Joyce Meyer - If It Is Broke, God Can Fix It

I call this: If it's broken, God can fix it. I started one day just running references on the word "Restoration". And to restore something means to make it new again or even to make it better than new again and I kinda like that idea because, you know, when you buy something brand new, there's no scratches, no nothing. I mean, you just think you just wanna sit there and look at it. But when you have a piece of furniture that's maybe 20 years old refurbished, it still is just gorgeous but it might have a little nick here or a little chip out somewhere else.

But to be honest, if we look at those pieces of furniture like our lives, I think those little nicks and chips are what give us character. If it's a piece of furniture, it actually makes it a little more interesting, kind of wonder what all it went through in its life to get to that position. I think that we learn from every one of our mistakes. Every single mistake that we make, we learn from it. And that's what gives us character. How many of you believe that you have learned and grown spiritually through the hard things that you've gone through in life? It also means to get an overhaul.

Maybe somebody's here tonight, you don't need a lot of repair, you need a whole overhaul. It means to repair, to fix, to rebuild, or to rehab, but then the article that I was reading said, "But the Bible definition, what the Bible is trying to convey about restoration is this: 'to receive back more than you lost'". I told you, good news message tonight. "A final state better than your original condition," wow. "God blesses people for their faith by giving them more than they had before".

And I've said this many times but I'm sure there are some people here tonight that probably feel the same way. I don't know how to work this out to where it makes any sense but I actually believe that I have a better life and I'm a better person because of what I went through in my childhood, than I would have if I would have had this nice wonderful life. You know, have you ever been hurting and you're trying to talk to somebody about your pain and it's obvious they don't have a clue what you're talking about because they never went through anything? And you can tell because they're busy wanting to say something but it's never what you need to hear.

There's nothing that aggravates me more than when somebody starts preaching one of my own sermons back to me, when I'm having trouble. And I get, "Well, you know, you say in your sermons..." "C'mon, practice what you preach". And when you've been hurt, when you've gone through something really, really difficult and somebody comes to you for help, there's a whole new level of understanding and a whole new level of compassion that you can't give to anybody if everything is just a theory in your head and nothing that you've ever had to put to practice in your life.

So sometimes when God could get you out of something faster but he doesn't, one of the reasons he lets you go through things is to equip you and qualify you to actually be in his service and have the credentials to actually help people, amen?

Now, we're gonna look at Deuteronomy 30:3 through 5 in the message Bible. And I may read this twice, this is so good.

God, your God, will restore everything you lost: He'll have compassion on you: He'll come back and pick up the pieces from all the places you were scattered. No matter how far away you end up, God, your God, will get you out of there and bring you back to the land that your ancestors once possessed. It will be yours again. He will give you a good life and make you more numerous than your ancestors were.

There's a couple of parts of this I really like. "God, your God, will restore everything that you have lost". Everything is everything. It's not everything except your thing. And he'll come back, no matter how far away you are. He will come back and he'll find you and he'll collect you and he'll bring you back to his heart and he'll restore everything in your life that has been broken.

The Bible says that God gives us beauty for ashes, that he heals the brokenhearted. Maybe there's somebody here tonight that you need restoration from a broken heart. Somebody's hurt you, wounded you, a broken relationship, somebody did something to you that you would have never ever, ever believed that that person would have done to you. And right now, you feel like you could never trust anybody again. Let me tell you something, don't ever let what one or two or three or four or five mean people do to you get you into an area where you distrust every person out there. It's miserable for you and it's not fair to them.

Isaiah 61:7. Boy, when I was going through the healing process with God for my sexual abuse from my father, I hung on to this scripture. Man, I hung on to this. This was one of my favorite go-to scriptures when I felt like I couldn't make it one more day. Isaiah 61:7: "Instead of your former shame you will have a double portion: and instead of humiliation your people will shout for joy over their portion. Therefore in their land they will possess double what they forfeited: and everlasting joy will be theirs". I call it when you hang out with God you get double for your trouble, amen.

So I remember the shame. I remember the humiliation, the hiding, the feeling like I was always so different than everybody else. But you know what? Those things now, I have to really try to go back and remember them because God has given me such an amazing life and such an amazing opportunity to help so many people and so the devil thought he was winning but actually he gave me equipment to go around the world and help everybody else.

Now let's talk about hope for a minute. Hope is a great motivator. It's amazing, if you get out of bed hopeless, you don't wanna do anything. But if you had even just a couple of drops of hope, it'll help you keep putting one foot in front of the other. It'll just help you keep going. And the devil does not want us to have hope. He wants us to be hopeless. And one of the things he wants you to think is that you've made mistakes that can never be corrected, you've messed up relationships that can never be corrected, you've done things that can never be forgiven, you've just been sick far too long to ever really get a healing, you've had money problems for so long you've just given up and said, "Well, I guess I'll just always have money problems".

But tonight, God wants you to stir hope up in your heart again. And hope is not just, "Well, I hope". That's not what hope is. Bible hope is a positive expectation that something good is about to happen at any moment in my life. I'm gonna say it again, because this is dynamite. If you can take this home with you and live this every day, the devil will not be able to defeat you. I don't care what happens. He can come against you one way and flee before you seven ways. Hope is a positive expectation that something good is gonna happen at any moment in your life.

And you say, "Well, what if I go to bed tonight and nothing good happens"? Well, then, get up the next morning and start all over again. Let the devil know that you're not gonna shut up until he goes away.

So Zechariah 9:12 talks about being prisoners of hope. Well, we know what a prisoner is. A prisoner is somebody that's locked up in a place that they can't get out of. So I would assume, then, a prisoner of hope is somebody who's locked up with hope and they can't get away from it. And here's what it says: "Return to the stronghold of security and prosperity, o you prisoners of hope: today I am declaring to you that I will restore double your former prosperity to you as the firstborn among the nations". So we've got scripture after scripture after scripture here that says that God will give us double blessings for our former trouble but that's if we do things his way, amen?

You know, there's a lot of things in our lives that we do not understand. And I just kind of got a hold of this a few weeks ago. And I actually shared it a couple of weekends ago. I was preaching at Lakewood Church in Houston and I shared it but it's too good to pass up here. I don't know why I never noticed it but I didn't until recently and I was listening to somebody who called attention to it. You know, there are so many things we don't know. And we get so bothered by the stuff we don't know. We worry about it, we try to figure it out. We ask other people. We try our best to figure out all the things that we don't know and most of the time we only get ourselves more confused.

In romans 8:26 it says we don't even know how to pray as we ought to. We do not know. Everybody say, "We do not know". We do not know how to pray as we ought to so the Holy Spirit comes along and prays through us with utterings and groanings that we don't even know how to hardly get out of our mouth. I guess that's one of those uhh, uhhhh. But the very next verse says but we do know. See, verse 26: we don't know. We don't even know how to pray. Our situation is so messed up, we don't even know how to pray. We don't know but "We do know that all things work together for good to those who love God and are called according to his purpose".

So here is my question for myself and for you: why don't we talk more about what we do know than what we don't know? I don't know why I'm in the mess I'm in. I don't know why I was abused as a child. I don't know why I'm 62 and have never had a date. I don't know, you know. Well, a lot of giggles so you must have needed it. But see, now if you're a person of hope, and you're 62 and have never had a date, you may meet somebody in this building tonight. 'Cause there might be a 63-year-old man here... anyway, I better get back on course.

We know that God loves us. We know we're gonna go to heaven and we're gonna live for eternity. We know we're not going to hell, amen. We know that Jesus is coming back soon and very soon. And we know that all things work out together for good. We don't know but we do know so why not focus more on what you do know than what you don't know? And I think you'll have a much better year.

So God restores our hope. He's always ready to give us hope back. A favorite scripture of mine is Romans 15:13: "May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing through the experience of your faith that by the power of the Holy Spirit you will abound in hope and overflow with confidence in his promises". He is the God of hope. And nobody can take your hope away from you if you won't give it up.

I really like this next one. Some of you will appreciate it more than others but you'll know who you are the minute I start talking. God promises to restore our youth. Now, come on. I mean, at least if you're 50 or more you love that. Maybe if you're 40. If you're 20, you're probably, "Heh, go on to the next subject," but, let me tell you something. You may be 20 now and I may be 75 but someday you're gonna be 75. And don't think for a minute that you won't. If the Lord tarries, every year you get a little older. Every year, gravity takes a little more effect. And one of these days you're gonna look in the mirror and all the stuff that used to be up here is going to have all gone down there. And that's when you learn to dress to hide things.

Psalm 103:2 through 6: "Bless, affectionately praise the Lord, o my soul, and don't forget all of his benefits: who forgives your sins, and heals all your diseases: who redeems your life from the pit, who crowns you lavishly with loving kindness and tender mercy: who satisfies your years with good things, so that your youth is renewed like the soaring eagle," amen?

And I love this from Paul, 2 Corinthians 4:16: "Therefore we do not become discouraged spiritless, disappointed, or afraid. Though our outer self is progressively wasting away, yet our inner self is being progressively renewed day by day". So what's that really telling me? That's telling me that old is an attitude more than it is a number of years.

So let me just give you a few hints. I guess I'll talk to the ladies first. Don't reach a certain age and then decide you have to start dressing old. Now, you know, I don't think if you're 60 you need to go around trying to dress like you're 12 or 16, I hope I don't get myself in trouble doing this but you can go into a department store... my son did this to me one day. He took me shopping and he said, "Okay, now I want you to watch this, mother". He said, "You can shop in all these areas, any of these areas you can shop in". But he said, "Now I want you to notice what starts to happen here". And you can see it. Everything becomes a little more boxy, it becomes a little more, I dunno, just older looking. He said, "Mother, you may never shop in that part of the store. You may only shop over here".

See, they all think they're trying real hard to hide how old I am but I tell everybody anyway, so. Don't talk old. "I'm so old". "Everything's falling apart. Everything hurts. I can't do that now, I'm too old". Keep a sense of adventure. The older you get, the more determined you ought to be to try something new every once in a while. C'mon, just get out of the box and do something new. I don't even care if you drive to work a different route. At least it'll be something new, you know? If you wear black socks every day of your life, well, try some brown ones. Do something. Do something to scare yourself.

How many of you know that old is a mindset? You just keep a young mind, you keep a young soul, and actually, your body will perform better if you do that. The older you think, the older you're gonna look, and the more you talk about it, the more other people are gonna agree with you. So God restores our youth. I like that. I really like that. Father, if there was anybody here who needs their youth restored, especially to have a youthful attitude, if they've gotten a sour attitude, an old attitude, a give-up attitude, I pray that you would give them a brand new fresh attitude tonight and they would be young on the inside, in Jesus's name, amen.