Joyce Meyer - Why Do I Continue To Suffer? (08/24/2019)
Joyce Meyer honestly answers why suffering often continues even after salvation, explaining that while Jesus has already secured our freedom and healing through Isaiah 61, deep soul wounds from past hurts require time, study, and mind renewal to experience it fully. Using the Israelites’ 40-year detour as a warning, she reveals the real blocker is often a bad attitude and unrenewed thinking, but with diligent partnership with the Holy Spirit we can change our thoughts, break generational cycles, and step into the promised abundant life.
The Question: Why Do I Still Suffer?
Why do I continue to suffer? In Isaiah 61, verses 1 through 3, there are Scriptures that carried me through many of the first years of what I might call my very confusing walk with God. Because very often we think, well, you know, now that I have Christ, I am going to church, everything should start turning around in our lives. But it does not always happen just that way.
I was in a large denomination, and I took instructions in the church, and I joined the church, and interestingly enough, not much got better in my life. Now, I did have some knowledge inside of me of Christ as my Savior, and I heard a good foundational message about grace. I understood grace. I understood the doctrinal things that we need to understand. I heard good teaching about Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the blood of Christ, the death and resurrection of Christ. But what to do with my everyday life, I did not know at all.
God’s Touch and Discovering Soul Wounds
And in 1976, God touched my life in a real powerful way, and He gave me a real hunger for His Word, and I began to study the Word. And I began to realize that I had many, many, many problems in my soul that were left over from the abuse in my childhood.
You see, very often, if we are in a circumstance that is hurting us, or maybe as a child you grew up in a situation where you were being hurt, maybe you were not given love and attention, maybe you had a lot of verbal abuse, some angry person telling you you were no good all the time, or always finding fault with you and saying critical things to you. “You will never amount to anything. Why can you not be like your brother? Why can you not be like your sister?” Whatever it is that angry people say.
Various Forms of Abuse
Or maybe you were sexually abused like I was by your dad, your mom, somebody else in the family, a neighbor. Maybe it was one or two times, maybe it was many years like what I went through. Maybe you were physically abused. I know people that were locked in closets, denied food, beaten unmercifully because they had mentally ill parents or angry parents.
It is amazing the horrible things that people do to other people. But one thing that has really helped me is to remember that hurting people hurt people. Hurting people hurt people. I do not think there are very many people who just get up every day and think, “Well, I am just going to see how many people I can make miserable today.” I really think that people many times are acting out of their own pain.
Breaking Generational Cycles
And what Satan wants, of course, is for someone to hurt us, and then for us to be angry and bitter and resentful, have a chip on our shoulder, spend our life feeling sorry for ourselves, get into all kinds of addictive behaviors, and then spend our lives hating somebody else and hurting somebody else so they can then turn around and do the same thing. And then there it goes from generation to generation to generation.
But I am here to announce good news to you tonight, that if you have been hurt in the past, it does not have to go beyond you to anyone else. You have the privilege of speaking the name of Jesus and believing in the power of God to not only completely heal you and make you just as if it never happened to you, but to never let it go on to anybody else in your generation. And that is wonderful good news. Amen. Give God a big praise.
The Process of Soul Healing
In those early years, I needed so desperately to believe the promises of God as I was trying to study this and walk it out in my life. I am not going to tell you that if you have been hurt really bad and you have got a big mess in your soul, your mind is messed up, your emotions are messed up, you do not know how to make right decisions, maybe you want to be in control of everything, or maybe you have become real passive and you do not want to make any real choices, you just kind of float through life and wait to see what is going to happen day after day.
It is going to take some time and some diligence and some study and some prayer to walk out this healing that is yours by virtue of the blood of Christ. While we have it legally as a gift from God, we have to learn how to apply it experientially in our everyday life.
Legal Freedom vs Experiential Freedom
And sometimes people get confused because they say, “But you said Jesus set me free, well then why am I not free? You said I am healed by the stripes of Jesus, so why am I still in a mess? You said that He would give me beauty for ashes, but why is my life still falling apart?”
Because all of those things are, they do belong to every one of us. Every person watching, if you have ever been hurt, anybody has ever abused you, misused you, you have been abandoned, you have been betrayed, you have had peers in your life make fun of you, you have been rejected, whatever it is, and you are emotionally wounded right now. You are what I would term a brokenhearted person.
The good news is, Jesus has already set you free. He has already set you free. Now part of my job as a teacher in the body of Christ is to teach you how to walk out of those prison doors that already have open doors, to teach you to see what is yours and to believe it enough to reach out and begin to put it into action in your life. It is a wonderful journey. Absolutely amazing, wonderful journey.
Personal Soul Struggles
How many of you think you understood what I just said? At least to some degree, okay? And it helps to understand that, because then you are not wondering, “Well, if I am saved, what is wrong with me?”
Well, you know, you can be saved, but maybe you have not renewed your mind yet. I was saved, but I mean, my mind was a garbage pit. I did not know how to think right. I was critical and judgmental and suspicious and angry, and many of my thoughts were dark and lonely, and I did not know that every time I read this, I was learning how to think different.
If we know how valuable this is, we will spend a lot more time in it than just a few seconds a day, maybe on a good day. Amen? My emotions were a mess. I did not know how to get along with people. I was just, I was a nightmare in relationships. And my will was messed up. I went from one extreme to the other. I either had to be in control, or if I got around somebody stronger than me, then they would control me. So I would bounce back and forth from being controlled to being in control, and being controlled to being in control. And that is not the way that God wants us to live.
Saved But Miserable
And I am kind of giving you a little picture of some of the problems that I had, because I want you to know that even though I was saved and going to heaven, I was miserable. Because I needed healing in my soul.
Conclusion to Joyce’s answer: why do I continue to suffer?
The Bible talks about a group of people, about a million and a half of them actually, as an estimate, who came out of Egypt where they had been slaves, headed for the Promised Land. It was 11 days from where they were to where God was calling them to, a land that flowed with milk and honey, a great land. But it took them 40 years to make an 11-day journey.
The Israelites’ Detour
Now, that to me is very sad. And not only did it take them 40 years to make an 11-day journey, only two, two people of the original one and one half million that came out entered into the Promised Land. Now, others were born out there and others entered in, but out of that original group of one and a half million, only two people made it.
And I think that is kind of indicative of a percentage that we might want to look at today of the number of people who maybe are born again, they are not in Egypt anymore, they are not living in sin, they are not officially slaves anymore, but they are always looking toward the Promised Land, but they end up just wandering around and around the same stupid mountains all their life, dealing with the same problems, having the same issues. Come on now. Does anybody here feel like you have been at your mountain long enough?
Missing the Real Issue
The Israelites were a group of people who just, they just never got it. There was only a few of them that really got it. They thought their whole problem was their enemies. The Jebusites, the Hivites, the Perizzites, the Canaanites, ites, ites, ites.
And you know what, we have all got our own ites. The husbandites, the wifeites, the kidites, the jobites, the trafficites, the economyites. They are just, the world is full of ites.
But many, many years ago as I was, I mean, I know God caused me to ponder this situation because it became the root foundation of a teaching that God allowed me to do that I really believe has opened a lot of people’s eyes and helped them over the years. And that is, that their problem was not their enemies, it was their attitude. Their problem was not their enemies, it was their bad attitude.
The Power of Thoughts and Attitude
It is possible that your problem is not really what you think your problem is. It is possible, just possible. I know it is an outside, one-off chance. But it is just possible that you have a bad attitude.
Now, I have four Scriptures that I want to go over with you on the mind because your thoughts become your words and your attitude. Your thoughts become your words and your attitude. How many of you understand that? What a man thinks is what he becomes. As a man thinks in his heart, so is he. Where your mind goes, the man follows.
Ephesians 4: Putting Off the Old, Putting On the New
Somebody out there has been listening to me, I can tell. Ephesians 4, 22 through 24. We want to look at these because I think it is important for you to see them.
Strip yourselves of your former nature. Put off and discard your old unrenewed self which characterized your previous manner of life and becomes corrupt through lusts and desires that spring from delusions. Delusions are lies that Satan tells us that we never bother to learn enough truth to refute those lies.
And be constantly, everybody say, constantly. Constantly. And be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind, having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude. Turn to the person next to you, smile at them so they do not get mad at you and say, get your attitude renewed.
The Bridge to Change
Now, let us look at the next verse because this always amazes me. And put on the new nature. Remember, he started by saying, put off the old nature. And now he is over here saying, put on the new nature. So, he is actually saying, stop living like you are not saved. Start acting like Christ.
But what is the bridge to get there? Be constantly renewed in the spirit of your mind, having a fresh mental and spiritual attitude. So, you are never going to change your life, you are never going to change your behavior till you change your thinking.
Yes, I said, you change your thinking. Now, we do nothing without God’s help. God gets all the credit for any success that we ever have. Apart from Him, we can do nothing. But neither is God going to do everything for us without us joining Him with a faithful effort, leaning on the Holy Spirit, certainly leaning on the Holy Spirit, knowing we cannot do it alone, but being determined that we are going to work with the Holy Spirit to be the person that God wants us to be.