. Many times I think God just has to kind of back off. We think, "Where are you, God?" He just has to back off and say, "Let me know when you're done. Whenever you're finished with all your plans and ideas, let me know, and then I'll go to work." Amen?
But we're so afraid if we don't help God. I mean, don't you just know that God needs your help? I have even caught myself making suggestions to God of what He might do. You ever done that? "Well, Lord, You could... or You might think about..." It's a good thing God loves us unconditionally. Psalm 55:22: "Cast your burdens on the Lord, releasing the weight of them, and He will sustain you. He will never allow the consistently righteous to be moved, made to slip, to fall, or to fail." He will never allow those that are His children to fail.
Quotes to Remember
I love these quotes. "Don't fear for the future. God is already there." Billy Graham said, "I've read the last page of the Bible, and everything works out good in the end." Amen? I guess the bottom line is, if you just want to think, "I'm just going to have problems all my life, and I don't know if they'll ever go away," the good news is someday you're going to be in heaven, and you're going to live with Him for eternity. So we'd all like for all our problems to go away, but if they don't, we've still got a pretty good future looking at us.
"Stop worrying about what can go wrong, and get excited about what can go right." "Worry doesn't empty tomorrow of its troubles, but it empties today of its strength." "If you think too much, you'll create a problem that was never there to start with." I really like that; I think I'll say that again: "If you think too much, you'll create a problem that was never there to start with." "If you fill your head with worries, there won't be room for anything else." I like this: "When you worry, you use your imagination to create something that you don't want."
Reasons Not to Worry
Reasons not to worry: First of all, it's totally useless. Worrying about a problem never changes it; all it does is make you miserable while you wait. Worry is more exhausting than a full day's hard work. You can spend a whole day worrying and being stressed out over problems, trying to figure out what you should do, especially if you add a lot of conversation to that. I mean, you can just be totally wiped out and exhausted at the end of a day, and all that time you put in did no good at all.
Worry is dis-ease (D-I-S-E-A-S-E), but it can create disease (same word without the hyphen). Worry steals our joy. Worry is the opposite of trusting God. Your time is too important to waste it worrying. And you may not like this one: according to Romans 14:23, it's sin. Well, where does the Bible say that worry is sin? It says that whatever is not of faith is sin. So unless you can tell me that you're worrying by faith, then I think we might have to change our tune just a little bit.
You know, I've thought and thought as a Bible teacher because I know what I deal with in making an attempt not to worry when I have problems. So I want to be sure I tell people something that's going to work in their lives. Sometimes when you teach people, "Don't worry, don't worry," you almost feel like you're teaching them something useless. I have looked for ways to tell people why they shouldn't worry, and I think one thing that has really helped me is just remembering it doesn't fix anything. It just does not solve anything at all.
The Difference Between Pondering and Worrying
There really is a certain amount of pride involved in it because it is us thinking that we can solve our own problems. Now, I'm not saying you don't think about the things going on in your life. I believe we need to ponder things before the Lord. There's a difference between pondering something before the Lord and actually worrying about it. "Don't let your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Him." Believe that when you pray, your answer is on the way. When I pray, my answer is on the way.
I love this scripture, Mark 11:24: "For this reason I'm telling you, whatever you ask for in prayer, believe that it is granted to you, and you will get it." First you believe, then you receive. I don't know; it would be nice if I only had to believe for five minutes and then I'd receive. Maybe I could handle that. But what if you have to be steadfast for five years? Or ten years? Boy, that's when it gets challenging. When you're believing God, and you can clearly see the promise in the Word, but it's just not happening for you yet, that's when we have to remember that the Bible says we inherit the promises of God by faith and patience, not just faith.