Joyce Meyer - Everyday Trust And Belief In God's Word

Well, this weekend I'm talking about ten of the things that have been what I feel are some of the most important things that I've learned in my 37-year journey of walking with God. Now I was born again a long time before that. I actually was saved when I was 9 years old, but I didn't really even try to walk with God or have a relationship with God until Dave and I got married. And then for a long time I was sincere in my heart. But I learned a lot about religion but I still didn't have that relationship with God through Christ.

And when I finally got serious... and you know there's a difference in just going to church and being serious. How many of you know that? There's a difference in just going to God when you have a problem and you want Him to solve that problem, and God being the center of your whole life and letting Him be involved in everything that you do. And to be honest, God doesn't want to live in a little Sunday morning box that a lot of people like to keep Him in. Let Him out. "Come on, God, You can come out for 45 minutes. It's Sunday morning. Then go back in your box and I'll just take it from here the rest of the week and let you know if I have a problem."

So if you're not real serious, then what I'm saying this weekend is not gonna mean a whole lot to you. But I believe you are serious or you wouldn't have taken the time to be here. Now we may have some people channel surfing right now and you don't know how you feel about any of this. Well, I'm just encouraging you to stay with us for a little bit because I'm gonna tell you some things today that's gonna help you really enjoy your life and have a better life than perhaps you've ever had before in your whole life. So I had a real rough childhood, like many of you, got a bad start, but I'm happy to say that just because you have a bad start doesn't mean that you can't have a good finish. And I personally believe that it's how we finish that's the most important thing.

So no matter where you're at right now or no matter what you've done or what's been done to you, I want you to know that God has a great plan for your redemption and He wants to walk you out of your mess and into what we fondly call "The promised land" in the Bible. And the promised land actually was a real place that the Israelites traveled to but it was a type and a shadow of our walk with God. We come out of bondage in Egypt, which is bondage to sin, and we all, like it or not, travel through a wilderness and that wilderness really is our own soulish, selfish, carnal living. We're learning in that period of time how to trust God, how to receive the grace of God, how to keep God first in our life, and so many other things.

Now if you never learn those things, then you never will make it to the promised land. You may go to heaven when you die, but you're not gonna enjoy your journey here. And I don't know about you, but I'm all for enjoying the journey. I want to enjoy every single solitary second. Every nanosecond of my life I want to be able to enjoy it. I want to talk to you today about always believing, coming to Christ like a little child and just say, "I believe. I trust You. I believe. I may not see it, I may not feel it, but I believe." I've been thinking about believing and about faith and, you know, it's not something you do with your head. Now our mind gets renewed and I think and probably for many of you who've walked with God a long time, I do believe all this stuff in my mind too 'cause my mind's been renewed, but there's still times when my mind can't get ahold of something.

When I look at a situation and even sometimes not just for me but in other people, I'll look at their situation or look at that person and just, you know, I want to believe but with what I'm looking at it's like I don't know. But thank God we're more than just a mind and a body. We are first and foremost a spirit, and it's with our spirit man that we believe. I didn't see Jesus die but I know that I know that I know I know that He did. See, a person who doesn't understand faith would say, "Well, how do you know that?" Well, I just know because God has revealed it to me in the spirit, just like many of you. Really salvation is an amazing thing, how God will just give you that faith to reach out and believe. But you do have to be willing to ignore or go beyond your own thoughts and your own feelings. Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things unseen. But faith is substance and it's evidence. It's just not a material evidence or a material substance.

And I just want to say to you this morning by way of encouragement that the spiritual realm is really much more real than the natural realm. We are not in here by ourself today. There are angels in this building. Amen. I said there are angels in this building. All of us have a guardian angel. You have an angel that goes with you everywhere that you go. Now I've never seen mine, but I believe the Word of God. And when you decide to believe and just get away from all the doubt and unbelief and the double mindedness and the trying to figure everything out, see, I believe that we're never alone, never alone. Even when you feel alone, you're never alone because God said, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you but I am with you always even until the very ends of the earth." God is with you no matter how you feel. It's amazing how wonderful life can be if we just decide to get out of this brain.

Come on. And just go deeper to what we sense in the spirit. I'll give you an example. I remember one time doing a meeting and we had planned this special meeting. It was on a holiday weekend and we thought well, it would be a special thing. You know, lots of people would come out. Well, as it turned out, it wasn't too well attended which is kind of a downer for a minister anyway. So I probably already had a couple strikes against me before I even got up on the platform because I'm disappointed 'cause all the people didn't come. And then I didn't feel too great about my message that weekend and so when I got done, I started the thing that we do until we learn better. "Oh, I shouldn't have done this, you know."

You know, it's pointless to think about how you shouldn't have done something that you'd already done. I mean if you've made a mistake over here and you wasted that day, then don't spend today regretting the mistake that you made yesterday because then you waste today. So even if I shouldn't have done the meeting I did it and I had a choice to believe well, this was a big mistake or somebody here today got helped. Somebody here needed what I had to say. Believing is wonderful. Believing keeps you happy, and I don't know about you but I've just decided that I'm gonna be happy. You see, I've lived more of my life than what I've got left and that's kind of an unusual thought when you get to that point. You see, I realized a couple of years ago, I've already done two-thirds of this. I got about a third left and I want to make it count. Amen?

I want to make sure that I don't waste any of my days and I want to really enjoy my life, and that's the second thing I'm a talk to you about today. We're gonna end with enjoying your everyday life. But first believing, it's something that we can choose to do, but it has to be done in the spirit. We believe the Word of God. Believing is an absolutely amazing thing. So I was having these regrets, probably shouldn't have done this meeting, had the wrong message, nobody got anything out of that. Dave and I started our drive home and I was just tormented in my mind.

Is there anybody here today that realizes that when you live in your mind, you can live in total torment all the time? Because your mind does not agree with the Word of God. It agrees with the world. And so when your mind, your mouth, and your feelings all pile up on you, you better have somewhere to go and that's like deeper into the Spirit. So this is what I felt that God put on my heart. He said, "Shut your mind off and tell Me what's in your heart about this situation." I want you to start trying that in your life when you start getting rattled and all upset. Just shut your mind off for a minute.

"What's in my heart? What's in my heart? Well, I believe I did preach today what You put on my heart. Matter of fact, if I really tell you what's in my heart, Lord, I don't think it was bad. I think it was pretty good. And, you know, I thought we were supposed to do this. You didn't tell us not to and it wasn't attended great, but it wasn't horrible and so yeah, everything's pretty good." I mean just in a few seconds, I went from being tormented, full of doubt and unbelief and misery and thinking the whole thing was a failure to knowing. See, there's a difference in thinking and knowing. If you can get ahold of this today, I think it's gonna elevate you to a new place.

We spend way too much time in our mind and believe me, the devil offers us all kinds of thoughts that do not agree with the Word of God. We have to learn to believe what God says and we grasp it by faith. We reach out and we grasp it with the Spirit. I want to live more in the Spirit. I want to walk more in the Spirit and not just walk in my feelings or my own mind or, you know, my own will but in the Spirit. Is anybody with me today? We want to begin to walk in the Spirit.

What is my spirit saying about this situation? Is it really hopeless like my brain wants me to think it is or are all things possible with God? Does God still have a miracle for me? Does He love everybody equally? If he's ever done anything for anybody, surely he can do something for me. He's no respecter of persons. So believing, I think you can decide to if you want to or you can keep making yourself miserable all the time trying to figure things out in life. Always believe. "In the word there's a righteousness revealed that leads us from faith to faith to faith, a righteousness revealed that leads us from faith to faith to faith."

That righteousness is that right standing with God. Oh, my gosh, things begin to change when you know that God loves you and you know that God is not mad at you and you don't even say, "Well, you know, how could I have this problem in my life if God loves me?" You say, "Yes, I have this problem in my life but that's no sign or symptom that God doesn't love me. God loves me and I can trust Him to bring me through this problem and I can trust Him to take it and use it for good in my life." Amen?