Joyce Meyer - Healing The Soul Of A Woman

TOPICS: Healing

I'm gonna talk about the "Healing of a woman's soul". And you know, obviously men can be wounded too, but this is a women's meeting. And so, I'm sorry guys, but you'll just have to listen to how to heal a woman's soul. And it probably will help you go home and help your wives have better lives. How many of you want your husbands to help you have a better life, amen? Alright. I've had a lot of practice with the healing of my soul. And I know a few things about it, anyway. And Jesus wants us to be whole, whole, completely whole. He died not just so we could go to heaven someday, but he died so we could have a life that's worth living while we're on our way to going to heaven someday.

And you know what? We've all got a story. And your story is important. And maybe you're one of the ones who could give your victory report, your testimony of what God has done for you. And maybe you're in the process of watching God do something for you. Or maybe, just maybe, you're here tonight and you just thought you had to live with it. It's amazing how many people that even are Christians and go to church, I was one of them for a long time, who has no idea that God is interested in anything other than just saving them and getting them to heaven. And so, I lived as a broken Christian for a long, long, long, long time. And I think it's bad to be a pitiful sinner, but it's really bad to be a pitiful saint. Because we are God's advertisement to the world. We're his ambassadors, and he's making an appeal to the world through us.

And so, it's important for your sake and also for his that if you've never done it before, that you make a decision tonight that you're going to go all the way through with God, and you're going to be everything that you can be in him. And that you're not gonna live full of pain, and secrets, and regrets from the past. But you're gonna go all the way through, and you are gonna be whole, and you are gonna be happy, and you are gonna be strong, and you are gonna be confident, and you are gonna hold your head up high, and you're gonna make the devil mad every single day that you're on this planet. Amen?

Psalm 147:3, "He heals the brokenhearted and he binds up their wounds curing their pain and their sorrow". Isn't that beautiful? "He heals the brokenhearted, he binds up their wounds curing their pain and their sorrow". Now, your soul is often referred to as your heart or your spirit, or even at times your mind. And it's really kind of some of all of that, but your soul is not your spirit, but it is the inner part of you. When you're born again, Christ comes to live in your spirit. And everything is just made good in there because he has to clean it up and make it holy, or he couldn't live there. So, we're all taken care of spiritually. That's why we can say and not be lying that we have things or we are things before we actually see them in reality. Like I can say, "I am the righteousness of God in Christ", before I'm actually doing everything right. Because I do have it, I'm just not showing it all yet, amen?

And boy, if you can ever get a hold of that. The devil is a thief, and he's right there ready to steal every beautiful thing that God gives us if we don't stand our ground and hang on to it. So, some of the things I'm gonna say tonight you may have heard me say before, but before this night's over, by the grace and the mercy of God, and it will take that, I'm gonna give you ten points on how to have your soul completely healed. And if you follow these points, it may take some years, it may take some time, it may take some crying, it may take some going through stuff, but you will come out on the other side a whole individual with no evidence that you ever were that messed up person that you used to be. That'll be somebody that you feel like you used to know, but you're certainly not that anymore, amen?

I tell Dave he probably feels like he's been married to 20 different women in the 50 years we've been married because we just keep changing and changing and changing. So, your soul is the inner part of you. And it's a part that certainly we can hide from people out here. Sometimes, we even get pretty good at hiding it from ourselves. You know, I think one of the greatest things that we can do is know ourselves. I mean, really know yourself. And that takes a lifetime to really know yourself and to be honest with yourself. But certainly God knows us. And so, it's very possible to look all together on the outside, and yet be a complete total mess on the inside.

Has anybody gotten good at dressing it up, and taking it to church, and putting on your church face? But yet inside, you're thinking, "I am falling apart, and why is this not working for me"? The condition of our soul is not only felt by us, but it's also felt by all those that we are in relationship with. And to be honest, the biggest favor that you can do your family is to be a healthy you. A healthy, whole you. Where they don't have to wonder every day what version of you they're gonna get. Come on.

You know, Dave says, "I remember I used to drive down the highway at night and think, 'I wonder what she'll be like tonight'". And I didn't know either until the devil told me. I didn't know until I got up and saw what my circumstances were going to be that way. Because if they were good and I was getting everything I wanted, then I might be happy. But I had no stability in my life. And there's nothing worse than being controlled by your thoughts, and your feelings, and what people say or don't say, or what people do or don't do, or whether you get what you want or you don't get what you want.

I want to be happy all the time, not just when my circumstances are telling me that it's okay to be happy. If the soul is wounded, we often wound other people. Many times unintentionally, many times we don't even know that we're doing it. But that's why we run into so many people in the world, and we think, "What is your problem"? Well, they're wounded on the inside. And to be honest, sometimes, instead of just wanting to get away from people like that, we might want to take a little more time to find out what's going on inside them. Because probably there's somebody that's bleeding on the inside and doesn't know how to get the help that they need.

So I think loosely, very loosely, we can say that our soul is our personality. It's the way we present ourselves. And so, God can heal our personality. James 1:21, I love this scripture, it says, "Receive the Word of God with meekness because it contains the power to save your soul". It doesn't say to save you like so you can go to heaven. It says the Word of God is the healing balm that we need that will bring salvation and wholeness to this inner life, to my mind. I tell you what, my mind has been saved. Not just my spirit, my mind has been saved.

When the Bible says to put on the helmet of salvation in Ephesians 6 as part of our warfare with the enemy, you know what that means? Learn how to think like a person that's saved. Don't keep thinking like somebody who's not saved. Think like a person that's saved. And then you don't have to believe every lie of the enemy. My feelings have been saved and are in the process of being saved. But I'll tell you what, I sure don't live by my feelings anymore, nothing like what I used to a long time ago. And even my will has been saved, not just my spirit, but my mind, my will, my emotions. And I no longer have to do just what I wanna do because I wanna do it. And I don't have to get angry anymore if I don't get what I want. But I can actually now want what God wants more than I want what I want in my life. That is wholeness and real salvation.

Now, in saying that, let me say this. It's been a long time coming. Forty years I've been a pretty serious student of the Word of God. And I would say probably 25 years ago, I started getting some pretty major breakthrough. But it took time. I'm gonna tell you something, and I'm gonna be honest with you. What I say tonight is gonna help you, I believe by the grace of God that it is going to help you. I pray that the words will be so anointed that they absolutely have to help you. But just what I say tonight is not gonna be the secret key that's going to fix everything in your life because here's the thing. If you don't go home and do what you hear...

You know, Jesus washed the disciples' feet. And he said, "I've done this as an example to you". And then in John 13:17, he said, "Blessed shall you be knowing these things if you do them". If you do them. And you know, we say, "Well, it's just so hard". Well, that's one of the first things we need to stop saying. Don't ever say that again, "It's just too hard". Because it may be hard, but God is not gonna give us anything to do that is too hard for us to do. He is the God of the impossible. And what God shows us to do, he gives us the grace and the anointing and the power to do.

Everybody say, "I can do it". Okay, I'm 10 minutes in and haven't even gotten to point one, so we're in trouble. When the Bible speaks about being saved, it's talking about being made whole. We're going to skip some stuff already. You see my pit here, don't you? How many of you know about being in the pit? Some of you probably still have one somewhere. Keep it around just in case you need to go in and visit for a day or so. Our pit is where we go and feel sorry for our self, when we go and remember all the bad things that everybody's ever done to us. And anyway, we'll visit the pit in a little bit. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. The pit ultimately refers to hell, but we can experience some of hell right here on earth unless we choose healing.

Psalm 40:2 and 3, a wonderful promise from God. "He drew me up out of a horrible pit a pit of tumult and of destruction, out of the miry clay (froth and slime), and he set my feet upon a rock, steadying my steps and established my goings. And he has put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God. Many shall see and fear (revere and worship) and put their trust and confident reliance in the Lord". Do you see what's that saying? He said, "Look, I was in a pit. He lifted me out of that pit. He set my feet on a rock. People saw it, and then they wanted to serve the Lord". Come on, people saw it, and then they wanted to serve the Lord.

One of the best things you can do for yourself and for God, one of the greatest ways that you can serve God, is to let him heal your life, and then be an example to other people that if God can do it for you, God can do it for them. And if God does it for you, God will do it for them. I'm here to tell you tonight that you do not have to stay broken. You do not have to stay miserable. You don't have to live in depression, you don't have to live in self-pity, you don't have to live hating yourself and despising yourself. You don't have to live in regret, and you don't have to live in dread, and you don't have to live in fear. God is living in you, and you can live the life that Jesus died to give you. And some of us are gonna be your cheerleaders to cheer you on as you make your journey.

Now, Joseph is probably one of the best examples as the right way to respond to unjust treatment. And I'm sure that he had some rough days that the Bible doesn't necessarily tell us all about. But wow, what an example. And what a great account the Bible gives us of somebody who was so unjustly and unfairly treated. And yet, he didn't park at the point of his pain. Come on now. He went all the way through from the pit to the palace. And honey, that's what God's got in mind for you. You might be in a pit, but you don't have to stay there 'cause he's gonna lift you out of that pit and set your feet on a rock.

So, just a few scriptures here in Genesis 37, "And when they saw him," they being his brother, "Far off, even before he came to them, they conspired to kill him. They said to one another, 'see, here comes this dreamer and the master of dreams. So come on now, let's kill him and throw him into some'", what? "'Pit: then we will say to our father some wild ferocious animal has devoured him: and we shall see what will become of his dreams.' Now Reuben heard it and said, 'no, let's don't kill him.' And he said, 'shed no blood, but cast him into this', what? "'Pit or well that is out here in the wilderness and lay no hands on him.' He was trying to get Joseph out of his hands in order to rescue him and deliver him to his father. When Joseph had come to his brothers, they stripped him of his distinctive long garment which he was wearing: and they took him and they cast him into a," what? "Pit, which was empty and there was no water in it".

But here's what I've got to say. Joseph chose not to remain where they left him. I don't know where somebody maybe has left you. Maybe somebody you loved and trusted walked out on you, and you're sitting there now with a broken heart. But you don't have to remain where they left you. You can get up, you can shake it off, and you can go on and do great things for God. Joseph decided somewhere down within him that he was gonna keep a good attitude, and that he was gonna trust God to do something for him in his life.

Well, let me tell you what living in a pit is like. We sit in our pits. For me, mine was my little office. Before I had an office, it was the bathroom. I used to love to go in the bathroom and be pitiful. Do any of you ladies like to go sit in the bathroom floor, lay your head on the toilet bowl, and just cry and be pitiful? Come on, be honest. Do you ever go to the bathroom and cry? Well, you know, it took me a long time, but God gave me a revelation on why women like to go to the bathroom and cry. There's a big mirror in there. And after you have sufficiently cried long enough, and you just, like, now feel as sorry for yourself as you possibly can feel, I can remember I would stand up really a mess now. If I had any makeup on, it was mascara's running, my eyes are all red, I'm looking bad, the hair's messed up. And I go look at myself in the mirror and go, "Ahhh".

I remember, one time, as a born-again, spirit-filled, Bible teacher, I was sitting in the bathroom floor, seven months pregnant with my baby, who's now, gonna be 37, head laying on the toilet bowl, feeling sorry for myself and one of the two times, in my life, that I can ever remember anything like this happening. I felt like, my spirit kinda lift out of my body and hover above me and look down at me. And the Lord said, "Don't you look ridiculous? Do you just not look ridiculous"? And you know what? We just need to sometimes just knock it off. Come on, I said we just need to knock it off, and we need to just get on with what God wants us to do.

So, I wasn't this dressed up when I went into my pit, by the way. Cause if you're gonna sit in your pit, you certainly, don't wanna look good while you're in there. And I would sit there and just hate people. And you know, if you live in a pit for a long time, you might as well decorate it and make it kind of nice. You know, so you've got something when you go in there. And so, you know, you can have pictures in your pit of all the people that you hate, and then it's like, "Ugh, ughaa. Boy, I remember, I remember what you did to me. And if you think I'm ever going to forgive you, I'm not going to forgive you. I hate you". And then I could just feel so sorry for myself.

Dave plays golf, and he doesn't even understand what I'm going through. And when I try to tell him, he just says, "Cast your care. Just cast your care". And then I had this book of remembrance. I was so dumb, I actually remember one time getting out a pad of paper, and writing down on a piece of paper everything that I thought was wrong with my husband. Well, the last list I made, I made one of everything that I thought was right with my husband. God has changed me, amen? Now, here's the thing. You know, we say, "Oh God, you gotta change me. God, you gotta help me. God, you gotta do something, you gotta do something". Remember what I said last night? The first thing that Jesus said to a lot of the people that he encountered was, "Get up, make up your bed, and go home". And what he meant was, "Get up, get some gumption, shake that junk off, decide you're not gonna live like that anymore, and let's clean up the mess, and leave no evidence that you were ever in that kind of a situation".

Well, God wants us to receive his unconditional love. It's one of the most important steps that we can take toward healing. The healing journey is a day-by-day process and today, we'd like to offer you help for your own journey or somebody else that you know, to wholeness. We're offering you, "The healing the soul of a woman devotional". It's a 90-day devotional, so each one is long enough that it's like a mini teaching, and then, a journal called, "Overcoming, a soul-healing journal". This journal is a tool that you can use to work through your hurt, write out your thoughts, and overcome the wounds in your heart. It also, includes excerpts and insights to offer rest and encouragement for your healing.

And also, all the proceeds from what you purchase today is gonna go to help, "ProjectGRL", to help girls and women that are in trouble and need our help. And if you don't already own my book, "Healing the soul of a woman", you can get it right now, today, by going to our resources online or you can pick it up at most bookstores. Thank you for being with us today. We're gonna have a story for you, a testimony of a girl that's been healed. So, take a look at this.