Joyce Meyer - Victims Of Suicide

I want to talk specifically about depression because that's a deeper issue than just being a little bit sad, or having a bad day, or an unhappy day. And let me just start off by saying that there's a lot of different reasons for depression.

And if you have trouble with depression, I know that sometimes it's not as simple as just, well, put a smile on your face, and forget your problems, and go on about your business. But I do believe that no matter what we're dealing with, even if doctors can't fix it, Jesus can. Amen?

Actually, Jesus can heal you anywhere you hurt. Healing is not just for the physical body, but it's for emotions, it's for finances, for our social life, for our mind. Every area of our being, Jesus wants to heal us, and He is our Healer. I believe that all healing comes from God. Even if it comes through some kind of medical help, it still came from God because only He can give people the technology that we have available today to help us in some of these areas.

Now, there are a lot of medical reasons why people can be depressed. Jesus can heal those. I believe that this weekend that people are going to have breakthroughs. And I don't want you just to get your little breakthrough, and go home and enjoy your breakthrough. I want you to let us know that God touched you because it's important for our faith to grow in these areas, and also important for you to share your testimony.

People can be depressed because they eat too much sugar, and it's not agreeing with them. People can be depressed because they don't get enough sleep. People can be depressed because they get too much sleep. Do you know that laziness will depress you? If you just sit around and do nothing, the more you do nothing, the more you don't want to do anything, so nothing turns into more nothing. And the more active you are, the more active you can be. The more inactive you are, the more inactive that you want to be. God didn't create us to sit around and do nothing. He wants us to bear fruit. And so, sometimes just boredom can depress you.

There's a lot of different reasons. Problems, if we meditate on our problems too much, and we think about our problems, and we talk about our problems, if you look around at your problems all the time, you know, there's a danger in just staring at your problems, and talking about your problems, and talking about your problems, and talking about your problems, and talking about your problems.

And God wants to help us in greater ways than what we can even imagine, but we do need to be willing to give Him our problems and our situations. So, if a person is making you sad, don't let somebody else who doesn't want to be happy steal your joy.

And I think maybe I'm going to I said if another person is making you unhappy, don't let somebody who doesn't want to be happy steal your joy, amen? And to be honest, if they enemy is using them to make other people unhappy, the more unhappy you are, the more you feed their problem.

I had a lot of discouragement, and depression, and bad moods in the early years of mine and David's marriage. I had a lot of problems. I'd been abused, and I had not learned how to think right yet. And my husband loved me, and he tried to help me, but I really wasn't at a point yet where I was ready to receive help. And I was unhappy a lot, but Dave stayed happy, and his joy made me mad.

Well, it's the truth. You know, when you're unhappy, somebody that's happy annoys the living daylights out of you. It's just like, "Well, what are you so happy about"? And it would almost aggravate me that he didn't seem to have any problems.

Well, it must be nice that life was so great for you, but you know, you didn't go through what I went through. And, but I can also tell you that in the long run, Dave's joy was the salt that God used to make me thirsty to have what he had.

So, you're not helping the person you're in a relationship with if you let them make you unhappy all the time. You're actually only feeding their problems. So, if you want to help them, stay happy. I said if you want to help them, stay happy.

And I'm not talking about being ridiculous, and going around and giggling all the time, and you know, joy is anything from extreme hilarity to a calm delight. And I think that we have those moments of extreme hilarity, but basically we live in a calm delight. It's God's desire that we just live in this calm delight, and that we can enjoy wherever we're at, whatever's going on.

Not that we like everything that's going on, we don't. And one thing's for sure, now listen to what I'm going to say, you'll never be consistently happy if you don't make a decision that you're going to be.

Okay, so about 40% of the crowd got that, so we're going to try again. I want you know, it's not even about the clapping so much as I just want you to get that. You're never going to really be consistently happy if you don't make a decision to be happy.

And I'll tell you something else that I think. I think that joy has to be a priority in our lives. I realized probably 15, 20 years ago that because the devil stole my childhood, that I never really learned how to be a child. And you know, kids are pretty happy no matter what. You know, they get mad at somebody and be over it in 2 seconds.

You know, you can punish them for something, and they'll find a way to make a game out of that. And you know, you tell them NO and act like it's the end of the world, but a few minutes later, everything is fine. And I never got a chance to be a kid, and so I didn't know how to be one.

And I think every healthy adult also needs to have a good healthy child on the inside of them. And maybe some of you that your childhood was stolen. You've always been serious, you've always been sincere, you've always been deep. You know, I used to say, "Well, I've just got a deeper personality".

Well, I was so deep, I didn't know where I was at half of the time. And so, you know, maybe you're like that. Maybe you've kind of just lost yourself somewhere in your depth, in your deepness, and it's time to just lighten up a little bit and try to enjoy your life.

You don't have to figure everything out. You can trust God and let Him and the reason why we call our TV program "Enjoying Everyday Life" is because it became a real priority for me because I continually saw in the Word of God that one of the reasons why Jesus died for us is so that we might have joy, and that we might enjoy our lives in abundance to the full, until it overflows.

Paul said, "Rejoice in the Lord, and again I say rejoice". And he was in very bad circumstances when he wrote that, it's recorded in Philippians. And so, I started making enjoying my life a priority. And I didn't want to just enjoy parts of it, I wanted to enjoy all of it. Being sad about your problems is not going to make them go away.

"But laughter does good like a medicine," the Bible says. And I know, I can almost see it when I look around, I see a certain amount of people, it's like what I'm saying almost minorly aggravates you because it's kind of like, "It's nice for you to say. You just don't have my problems". No, you're right, I don't have your problems, but I've had plenty of my own.

And I'm telling you what I've learned over the years. I wasted too much of my life being sad about things that I couldn't do anything about. You know, you can't do anything about your past, but you can do something about your future. Maybe you didn't have a good start, but you can still have a good finish, amen? This is the day the Lord has made, and today I will rejoice and be glad.

And you might think, "Well, I can't help the way I feel". Well, depression does do a lot to your feelings. And like I said, there's a lot of different reasons for that. I'm not just saying everybody can just, you know, all of a sudden feel better, but you can do something about how you act. And I believe that when we act on the Word of God in faith, that our feelings catch up with it.