Joyce Meyer - Relationships

Well, thank you for joining us today on "Enjoying Everyday Life". You know, one of the ways that we can enjoy every day of our life a lot better is if we have really good relationships. I don't think there's anything better than great relationships and probably not too much that's worse than really bad relationships.

And I don't know about you but I find learning how to be integrated with a lot of different people, to be a little bit interesting and quite challenging. See, here's the reason. There's only one of each one of us. We are the way we are and if everybody would be like us, we would be okay, we think. We probably wouldn't like that either 'cause most people don't even like themselves.

Now I want you to think about this. Everybody that you deal with is different than you are in some way. They may have a similar personality but they're different than you are. They're not gonna think the way you do, they're not gonna like what you like, they're not gonna want what you want.

And so God puts us all together and says, "Hey, guess what? I want you to get along really good". And there's words in the Bible like "Agree" and "Unity" and "Harmony". And the Bible actually teaches us that if we can maintain that unity and harmony, oh wow, it really increases the power of God in our lives. But if we don't have that, when we're divided, then it opens the door for the enemy in our lives.

And so in families, I mean, the enemy really attacks families. He really wants to get into marriages, and brother and sister relationships, and relationships with kids and their parent. And then when you get into any unit like the ministry here and you're all born again people that love God. You love the Word. And yet, I know full well that there are times when you have a hard time getting along with each other.

So it doesn't matter how, quote, "Godly" you are or how "Born again" you are or how many times a week you go to church, you're going to deal with these issues of how do I get along good with other people.

Now, it's really not rocket science if you wanna know the truth. It's amazing how we complicate things sometimes that are just pretty easy. So I can give you one scripture that solves the whole deal: "So whatever then that you desire that others would do to and for you, even so do also to and for them".

So the best way in the world to get along with everybody is to treat everybody the way not the way they treat you, but the way you would like to be treated. Now, this is found in Matthew 7, verse 12, but prior to verse 12 is the wonderful scriptures in Matthew 7 about, "Judge not lest you be judged," the same way that you judge other people is the same way that you will be judged back.

Why try to take the speck out of your brother's eye when you've got a telephone pole or a log in your own eye? And he goes through that whole thing. And then goes on to say that, you know, don't throw your pearls before swine which really, if you study that out, he's given us an ability to love people so he's pretty much saying if we don't do that then we're opening a door for the enemy in our own lives.

So then he goes on to say, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Then next verses talk about, "Stay on the narrow path that leads the way to life, and off the broad path that leads to destruction".

So I might just say that treating other people the way we wanna be treated definitely you have to stay on the narrow path which that means there's not a lot of room for fleshly behavior and doing what we feel like and treating people the way we feel like. It means we always have to submit our feelings to the fact of God's Word which says that when we treat other people good, even if they're in the class of an enemy, if we treat them good now we throw the door wide open in our life for blessings of God to chase us down and overtake us. I'm gonna say that one more time.

When we will keep our flesh under, not walk according to how we feel, but base everything on the fact of God's Word, when it comes to getting along with people, if we will do what God asks us to do and we can't do it without His help, we throw the door wide open for God's blessings in our lives.

Let's remember this morning that the Bible even says that if we want our prayers to be answered, that when we pray we must first forgive anybody that we have anything against otherwise our prayers are not going to be effective.

So the Bible actually, I think, is a book about relationships. I really believe it's one of the best books that we can ever find about relationships. But it's about three relationships: number one, our relationship with God which, if that's not right, nothing else is gonna go right. Secondly, it's about our relationship with ourselves. A lot of people don't get along with themselves so there's no hope of ever getting along with anybody else. If you don't love yourself, you're not gonna love anybody else. And then thirdly, it's about our relationship with all these different people out there.

So the way this is supposed to work is God loves me, that's the fact of the Word. I believe that and when I believe it I receive it so I let that come into my life and into my heart and that becomes a reality to me and then only because God loves me I can begin to love myself.

I didn't say, "Be in love with yourself". I'm not talking about a selfish self-centered love. I'm talking about a respect for yourself, an appreciation of what God has created, valuing yourself, being kind to yourself, being patient with yourself. How we treat ourselves ultimately is how we're gonna treat other people, amen? And so then, when that's taken care of, when you know God loves you, you've received that, you're loving him back, then you can let that love flow through you to other people.