Joyce Meyer - Finding Stability (08/21/2019)
Joyce Meyer fires up believers to follow the Holy Spirit's exciting lead, renew minds daily with God's Word per 2 Corinthians 10:4-5 and Romans 12:2, cast down enemy strongholds and lies by aggressive Bible study over spiritual laziness, and choose beautiful thoughts for victory, peace, and a transformed life where mind leads man to God's good will.
Exciting Life Led by the Holy Spirit
Following the leadership of the Holy Spirit is an exciting journey because He has ideas that we don't have. And you never know on any given day when you get up exactly what God may lead you to do that day. I love being led by the Holy Spirit. It's wonderful to be led by the Holy Spirit in my preaching. I have messages and notes and I've studied until I can't cram anything else in there. But I can promise you that when I come out, I'm more led by the Spirit than I am by my notes. I have it all in me, but God will bring things out of me that I didn't even plan to say, didn't know that I was going to say. And many of you may think, how in the world did you know that? That's exactly what I was asking God. Well, I don't know it. But when we're led by the Holy Spirit, life gets exciting. Can anybody say amen to that? When we are led by the Holy Spirit.
God Has a Wonderful Life for Everyone
Now see, I know that we have all kinds of people that come to these meetings. And some of you are not even saved yet. Last night we had 695 people receive Christ. So some of you, you're just a 24-hour-old baby Christian. So you don't know much yet. Some of you have been in church all your life. You still don't know anything. Love you. And some of you are very spiritually mature. And then we have people all along the way. And so I'm not going to assume that you already know these things. I'm going to sit here tonight and act like none of us know anything. And I'm going to start with some of the really basic things that we need to learn and grow in.
God has got a wonderful life planned for every single one of you. Every single one of you, God has got a wonderful life planned for you. You do not have to sit in the audience of life and watch other people have a good life and think it's only for them and not for you. God has got a good life for you and it is never too late to begin again. It is never too late for a fresh start. You can begin again.
Where the Mind Goes, the Man Follows
So let's start by talking about the mind. Because the truth is, is where the mind goes, the man follows. Now, 2 Corinthians chapter 10, verses 4 and 5. I actually have about four scriptures that I want to share with you on the mind. These, I think, are some of the most important. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They are not physical weapons of flesh and blood, but they are mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.
What is a stronghold? A stronghold is an area that's dominated by an enemy. If you're in a war and there's an enemy stronghold, it means that somehow the opposing part of the enemy has managed to dig into a place and you're having a hard time getting them out of there. Well, God is getting ready to talk to us here about the mind. And we have strongholds in our mind. And what that is, is areas of our thinking that Satan has somehow managed to dominate.
Satan's Lies Become Reality Without God's Word
He tells people lies. There are people sitting in here tonight, beautiful, lovely, wonderful people, but you believe lies. And because you believe those lies, they become your reality. Just like I believed lies for many, many, many years and still may have a few things that God has yet to show me that I'm not aware of. There's only one way to know when the devil is lying to you. There's only one way, and one way only, and that is to be educated in the Word of God. That's the only way. There is no other way.
So let me just sit down here and act like your mama for a minute and tell you something. If you want victory, but you're not going to be a student of the Word of God, then you might as well forget it. It's not going to work. Well, I go to church. You can go to church and sit there week after week after week and honestly not learn anything. You may get a few goose bumps. You may sing a nice song. You may even hear some sermons that are worth hearing. But what can you remember about them the next day?
No Secondhand Faith – Study the Word Yourself
Now, some people do learn a lot as they hear other people teach, but nothing like what you learn when you study yourself. I believe that you learn when you listen to your pastors and prayerfully when you listen to me. I think you've got some good stuff coming at you. But I'm trying to make a point that you can't let somebody else spoon feed you the Word all the time. You cannot survive on what I call secondhand faith. You have to have your own experience with God.
It's good to hear my testimony. It's good to hear other people's testimonies. But I want you to get your own. The only way that we're ever going to know whether Satan is lying to us or whether our thinking is the God kind of thinking or not is if we are educated in the Word of God. So I'm just going to throw something out. You obviously don't need to answer out loud. Don't want to embarrass anybody. How much time do you spend in a week studying the Word of God? You just think that over.
Meditate on Scripture Like You Worry
Because if your answer is none, or even if you say, well, I listen to you every morning, well, that's good. I mean, I'm glad that you do. But I would at least like you to try taking some notes and maybe then getting out your own Bible and looking those Scriptures up that I talked about and reading them for yourself. We can't afford to get spiritually lazy. If we're spiritually lazy, we're not going to have the victory in our life that we want.
Now, you're all kind of looking at me like a calf at a new gate because I know you're just like, study the Word of God. How much time do you spend even thinking about the Word of God? We have to meditate on the Word of God. And you do know how to meditate. If you know how to worry, you know how to meditate. Because worry is just meditating on your problem, rolling it over and over and over in your mind, trying to figure it out and understand it.
Cast Down Wrong Thoughts – 2 Corinthians 10:5
Well, that's what it means to meditate on the Word. You just think about it and think about it. You think about it and you think about it. You know what? I am very convinced that God loves me. You know why? Because I have thought about that Scripture and quoted it in my mind at least probably 50,000 times in the last 30 years. I know that I've been made right with God through the blood of Christ and that I do not have to live under condemnation. But it took a long time of meditating on those Scriptures.
The more you think about something, the more it becomes a part of you. And you're going to think about something anyway, so you might as well think about something that's going to do you some good and produce some good fruit in your life. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. They're mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down imaginations and theories and reasonings. I'm still quoting 2 Corinthians 10, 4 and 5. And every high and lofty thing that exalts itself against the true knowledge of God.
A Beautiful Mind – John Nash's Story
So he's basically saying that anything that comes to your mind that doesn't agree with God's Word, cast it down. Casting down. Pitching, throwing aside every thought that doesn't line up with the Word of God. Now, let me tell you a story about someone that you may remember and you may not. Many of you may have seen the movie A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe in it. And it's a true story about a brilliant mathematician named John Nash.
And he was extremely brilliant. He ended up winning the Nobel Peace Prize for his contribution in math and economics. He was born in 1928 and not only was he extremely brilliant, but he also had mental illness. And it was back in the days before they had much to treat the kind of mental illness that he had because he was a paranoid schizophrenic.
Ignore the Lies – Train Your Mind
Some of the ways that manifested was he saw people who really weren't there and they talked to him and he believed them. Because they seemed just as real to him as I seem to you right now. And, of course, it was destroying him. And without medication to help him, this man, over a period of years, trained himself to ignore those lies. He would even say to other people sometimes, do you see somebody standing here talking to me? And if they said no, then he would say, good, I didn't really think they were there. Or if they would say yes, he'd say, okay, then I'll listen to them.
When the man came to tell him that they wanted to give him the Nobel Peace Prize, he thought it was one of his apparitions because one of the things that these people that he saw told him all the time was all these great, lofty, amazing things about him. And he had come to the point where he was not going to listen to any more lies. It was absolutely amazing that he had the discipline to train himself to ignore those things that seemed so real to him because he knew down deep that they weren't real.
You Can Control Your Thoughts
And I'll tell you something, if he can do that, surely we can learn to compare our thoughts to the Word of God, and if what we think does not line up with what God said, we can say, I refuse to think that. That is not my thought, and I am not going to take ownership of it. Now listen, you probably think, well, I can't help what I think. Well, the truth of the matter is you can. Maybe you didn't know that you could, but you can.
Think about what you've been thinking about. Any time you feel down and depressed, think about what you're thinking about, you'll find the root of your problem. Any time you spend a day at home filled with self-pity, I should say waste a day at home filled with self-pity, all you have to do, it doesn't do any good to say, I wish I didn't feel this way. You need to think about what you're thinking about, and it's what we're thinking about that's bringing the mood down.
Mind, Mouth, Moods – All Connected
The reason why I want to talk about mind, mouth, and moods is because they're all connected. What's in our mind comes out of our mouth. And what we think about and say dictates how we're going to feel. You can talk yourself into a lousy mood anytime that you want to. Amen? How many of you do that sometimes? You just talk yourself into a lousy mood. Well, you know what? You can also talk yourself out of one. You can. Just as easy as you can talk yourself into one, you can talk yourself out of one.
If you rehearse all your problems and make a mental list of them and think about what you don't have, you're going to sink. If you start thinking about what you do have, talking about them, get violent, get a piece of paper, write down all your blessings, and march around the house, and say, I am blessed. I am born again. God loves me. I am right with God. I have hope. God has done so many good things for me. And you'll find out it won't be long, and your mood will start to pick up and lift.
Do Your Own Thinking – We Have Christ's Mind
I remember the days when, if I would wake up in the morning, the thought came to me, I'm depressed. And I would just be depressed all day. It was amazing to me when I found out that I could do my own thinking. That I didn't have to just think whatever fell in my head, that I could actually do my own thinking. Now, to some of you, this is not brand new news, but there are many people here in this room, and certainly probably millions watching by television, that this is brand new news to you.
Can I tell you something? Not in any way, shape, or form to put down the ministry of counseling, but if you learn how to think right, you won't have to go sit on somebody's couch every week and pay them $100 to listen to you. You can think your way right out of bondage. We have the mind of Christ, 1 Corinthians 2 says. We have been given the mind of Christ. That means that we can learn to think like Jesus thinks.
Transformed by Renewing Your Mind – Romans 12:2
Romans 12:2. Now, I want you guys to get this. I don't want you to make me work hard tonight. I just assume just work a little bit easier tonight. Don't be conformed to this world, this age, fashioned after and adapted to its external superficial customs, but be transformed, transformed, changed, and that's what we all want, changed, by the entire renewal of your mind.
By the entire renewal of your mind. You know what? If you want to have what God says you can have, you have to learn to think like God thinks. Amen? How many of you think that you can control your mind if you're willing to let God teach you how to? How many of you don't always bother to do that, and so you let your mind go to the garbage dump, and you end up having a lousy day? Okay. So, whose fault is that?
Choose Aggressive Thinking Daily
Well, it's just the devil. He just puts all these thoughts in my mind. Well, he's not going to stop. I mean, he is not going to stop. I have opportunity every morning to get in the trash can with the devil, or to remember who I am in Christ, and to think about things that are going to minister life to me, not things that are going to minister death to me.
I think it's pretty exciting to think that God has given us that kind of control over our lives and our destinies, that we can think what we want to think, and we can say what we want to say, and we don't have to bow down to a bunch of emotions that want to control us and dictate how we're going to live. We just need to know the truth, and the truth will definitely make us free.
Get Up and Study – No More Laziness
Now, if you don't know anything about the Word, then you've got a long way to go. But so what? It's better to start going in the right direction than to keep going in the wrong direction. And even if Jesus comes back and we haven't arrived yet, at least He'll have a smile on His face because He found us on our way to make the journey.
I thank God for what I know. Oh, I have put in a gazillion hours studying the Word of God. I've got file cabinets full of sermons and messages that God has given me over the years. And I'm so grateful for the amount of time that I've put in to learning the Word of God. And it's so easy to think, well, I wish I knew what you knew. I wish I could quote the Bible like you do. I didn't get it wishing. And you're not going to get it wishing.
Prove God's Perfect Will – Renew Daily
You need to just shake yourself up a little bit. Shake off that passivity and that laziness. When Jesus came to the crippled man laying by the pool waiting for a miracle. He'd been laying there 38 years. Jesus did not feel sorry for him. He said, get up! Get up! It's time to get up. It's time to get a little bit of holy violence stirred up on the inside of us.
And say, I'm not going to put up with this knowing nothing anymore. I'm going to get up and learn the Word of God. Soon as you get your Bible out, the devil's going to whisper, this is pointless because you can't understand it anyway. You know something? I mean, there's still some of the Bible. I just read it and go, wonder why God took chapters to tell me about everybody's relatives and the genealogies. It's just like, I don't get it.
Beautiful Mind – Ephesians 4:23 Daily Renewal
Well, so you know, I try to be faithful to read some of those things, but I got my stuff that I get, man. I mean, there's stuff in here that like, yeah, don't worry. Don't stay mad at people. Don't be full of pride. Love God. God answers your prayers. Even if you don't understand everything that you read, keep at it. Get some study helps. Learn how to study the Bible. Find something in here that you do understand, and educate yourself with the Word of God.
If you were hungry, you'd go get a sandwich. If you're spiritually hungry, you need to get this and feed yourself the Word of God. All right, now, Romans 12:2. Let's put that back up again, and we're going to actually go on a little bit further in this. So don't be like the world, but be transformed by the entire renewal of your mind, so that you might prove for yourselves, I love this, what is the good and acceptable and the perfect will of God.
Normal for Believers – Peaceful, Positive, Decisive
Even the thing that is good and acceptable and perfect in His sight for you. So he's saying, if you want to prove out the good will of God for you, if you want to actually see it in your life and in your circumstances, then you need to let the Holy Spirit help you renew your mind according to the Word of God.
Can I tell you right now, how we think is one of the most important things in our life. How we think what we choose to think about is one of the most important things in our life. And I've determined that I want to have a beautiful mind. I want to have a mind that glorifies God. And I want to think beautiful thoughts. I want to think good thoughts about people. We don't need to think judgment and criticism and all kinds of junk about people. Think about all of our problems all the time of what we don't have.
Daily Choices for Aggressive Good Thinking
Every time we find an ugly thought in our mind, we need to say, Nope, God, I want you to help me have a beautiful mind. Amen? Ephesians 4:23 says that we are to renew our minds and our attitudes daily. Daily. No matter how long you've been walking with God, every single day of our lives, we will have many opportunities to cast down wrong thoughts. It's a never-ending thing. Don't expect to ever get to the point where you don't have to control your mind. Because you will always have to control your mind.
Now, if we choose to think on good things, on purpose, then there's not going to be near the problem that we may encounter now, because if your mind is full of good stuff, then there's no room for the bad stuff to get in. That's why we need to do some aggressive thinking, instead of just fighting with the devil all the time.
What’s Normal for Believers?
Where the mind goes, the man follows. When is your mind normal? You might be thinking, not too often. Is it normal for a believer to be confused or peaceful? Peaceful. They've got it over there. Is it normal for a believer to be worried or to trust God? Is it normal for a believer to be positive or negative? Positive. Positive. Passive or active? Active. Decisive or double-minded? Decisive. Look what you guys know.
So, see, anybody who sits around and thinks garbage all day, it's not because we don't know any better. We do get lazy. Sometimes we just get spiritually lazy, and sometimes we just forget, and sometimes we just get tired of it. And that's why God leads us to come to things like this, because now, here, I'm gonna yell at you for one hour to get your mind straightened out, get your mouth straightened out, get some stability, and you know what?
Keep Hearing the Word – No Backsliding
You're gonna have a better week than you would have if you wouldn't have come. Then, then about the time we start to backslide, you'll turn on the TV program, and I'll be saying it again in a different way, or you'll go to church on Sunday, and your pastor will say it in a different way. That's why we have to continue to hear the Word of God.