Joyce Meyer - Love God, Yourself And Others As You Live By Grace (08/22/2019)
This powerful message reveals that true self-worth comes from God's unchanging love, not appearance, achievements, or people's opinions. Drawing from scriptures like Ephesians 1:4-5 and personal testimony, Joyce Meyer urges us to stop wasting life searching in wrong places, receive God's deep love as a free gift, and learn to love ourselves in Christ for real healing and freedom.
The Universal Search for Worth and Value
Love. It's actually the answer to finding our self-worth. Everybody in the world just wants to be valuable. We just want to know that we matter. We want to know that we mean something to somebody. And sadly, if people don't get a good start in life, they can waste, yes I said waste, their whole entire life, searching for self-worth. And they look for it in all the wrong places, and what they do, the people they know, the label in their clothes, how they look.
Very often, it's what kind of work that people do. They think that they're valuable if they can be the president or have their name on an office door, but they feel like they have no value if maybe they do some kind of a menial job. And the thing we have to understand that our worth and value is not and never can be in any of that. Maybe we look more valuable to the world, but not to God.
And when push comes to shove, when all this is over, there's only going to be God. And we need to be a little more concerned about his principles and what he has to say about us than we are the people that are rapidly passing through our lives. Do you know that many of the people, most of the people, other than maybe a marriage or your children, that you are involved with right now, there's a good possibility that 10 years from now they won't even be in your life? Wow.
I'm not really comfortable with change. Too bad, because it's happening all the time. I mean, there are people that I thought would always be a part of my life and always maybe work in the ministry. People that we started with and they're just not there anymore. And new people come along. And we learn how to trust God with that.
Don't Tie Your Worth to People's Approval
But when you get your worth and value in what people think of you and whether they applaud you or don't applaud you, we're making a big mistake when we do that because it derails our destiny. The Apostle Paul said, and it's recorded in Galatians 1:10, if I were trying to be popular with people, I would not right now be an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And I can tell you, if I was trying to be popular with people, I would not be doing what I'm doing today because when I made the decision to follow the call of God on my life, I was very unpopular and very rejected. I was asked to leave my church. I lost all my friends. Family members came against us. It's not always easy to do what God is asking you to do, but in the long run it's the only thing that works long term.
You are valuable. Not because you look a certain way or don't look a certain way. Not because you have some kind of a title that goes along with your job. Or because you do whatever you would think would be the lowliest job on earth. Your value is not tied up in any of that stuff.
The Apostle Paul talks very openly in Philippians chapter 3 and he said, Look, if anybody had a reason to rely on the flesh, I had one greater than all of you. He said, I was highly educated. Not just a Pharisee, but a Pharisee of the Pharisees. I was in the right group. I had money. I had influence. I knew all the right people. And yet Paul said, I would get rid of all of it. And I consider it all trash and rubbish. Compared to the priceless privilege of knowing him. And being found and known as in him.
God's Love – The True Source of Your Worth
I'm going to tell you why you're worth something. And worth just as much as anybody else on the planet. Because God loves you. And because he sent his only son to die for you. And if you would have been the only person on the earth, he would have still done the same thing. I said, if you would have been the only person on the earth. And that just makes my mind go tilt, tilt, tilt, tilt.
No. Yeah. I mean, God loves everybody. We can accept that. But God loves you. On your worst day, just as much as on your best day. You know why? Because love is not something that God is even able to turn on and off like we do. You see, love is not even really something God does. It's who he is. God is love.
And I believe it's the love of God that rescues us. It's the love of God that heals the broken hearted. What was my condition after being abused by my father? And abandoned into the situation by my mother who knew what he was doing, but didn't have the courage to stand up to him. What was I like? I felt worthless. I felt guilty and condemned. I felt used. I felt damaged. My personality was all messed up.
And I tried so hard to find some kind of worth and value in all the wrong things. Do we have any workaholics here? I tell you what, I made myself responsible for everything. I was like trying to run the whole world and keep everybody straight. And I worked and I worked and I worked and I worked and I worked and I worked. And I was so proud of my work. And I got mad at everybody who didn't work like I worked. I was your classic Martha.
Martha, Martha. And you know, the interesting thing was, Jesus didn't even chastise her for working. He chastised her for being upset while she was working. For being anxious. She needed to enter the rest of God. She needed to know how to sit at Jesus' feet when the time was right to do that, and how to work when the time was right to do that.
I am a hard worker, and I believe that God has built me that way. And I don't apologize for it. I'm motivated by accomplishment. I enjoy what I do. I don't want to sit around and do nothing. But neither do I want to kill myself working, nor should I be getting my identity and my self-worth out of my work. Amen?
Receiving God's Love – A Message for the Hurting
And I just felt like that I wanted to take a minute and address our TV audience. I know that there are many, many, many of you watching this program right now. You may be laying in a bed sick. You may be sitting in a chair somewhere deeply depressed. You may have been abused in your childhood. You may have been rejected, abandoned. Perhaps your spouse just walked off and left you with a house full of kids, and you don't know what in the world you're going to do.
And you feel like the tail end of everything, and that nobody loves you, and you don't even love you. Well, I want you to listen to me. God loves you. I said, God loves you. And I want you to receive that right now by faith. I want you to step out and say, can God love me? Yes, God can love you because God is perfect, and He can do anything that He wants to.
And He doesn't love you because you deserve it, and that's what makes it so amazing. He loves us in spite of ourselves. And I felt like this morning that God put on my heart that if I would just take a moment to do that, that there's an anointing for people to receive that love right now, and I can tell you that love is what's going to rescue you out of the pit and out of corruption.
God loves you. It doesn't matter who doesn't love you. God does love you. Amen. There's no hope of making any progress in our life. There's no hope of getting from the test to the testimony if we don't learn that we are deeply loved.
Psalm 27:10 says, even though my mother and my father have forsaken me, the Lord will take me up and adopt me as His own child. God is so much more important than any person in the world.
Chosen and Loved Before the Foundation of the World
Let's look at Ephesians 1, 4, and 5. Even as in His own love He chose us, actually picked us out for Himself as His own in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy, consecrated, and set apart for Him, and blameless in His sight, even above reproach, living before Him in love.
Now to really get the full meaning of what that's saying, you have to understand all these words. And I've got a lot I want to say this morning, and I can't go over every little minute detail of everything. But I want you to pay attention to the fact that it says, God just didn't get stuck with you, He chose you. Do you understand me?
I like certain kind of apples, and when I go to the grocery store and I pick out apples, I don't want an ugly apple. I want a pretty apple. The Bible says that we are the apple of God's eye. And God looked at you, and He looked at me, at every single one of us. Nobody is an exception here today, do you understand me? This message is not for everybody else in the room, but you. This is for you.
And God said, I want that one. God chose you. He picked you out for Himself in Christ. This has got to make somebody feel better. You know, last night, if you weren't here, I did what I thought was a good little analogy. I gave away free gifts, books and CDs and Bibles, and this place went wild. I'm telling you what, Matt, the guy that was helping me, he said, I got attacked. He said, I had people jumping on me, trying to take the stuff out of my hands, pushing and shoving.
And then I talk about the free gift of salvation, the free gift of righteousness, the free gift of justification. And we give a little patty cake. Oh, praise the Lord, isn't that sweet? I'm looking at a bunch of people that are not going to hell. Hallelujah! You're looking at an eternal being today. I'm going to live forever.
If we would just stop long enough to think about what we have in Christ, and stop moaning over all of our little petty problems. And I include myself. Stop moaning over all of our little problems that God is more than happy to solve if we will just give them to Him. And ever begin to really understand, I am a blood-bought child of God. God cares about me. He has His eye on me. He goes before me. And He follows behind me.
I didn't have to worry about this conference, because God got here a long time before I did, and He already set everything up. Is anybody home today? He chose us. Picked us out for Himself. That we might be blameless. Above reproach. That means shame and blame. God's not blaming you today. He's not reproaching you today for past sins. The announcement is, you are forgiven. Completely forgiven. All you gotta do is receive it.
Loved Back from the Pit – God's Long Arm of Love
Verse 5. For He foreordained us, destined us, planned in love for us to be adopted and revealed as His own children, through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the purpose of His will. Why? Because it pleased Him and was His kind intent. So God loves us because He wants to. Nothing you can do about it. He just loves you. And if you want to miss out on it, that's up to you. But God's gonna love you anyway.
Isaiah 38, 17. Love it, love it, love this scripture. He loves our lives back from the pit. Look at this. Behold, it was for my peace that I had intense bitterness. But you have loved back my life from the pit of corruption and nothingness. You have cast all my sins behind your back. Woo-hoo!
I love, the Bible says that God's arm is not shortened, that He cannot save. God does not have a short arm. He's got a long arm. And no matter how deep of a pit you're in, He can reach down in it and lift you out. Well, what about all the mistakes I've made, Joyce? Well, you know what? God will get value out of every one of them.
What do you think I'm doing here today? I'm letting God make value out of the mess in my life. And God will do the same thing for you. You're not beyond hope. You're not beyond repair. You're not beyond help. God wants you.
Embracing God's Love – And Learning to Love Yourself
We need to receive God's love. There's so many scriptures the Bible talks about love. Be rooted and grounded in the love of God. Rooted and grounded in love. Let nothing separate you from the love of God.
When you have some kind of a problem in your life, don't ever say, well, God, don't you love me? I just feel like you don't love me. Don't ever say that. Do not ever say that. When you go through the worst storm, be like that tree of righteousness, firmly planted, that says, God, I don't understand what's going on, and it hurts like crazy, but I know that I know that I know that I know that you love me.
If you want to really make the devil mad, in the midst of your worst adversity, stand up and out loud say, I know that God loves me. I know that my Redeemer lives. I know. I know that I know that I know that I am more than a conqueror. Right in the midst of all of these things, I am more than a conqueror.
And you know what? The thing is, is it's not just hype. You believe it down in here. Your spirit bears witness. That's why you shout. Because your spirit bears witness. You might not even see the evidence in your life right now. The Bible says, even though at times we look like sheep led to the slaughter. Right in the midst of all of those things, we are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us.
The most wonderful message in the Bible is receiving the love of God as a free gift. Watch for the love of God in your life, and stop giving luck and coincidence the credit for what God is doing.
Now the next thing that is important about this love thing is you have to learn to love yourself. Most people don't even like themselves, let alone love themselves. It is the truth. I don't like this about me. And I don't like that about me. And I don't like this about me. And I don't like that about me.
Well, why don't you just embrace all of you today? Well, but I don't like that, and I don't like that. You know, sometimes I'm around women that are really sweet. I just think, Joyce, why don't you try being a little bit softer, nicer. You know what, I last about five minutes, and then when I open my mouth, everything comes out as an explosion.
I mean, just imagine if I stood up here this morning and said, I want you all to know. I want you all to know that God loves you very much. I'd be on television about one day, and that'd be the end of it. No, I got to get in your face and say, listen to me. God loves you.
Well, so guess what? God made me the way I am for what He wants me to do, and I don't need to apologize for it, and neither do you. Amen? Now, I don't mean to say by that that we shouldn't grow in the fruit of the Spirit. I study love in the fruit of the Spirit all the time, and it grieves me if I feel like that I am unkind to somebody. That's not what I'm talking about, but I'm just talking about stop trying to be something that you're not.
Stop trying to be like somebody else that you've got as a role model there that you think that you should be like. You can maybe learn some things from them as an example, but you can't be them. You're stuck with you. I said you're stuck with you. You better like yourself because everywhere you go, there you are.
You know what? It's a scary thought to think that I will never for one second in my whole life ever get away from me. I mean, that's pretty frightening. So I finally decided... I mean, I don't enjoy even spending one hour with somebody I don't like, so to spend your whole life with somebody you don't like is really a nightmare.
So I suggest that you decide today to come to terms of peace with yourself, embrace the who you are in Christ, and say I love it, I love it all. And I challenge you every day to say out loud at least four or five times, I love myself. You don't need to say it to somebody, but just between you and God.
It might not work too good if you went to work and said I love myself, I love myself. Oh, I love myself. You just have no idea. It just about gives the devil a nervous breakdown when you start saying, I like myself.