Joyce Meyer - Do You Have Any Tips For Someone Battling OCD?

Do you talk and think more about how afraid you are or how much God loves you and how he is with you. Say 50 times a day, "God is with me right now. Right now, God is with me. God is with me when I go to work. God is with me when I go to the marketplace. God is with me. He's not just with me when I go to church, God is with me all the time. He cares about everything I do". When fear knocks on your door, send faith to answer and nobody will be there, amen? Fear can only be conquered by faith. There's no other way to conquer it. You feel fear, you either confront it and you say, "You're not gonna stop me".

See, courage is going forward while fear is still present. You can't wait to not feel any fear before you do anything that you believe God wants you to do. Some of you let other people run your life. You let people abuse you, and mistreat you, and manipulate you because you have the fear of man on you. And what God wants you to do is respect yourself enough to not let other people take advantage of you, and even though you might feel afraid to confront them, and stand up to them, and say, "Listen, I love you and I want to have a relationship with you, but you are not gonna mistreat me. You are not gonna take advantage of me". Amen?

We can't really be mad at other people if they take advantage of us. You have to stand up for yourself and you can't let the fear of man: what they think, what they say, what they do, their rejection, their acceptance — you can't let the fear of other people rule your life, because if all they're trying to do is control you, then the bottom line is they don't care that much about you anyway and you could probably not have that friendship. Do it afraid. There's many different types of phobias and things that people have.

I was watching a TV program recently about people who have Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, OCD. And you know, you frequently hear people making jokes, "Well, I'm a little OCD about that," which kind of means, "Well, I'm a little overboard about that. You know, I like every hair in place or whatever. I'm a little overboard. I get a little freaked out if that's not right". But there are people who have serious problems in that area. And on this program, it said that they have unrelenting thoughts that drive them to keep taking the same action over and over. They have to wash their hands hundreds of times a day. Different things that they do because their thoughts keep telling them, "You have to do this, you have to do this, you have to do this".

So, they tell a person with severe OCD, who is controlled by their unrelenting thoughts, they teach them that if they can control their behavior, they will then be able to control their thoughts. But God's word teaches the exact opposite, that if you don't learn to control your thoughts, you will never learn how to control your behavior. Amen. And if you have a problem like that or a disorder like that, if you're watching and you have a disorder like that, I have great empathy and compassion for you, and I plead with you to begin asking God to renew your mind. God says, "I've got a good plan for your life," but if you want to experience that plan, you have to renew your mind.

Stop thinking all the junk and start thinking what God says and do it on purpose. Don't just wait for something to fall into your head. Get up and think it on purpose. Don't say, "Well, I'm controlled by this, and I can't help it, and I'm controlled by this". No, you say, "God is in control of my life, and the power of the holy spirit is in me, and he is gonna help me do what I need to do".

Now, I will say that there are sometimes chemical imbalances that people have that need to be adjusted that can affect your thinking. If you need something like that, get the medical help that you need, but I will still tell you that things are never gonna be right in your life until you learn how to get into agreement with God in your thinking. Can somebody say, "Amen"? "As a man thinks, so does he become". "God is with us". "Fear not, for I am with you". "Stand still, see the salvation of the Lord which he work for you today.