Joyce Meyer - Help For The Uptight

I want to offer some help for uptight people. That's what I'm calling this tonight, just very simply, "Help for uptight people". Are there any of you that would say you kind of fit in that category of being a little uptight, and tense, and you get worried, and concerned, and you don't really care for it too much when things don't go your way? We've got any people like that? You don't like it too much when things don't go your way. Now, I know there's a few of you here tonight that probably think, "Well, I'm not uptight". Well, goody for you, but there's a bunch of the rest of us that are, and we need help. If you're not an uptight person, more than likely you are married to someone who is. How many of you are pretty relaxed, and laid back, and chilled out, but you got somebody in your life that is really uptight and about to... See, so this is for everybody here tonight, amen.

Now, I want to talk to you tonight about maintaining a relaxed and easygoing attitude. You see, I believe that there is a holy ease that we can live with. Now, what I mean by that is not that everything's gonna be easy. We don't really need the power of God in our life for everything to be easy, but even when we're confronting difficult things, we can handle them with a holy ease and relaxed comfort through simply knowing that God is never going to leave us or forsake us; that even though we don't know what to do right now, that God will show us what to do at just the right time. I'm so comforted by the fact that God has promised to always take care of us. I want you just to receive that promise tonight. I feel like I have that word from God for my life, and it's a word right out of the Word of God so it's for all of us, but you have to receive it personally.

Can you just hear the Lord speak in your heart tonight. "I will always take care of you". Just receive that. God says, "I will always take care of you". And you know, one of the things that gets us uptight is trying to figure out what God's gonna do. And I don't know if you've noticed or not, but he doesn't usually tell us. The Bible says that God is never late, but I'll just take it a step further and say He's usually not early either. Why does God sometimes leave us in the situations that He leaves us in when He could just as easily solve the problem today as He could 5 years from now or 3 years from now? Well, because actually, to tell you the truth, the way we develop faith muscles, the way we develop faith in God and trust in God is by having to use it.

The more you use your faith, the more of it you're gonna have in your life. I was such an uptight, tense, easily irritated human being. And even as a christian, even as a woman in ministry, for many years I just did not understand what I'm trying to share with you tonight. I kept wanting people to change. If you'll change, I can be happy. Anybody there right now? You're like, "If so-and-so would just change, then I could be happy. Why do you have to make me unhappy"? And then I would think, "If my circumstances would just change, then I could be happy". And then sometimes I would even look at myself and think, "If I could just change, then I'd be happy". But you know, God showed me something, and sometimes the simplest things can be such a revelation to us, you know? And a revelation is deeper than information. It's something you finally get it.

And several years ago, this is what I saw. "Joyce, the world is not gonna change. There's always gonna be people around that can be irritating. There's always gonna be circumstances come up that you weren't planning on. If anything, there's a possibility the conditions in the world will get worse", but what God has taught me is I can change my approach to these situations. Even though the situation doesn't change, I can change how I approach the situation, how I look at the situation, how I think during the situation, and everything changes for me. The situation hasn't changed, but because I handled it totally differently.