Joyce Meyer - Why Is It Important To Acknowledge God?

James 4:13: Come now, you who say, 'today or tomorrow we're going to go into such and such a city and spend a year there and carry on our business and make money.' Yet you don't know the least thing about what might happen tomorrow. What is the nature of your life? You're really but a wisp of vapor (a puff of smoke, a mist) that is visible for a little while and then disappears into thin air.

I really like when I share this scripture to bring a can of hairspray and just go pfft, "There I go". You know what we need to hear a lot more of? We need to hear a lot more of, "If God wills, I'll do that. If God approves".

I'm serious, we need to get more of that into our conversation, even our conversation with each other. Let's just stop declaring what we're going to do all the time because we're not going to do anything if God doesn't enable us to do it and bless us to do it. I think we've moved too far away from, "If it be Thy will".

First time that I can remember God confronting me with this scripture was I was actually in Georgia. It was a lot of years ago, and Dave and I had worked so hard. And I mean, everything we did then was just little, tiny. And I mean, I did so many meetings all the time, it was just, like, ridiculous.

And you know, I'd teach people here, and there, and somewhere else, and somewhere else. And we were just running and going and doing stuff all the time. And we were just completely worn out, and we didn't have much money to do anything, but we had managed to save some money to go on a vacation at a resort in Georgia.

And we drove the whole way, which was about 12 hours. And I was thinking about it this morning just how beautiful it was and full of flowers. And you know, we were driving around the grounds, and it was just so pretty, I just wanted to cry because I was so tired and I was just so happy to be there.

And I'd only been there about a day and I started making plans to come back the next year and bring my whole: "We're going to come back next year, and we're going to bring all the kids..." and I'm planning all this stuff. And the Lord just stopped me, He said, "You might say you'll do that if it's My will".

Come on, I'm trying to help you today. If it's God's will, you'll do that. It's healthy for us to get that kind of a mental and a spiritual dependence on God.

Proverbs 3 says, "Acknowledge Him in all your ways". We don't have to have a prayer meeting about every decision we make, but we do need to acknowledge God at least. Even if you say, "Lord, this is the direction I'm going to go in, but if You don't like it, You stop me".

Often, I'll say that to God, "This is what I've got planned for today. I'm going to get busy with it, but if there's any of it You don't like or You don't approve of, just put Your foot in it and I'm happy to quit because I only want to do what You want me to do". How many of you want what God wants more than you want what you want?