If I Could Do It Again – Part 1 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life

In our world today, there’s an epidemic of anxiety, there’s so much coming against us and for many, it’s causing not just worry but an overwhelming and frightening state of panic.
There are keys to dealing with this and I want to help you use God’s word to fight and win the battle for inner peace.
My book, the Answer to Anxiety will help you through the process of eliminating tormenting thoughts and replacing them with the peace that passes all understanding Joyce Meyers, the answer to anxiety order.
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You can’t listen to how you feel and you can’t listen to your own carnal mind.
You’ve got to really go to the word and listen for that still small voice of God as you know, I love to teach the word.
I’m so honored that God has allowed me to teach His word.
And you know, I’m gonna read your scripture and then I’m just gonna show you a little example.
I believe that many of you, God has called you to do something and you kind of know it, but you get so wrapped up in all the stuff that you’re doing, doing, doing, doing that.
You just forget about it. And I think some of you had a dream, you’ve lost your dream.
You was taking too long, you gave up on it, whatever you had a vision and you don’t all have a vision to do something like what I’m doing.
But I don’t care if it’s a dream to clean your closet out.
You, you need to have, you need to be going somewhere, you need to be making some kind of progress in your life and having something that you look forward to.
We’re not meant to just stagnate and do the same thing.
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and gripe and murmur and complain.
We need to have vision and purpose for our lives. Amen.
And so Genesis 15 1 through six says after these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision saying fear not Abram, I am your shield, your abundant compensation and your reward shall be exceedingly great.
And Abram said, Lord, what can you give me since I’m going on from the world childless?
And he who shall be the owner in the air of my house is this steward Eliezer of Damascus.
He had no air and he was going to have to leave everything he had to a servant who worked for him.
And Abraham continued look, you’ve given me no child and a servant born in my house is my heir.
And behold the word of the Lord came to him saying, let me stop here and say, yes, God does speak to you.
I don’t know why people.
I don’t know if, if you talk to God, it’s prayer, but if He talks to you, you’re crazy.
And I mean, all through the bible from beginning to the end, God spoke to his people and we are no different.
God shows us things and he tells us things and the word of the Lord came to him saying this man shall not be your heir, but he who shall come to your own body shall be your heir.
Now, I want to tell you that it didn’t happen right away.
Matter of fact, it didn’t happen for a long time.
And you know, when we wait and we wait and we wait and we wait.
I mean, if you’re waiting, well, part of the reason why God brought you here is for me to remind you not to give up amen.
And I love this part.
And I think this is what God has done with you this weekend, he brought him outside his tent into the Starlight.
So I’ve got my tent here and this tent represents your life, your house, your neighborhood, your job, and some of you have been in it so long, you’ve forgotten the vision and the dream that God gave you.
And Abraham believed God, that’s all God wants you to do is just trust him.
Just believe him no matter how impossible it seems. Just keep saying God, I believe you.
And he brought him outside and he said, look at the stars.
Come on, where are my stars?
He brought him outside of his tent.
And I love that. It’s like he’d been in there so long.
He’d lost his vision and God brought him out and said, get your mind off all that stuff and remember what I said to you.
And I think that’s what God is saying to many of you tonight.
You’ve had your nose stuck in just the ordinary for so long that it’s time to remember the extraordinary thing.
Come on that God wants to do in your life. Amen? All right. Come on.
Make more noise than that for Jesus. Okay.
Well, I’ve been in ministry 45 years.
The first five years, all I did was teach a couple of home bible studies and I was faithful to 25 people who sat in my living room floor for five years.
And I probably studied harder than even than I do now because I didn’t know anything.
It’s kind of hard to teach other people if you don’t know anything.
So I studied really, really, really hard and those first five years were testing ground for me and God was testing my faithfulness.
I didn’t make any money for it. I eventually quit my job.
So I could study just to do that.
And I had this dream of doing what I’m doing today, but it certainly didn’t seem then like it was gonna happened when I looked at those same 25 people every week.
And I just want to tell you if you want to see God do extraordinary things in your life, you’re gonna have to be patient Because one thing God is not, is in a hurry.
Most of you figured that out by now, right?
And God will test you sometimes it’ll look like there’s no way that what he spoke to you, he’s gonna come to pass.
And those are times when against all odds, you need to say God, I trust you.
I don’t understand this, it hurts, it doesn’t feel good, doesn’t make any sense, but I trust you now, I didn’t know how to do that back when I was going through this.
And so all my suffering you get to benefit from because now I can tell you the right way to do it, even though I didn’t know the right way to do it.
I had to learn it the hard way. I didn’t have anybody to tell me.
People ask me sometimes who mentored you and nobody, the Holy Spirit.
I didn’t have a me to preach to people every day on TBN and day star and all these places around the world.
Matter of fact, when I started doing this, there wasn’t very many women who did and especially not anything on any kind of a large scale.
But now thank God, women are finding out that they’ve got quite a bit going on if they’ll just let God use them.
Amen. Uh And I want to tell you something and I want you to please believe this.
Now, some of you may be called to a pulpit ministry, but that is not, that is by far, not the most important thing that you could be called to do.
More. People are gonna be 1, 1 on one That are ever going to be one from a place like this.
And what is so important to me is that I can get you to understand how important you are.
Quit gawking at people like me and saying, I wish I had a ministry life choice.
You know what? You probably don’t because I want to tell you this is a very little tiny part of what I have to do to stand here and do this.
And so if God makes you do it, do it, but if not be happy to minister to your neighbor, Amen.
And you’ve all got a pulpit. Every single one of you have got a pulpit.
It may be your backyard fence, it may be your desk at work.
It may be while you’re checking out at the grocery counter and you don’t always have to preach to people.
Matter of fact, sometimes it’s better to live it instead of talking and not living it.
Amen. Everybody thinks witnessing is getting somebody in the corner and preaching the gospel to them.
But you witness more with your life than you ever will. Probably with your mouth. Amen.
So I am now 79 years old and I really can’t wait until we have our 50th women’s conference.
So, needless to say in that many years, I’ve learned a little bit most of it the hard way.
So tonight I want to talk to you about if I could go back and do it all over again.
What would I change? First of all, you can’t do that the best, the main thing that you can do from your mistakes is learn from them.
And then part of the privilege I have is I’ve been able to use the mistakes that I’ve made then to help other people.
Hopefully not make them. But most people go ahead and make them anyway because we’re kind of dumb and we just got to figure it out for ourselves.
Amen. But man, I’ve been through some stuff.
So, first of all, the first thing I would not do if I could do it over again is I wouldn’t marry the first guy that I married, which was not Dave, I left home when I was 18.
My father had been sexually abusing me for as long as I could remember.
I was probably somewhere around 12 to 15 years. It’s all I ever remember.
So, I don’t know if I was 345 or six.
But I know I was very, very little and, uh, my mother knew it.
She let fear rule her life. That’s why I hate fear so much.
And her fear kept her from doing anything to protect me and it just destroyed her life, ruined her life.
So I left home as soon as I graduated from high school, I left home And I was 18 in June and graduated that same time.
So I was 18 years old when I left home and I thought that I had got away from my problem.
I didn’t realize that I took it with me in my soul.
See, you can look perfectly fine on the outside and be an absolute total mess on the inside.
And that’s really what most of us are.
We smile at each other in church and say praise the Lord and thank you Jesus glory to God.
And how are you? I’m fine. Thank you Jesus. And we’re not fine.
And one of the things we need to do is get honest with each other.
Have some honest, sincere talks with people.
You can trust and say I need help. I need help from God.
Things are not right.
We need to stop blaming everybody else for the messes in our life and take responsibility.
But I’ll get to that in a few minutes.
Now, I married the first guy that asked me because I was desperate.
I thought nobody would ever want me because I’d been sexually abused.
And so this guy was handsome. He was good looking. I thought it was a bargain.
I knew. Now, listen to me, I knew I was making a mistake.
It was just a little nine.
But I was afraid and I was desperate.
So I did it anyway. And I just want to tell you don’t do that.
Don’t be so desperate that you do something dumb.
It’s gonna end up causing you problems for years and years and years.
Abraham was waiting for God to give him a son and God told him it would be a son from his own body, not he wasn’t gonna have the baby but from his own body.
And they got tired of waiting.
So they got a fleshly planned on how they’re gonna get God’s will.
We never do that. Do we bright idea? I know what God wants me to do.
And so Sarah said, take my handmaiden as a secondary wife.
Now, you gotta be dumb if you give your husband another wife.
But just to be fair culturally, that was not that far outside of normal then.
And I frankly can’t imagine how that worked.
But anyway, you know, it’s like you can have him tonight, I’ll get him tomorrow night.
You know, that wouldn’t work too good, I don’t think.
And So he got her pregnant and they had Ishmael now here’s what I want to tell you.
13 years later, I think it was. They had Isaac.
I don’t know how many years I may be wrong about that.
But long time later and if you get messed up with Ishmael, it’s gonna take a lot longer to get Isaac serious because when you have Ishmael, then you’ve got to take care of Ishmael.
Now you gotta, you know, get in the spirit with me here a little bit.
What I’m saying is if you go off and do your own thing, then it’s gonna take longer to get the thing that God had in mind for you.
And so you may get tired of waiting.
But if you get tired of waiting and go off and do your own thing, you’re just gonna make yourself wait longer and the enemy will always dangle Ishmael in your face while you’re waiting for Isaac.
I remember I was in California and I wanted to do, I wanted to preach like I get to now so bad.
I couldn’t hardly stand it. And everything I did was little, little, little, little, little and I didn’t have any little dreams.
I’m not a person that likes little. I like everything big.
You know, if you’re gonna do it, do it.
If you’re gonna wear it, let it sparkle, make it shine.
And I like a big bathroom.
I like, I want space and uh I was in California.
I had gotten a speaking engagement, which I was so thrilled to have.
And I was laying across my bed one day and praying about a situation that had come up because a man had came to Dave and I, and he was, I guess you’d call him an agent and he said, you know, you’re really good at what you’re doing.
And if you’ll, I’d like to take you on as a client and be your agent and I can, I can get you speaking engagements.
I can get you either and I can get you there and I can do this and that and something else.
Well, that was my Ishmael.
And you don’t know how bad I wanted to say yes.
But as I laid across that bed that afternoon, I knew down deep in here that God said, I’ll do what needs to be done.
I’ll get, I’ll get you invited to places.
I’ll open the doors for you don’t do this.
And I’m so glad I didn’t because I might have missed what God has for my life.
And I want, I just want you to be so careful because the Bible says in the last days, there’s going to be great deception, great deception coming on the earth.
And that means that you, you can’t listen to how you feel and you can’t listen to your own carnal mind.
You’ve got to really go to the word and listen for that still small voice of God.
And many times it doesn’t come in words. It’s just, you just know.
It’s just this, I just wish God would shout sometimes.
Buddy whispers and you gotta pay attention to those whispers and I don’t know why he doesn’t just come and sit on my bed and say Joyce do this Joyce do that.
I don’t know why he makes it so hard sometimes to, but he wants us to press into him and he wants us to take the time for some things like this.
Not just because what I’m gonna say, but just the fellowship you’re gonna have with other people to worship, just getting away, getting outside your tent, getting your vision fresh again.
And some of you if you did come by yourself, man, two days in a hotel room by yourself could be the greatest thing that ever happened to you.
Amen. Listen for that still small voice and don’t do dumb things because isn’t that we learn everything when we’re just being stupid and we think we’re so smart, we think we, you know, are doing just the right thing and we’re just doing the dumbest stuff and then, you know, God comes along, gets us out of it and, and then on top of that uses it, works it out for good in our lives.
So I married this guy and We were married five years and probably in those five years, we maybe live together six months and he had more problems than me.
If that was possible. And he was a con man. Smooth talker.
Good looking lazy, didn’t want to work.
He was a used car salesman and they just not that there’s anything wrong with that.
I’m not trying to be rude to anybody, but he just liked to hang out on the car lot and pretend to be a big shot and never made much money.
And what he did, I never saw any of it.
And, uh, I mean, I woke up one night and he was trying to get my wedding ring off my finger so he could sell it, you know, and I cannot even tell you how many times The guy just disappeared in those five years, he would leave to go somewhere and he wouldn’t come back for four months or five months.
And then he, I mean, he abandoned me in California one time and he was 18 years old and he took me to Albuquerque, New Mexico and back then they would pay people to drive cars to other.
If somebody wanted to buy a certain car in another state, they’d pay somebody if the car was here to drive it there.
Well, that was what he did to make money.
And so he talked me, he talked me into some stupid stuff.
He talked me into stealing some money from the company that I worked for and writing some payroll checks that weren’t mine and cashing them and he sold my car and we took off, you know, for this great life.
And Before, by the way, God made me go pay that money back to them eventually.
That was quite interesting. You know, I go in 15 years later, I’m a Christian and I stole some money from you one time.
God told me something, get it back to you.
And I’m not telling, you know, you don’t have to do what I did.
But you know what, when God does tell you to do something, you better do it.
And that’s part of the problem we have today is people are doing what they please instead of doing what God tells them to do.
And that was hard for me to do. I didn’t want to do that.
I thought what if, what if I go to jail?
You know, sometimes you gotta take a chance when God tells you to do something, you can’t be worried about what’s gonna happen to you.
The only thing you got to be concerned with is doing what God tells you to.
I’m just gonna do what God tells me to and the results are up to him.
And so, I mean, it was just a mess and so I got pregnant and I had a miscarriage and then I got pregnant with my son, David who’s sitting up here on the front row and while I was pregnant with him, my husband left me and told everybody the baby wasn’t his.
And it was probably the darkest time in my life.
one of the darkest times in my life I didn’t, I didn’t really have that many friends.
I couldn’t go home to my parents. I worked, I lived in a third floor, attic apartment.
It was really hot that summer. And Of course, no air conditioning probably.
I had a fan, I hope, I don’t remember.
And, uh, I lost £35 while I was pregnant because of just the stress and you know, the fear.
And when I finally got to the point where I couldn’t work anymore, my hairdresser took me in and I lived with her and her mother until I had the baby.
And then he came to the hospital when the baby was born and he happened to look a lot like him.
So he couldn’t say the baby wasn’t his and we left the hospital, didn’t have anywhere to go.
So I was homeless.
I mean, I wasn’t on the street but I didn’t, didn’t have anywhere to go.
So um he called a relative of, he called his brother’s ex wife who was a Christian and she took us in and while we were living with her, he left me again.
And so finally I said that, you know, I got to get a divorce, I got to get out of this situation.
But he here, I told you that whole story to read you one scripture and tell you this, you may be in the darkest place in your life right now.
You may be going through things that make my story sound like a party, believe me, no matter how bad you’re hurting, there’s always somebody that’s hurting worse than you are.
Somebody going through something harder than what you’re going through.
And there’s a beautiful scripture in Isaiah 45 3, it says, and I it’s God talking and I will give you the treasures of darkness.
There’s treasures for you in these dark places.
If you’re living with pain or disappointment, maybe you feel like you’ve hit a roadblock in your life.
I want you to know that it’s never too late for your fresh start. You can begin again.
And I want to show you how today we’re offering the book.
You can begin again for your gift of any amount.
Visit online at Joyce Meyer dot org or call 1 807 092895.
Completely honest with God David in the Bible certainly was.
He poured out his questions and pain and discovered how deeply God loved Him through it all you can to.
That’s why I’m so excited about this devotional daily devotions from Psalms.
As you take time to know God in a deeper way, you will find comfort and peace every single day.
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