Joyce Meyer - How To Stand Strong In Every Season Of Life

You know, as baby Christians, we are to develop into mature sons and daughters of God. I'm real big on christian growth. People ask me all the time, "What do you think the church needs?" I think we just need to grow up. We need to grow up and do what we're supposed to be doing, and stop murmuring, and complaining about everything and thinking everything needs to be padded so nothing hurts, doesn't bother us, and we need to realize who's alive in us, and what we're equipped to do, and get out there and do it.

But God wants us to do everything that He wants us to do from a position of being seated in Him or having entered his rest. And so I'm just making the analogy that we're babies, we learn how to sit. We learn how to sit, that means enter the rest of God. That's our first position in God. We learn how to be seated, how to do everything else from God's rest. How many are with me on that? Everything else has to be done from God's rest. Then we finally learn how to stand. Today we're gonna talk about standing. Then we finally learn how to walk. Tonight we're gonna talk about walking and running, and so on and so forth.

I think a lot of people get saved and right away they try to run. They want to have a big ministry, they want to do some big thing, want to be on the platform, want to get the greatest promotion at work. And so they learn a little bit about faith and now they're using all their faith to get all these big things, but they're not equipped, they're not rooted and grounded in Christ. They haven't entered the rest of God yet so here's what we see, we see a lot of instability because a christian like that who has maybe a little fruit but no roots, they're okay till a storm comes and then every time a storm comes, they're falling by the wayside, wanting to quit, and give up.

So we need to learn how to stand and how to stand strong, and listen what I'm gonna say, how to be the same in hard times as we are in good times. Amen? Now, that doesn't mean we're gonna feel the same in hard times as we do in good times, but it does mean that we don't have to take our hard times out on somebody else. I think I might just oughta say that again. It does mean that we don't take our difficulties out on somebody else. We still keep our commitments. I'm here today, aren't I? All right, we still keep our commitments. We keep giving. We continue in the word. We continue in worship.

I teach a message and I've actually thought about writing a book called, "What to do when you don't know what to do". Because so often we're just like at the end of our rope, we're like, "I just don't know what to do. I just don't know what to do. I don't know what to do". And, you know, the devil sends out a little demon to sit on our shoulders screaming in your ear, "What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?" And our friends say, "So hey, I heard about your problem, what are you gonna do?" I get so tired of people asking me, "What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?"

Well, there are some things that we cannot do that only God can do but here's what I try to teach people, here's what to do when you don't know what to do. When you don't know what to do, keep doing what you do know to do. Amen? And I can give you a scripture for that a little bit later. Now, so today we're gonna talk about standing and the Bible has so many great scriptures about standing strong in God, that's gonna be the first part of the message, and then standing against the enemy. My goodness, we need to know who we are in Christ and we need to know how to resist the devil.

The Bible says resist the devil and he will flee. He has power, but he does not have more power than you do as a believer in Jesus Christ. We do not have to be afraid of trouble. Nobody wants trouble, none of us are going around looking for it, asking for it, but you know what? The Bible says, "Jesus said in the world there will be tribulation. Cheer up". That's the first thing to do when trouble comes, cheer up because really what the devil's after, he don't want your stuff, he wants your joy because the joy of the Lord is your strength. If he can get us sad, depressed, discouraged, negative, critical, complaining, being jealous of everybody else, then he's won. But I think the real trick for us is say, "Throw your best shot and I'm gonna stand strong in God".