Joyce Meyer - You Belong To God

I'm gonna start with a question, what are you worth? Now, you know, normally when somebody asks that question, the first thing we think of is our finances, or maybe our job position, or our accomplishments. In the world, we learn how to tie our worth and value to what we do but in God's Kingdom, he wants us to understand that our worth and value is wrapped up in who we are in him, not what we do.

I'mma say it again, your worth and value is not determined by what you do, or the important people you know, or the job title you have, how much education you have. Your worth and value is determined by being a child of God. And I can tell you what you're worth.

Every one of you is worth the son of God. "For God so loved the world that He gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life." You're purchased with a price.

1 Corinthians 6:20, "God paid a tremendous price for you and you belong to Him." You don't belong to yourself. You may think you do, but in reality, you belong to the Lord.

1 Corinthians 6:20, "You were bought with a price purchased with a preciousness and paid for, made his own. So then, honor God and bring glory to Him in your body." And I think we might go on to say, and with your life.

Are we glorifying God with our life? Are we glorifying God with our lifestyles? Are we glorifying God with our choices an our decisions? Are we glorifying God with our thoughts, with our words, with our choice of entertainment? Can I tell ya something? God's not interested in just having a Sunday morning relationship with you. He wants to invade every single area of your life.

See, we think about being filled with the Spirit and that's sounds like fun. "Oh, yes, I wanna be full of the Holy Ghost." But you know what happened to me when I was filled with the Holy Spirit is God starting messin' in stuff that I didn't want Him to mess in. You know, you can just go sit on a church pew on Sunday morning and just be a miserable saint instead of a miserable sinner. It's one thing to be lost and be miserable, it's another thing to be saved and still be miserable.

Surely, we can understand that Jesus didn't die so we can be miserable, and murmur, and complain, and grumble all the time, be unhappy, have no peace, worry about everything. He died for us to have a totally different quality of life and He bought us back from the enemy. He paid for us and He bought us back.

Now, anything that you have paid for and bought, you have a strong sensing that it's yours and you really don't want anybody else messin' with it. It's yours, you can do what you want to with it.

Well, we have been bought and paid for with the precious blood of Jesus Christ. We no longer belong to the devil, but the news tonight is you no longer belong to yourself either.

Well now, you have freewill and you can do anything you want to. I'm not saying that you can't. You can live any kind of life you want to. And you may, you know, live a compromising lifestyle and still squeak into heaven but you won't be happy, and you won't help the Kingdom of God, and you won't be a good witness to other people.

But tonight, you can do some turnaround and make some decisions. We all have to come to a crisis point in our life and maybe some of you have already been at that place and you've made a real serious decision about your walk with God.

I believe many of you have but I'm also well aware that I'm not just talking to people in this room tonight. There are people all over the world watching by television in different languages and I wanna make sure that you know that you really do not belong to yourself.

You have been bought with a price and God expects you to surrender your life to Him. We need to consecrate ourselves to God and to be consecrated means to be set apart for a special use of a special purpose.

We're going deeper tonight, whether you want to or not. "Well, sister Joyce, I'm hurtin' and I thought you'd comfort me." Oh, let me tell ya something, if you talk about big time comfort, you just start lettin' God have control of your life.

Now, it's gonna be a fight to start with, I'll tell ya that right now 'cause your flesh is used to ruling things. And how many of you know that our flesh can just really throw some fits?

But oh, when you finally make it through, wow, does life get sweet. You don't have to worry, you don't have to compare yourself with other people. You don't have to try to impress people. Your worth and value's not in what you do.

You can do what you do for right reasons. You don't have to get upset if you don't do everything perfect all the time because you belong to somebody that's greater than you are and greater than anybody else out there.

O, what are you worth? The blood of Jesus Christ. What are you worth? All the death, the misery, the pain that Jesus willingly took on Himself and he would have done it if you would have been the only person on the earth. That's how much God loves you and that's how much you're worth.

So, if anybody would ever ask you again how much you're worth, you might have to do a little preaching afterwards. But you need to say, "More than you can ever possibly imagine." That'll shake 'em up a little bit, amen?

You know, how many of you wanna enjoy your life more? Okay, now, I'm just gonna tell ya something, you can't enjoy your life more if you don't learn to enjoy yourself more. Somebody over here liked that. You can't enjoy your life more if you don't learn to enjoy yourself more and for that matter, enjoy God more.

I believe the high call on our life is to enjoy God. Serving God is not a drudgery. I'll tell ya what, my journey with God, once I really got on board and figured out that he was gonna get His way in the end... see, really how hard it is is pretty much up to us.

Fighting with God is a losing battle because He either will get his way in your life or you will be miserable. I said, he either will get His way in your life or you will be miserable.

You know, sometimes I can tell I'm fishin' for something and I'm not 100% for sure what it is. But I just got this strong sensing tonight that God's brought a lot of people that you've been wrestling with some things in your life, avoiding, evading.

Maybe God's trying to deal with you about something and you've been blaming it on somebody else. Oops. Come on, maybe God's been trying to get you to walk away from something that's poisoning your life and you just keep hanging on. And maybe you've been trying to get away from something that God wants you just to settle down and stay put.

I'll tell ya what, our world is in such an awful mess, and I wanna tell you what, there is so much compromise, not only in the world, but also in the church. And some of us have gotta make some decisions that we're gonna stand up and be the best we can be to glorify God and not just keep floating downstream with everybody else just so they can like us and approve of us.

If I were you, I would make a decision tonight that you're gonna go all out for God if that means that you lose every friend you've got. And you might, I did. But now I got more friends I know what to do with. See, what you give up for God's sake, He will multiply back to you many, many, many times over.

You know, we wanna have a great relationship with God, but we wanna do it respectably. We don't wanna be one of those radical, fanatic, overboard Christians, amen? Well, I'm not saying we all have to go around acting like lunatics but let me tell ya something, if you're gonna serve God, really serve God, you may do a few things that seem odd to the rest of the people occasionally.

Like be happy while you got problems. That is really strange. Not worry about your kids when they seem like that they're just going right down the drain 'cause you got some secret information.

Being good to your enemies, what sense does that make? Praying for those that have hurt you, wow, we got a strange deal going on here. Everything's upside down from what it is in the world but I'll tell ya what, it works. I've tried the world and I've tried God and I can tell ya God's better.