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― Joyce Meyer

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And the number two, you know, as long as our circumstances control us, we might as well say that the devil is in charge of our life because he can mess around with our circumstances.
He he knows just how to push your buttons and which ones to push.
At what time I’ll tell you a little secret.
I’m Joyce Meyer and I believe that God can heal you everywhere you hurt.
Well, thank you for joining me today on enjoying everyday life. You know what?
It just wouldn’t have been the same if you wouldn’t have joined me, I believe that you’ll help me preach better today.
So you pray for me while I bring you the word.
And I’ve already prayed for you that you’ll receive it and then it’ll help you in your everyday life. Today.
I want to talk about something that we all need and that is emotional stability. Wow.
I tell you, I was so emotionally unstable 55 years ago when Dave and I got married because I’d been sexually abused by my dad and really mistreated in my childhood and never had a really good example.
And I remember Dave saying after I did have some positive change in my life, he said, I remember when I used to drive home at night thinking, well, I wonder what she’ll be like tonight.
And you know, that’s pretty sad to have to live with somebody like that.
But I was that way because my circumstances dictated how I felt.
And what I did now, you know, the Bible says in Romans 8 29 that we are predestined, predestined by God to be conformed into the image of Jesus Christ.
So that basically means that we’re all to grow spiritually and keep growing until we become like Jesus.
And of course, that’s gonna take a lifetime plus none of us will have arrived even when Jesus comes to get us.
But we should always be making progress.
So, Colossians 1 28 and 29 says he is the one we proclaim admonishing and teaching everyone with all wisdom so that we may listen to this present, everyone fully mature in Christ.
Now, Paul said, the Apostle Paul said that was his goal to keep working with people until he could present every one of them fully mature in Christ.
And if you listen to me teach very much, you know, that a good portion of my teaching is about spiritual maturity.
It’s about growing up in God and not just remaining a baby Christian.
It’s about really living the life, not just going to church on Sunday and thinking that’s all that’s required, but actually hearing the word and then doing what we hear.
Paul said to this end, I strenuously contend with all the energy Christ so powerfully works in me.
So he said I really work at this.
I strained myself to work with you and to help you mature in Christ.
Are you growing in your relationship with God?
Are you growing and improving all the time in behavior?
Are you growing in the area of not letting your circumstances dictate how you feel and what you do?
Can you say now that you’ve made a little improvement from the way you were last year?
God is not the least bit upset if we haven’t arrived, but he does want us to be making progress.
Emotions are said to be the believer’s number one enemy and we all have them probably more than anything.
People tell us how they feel I feel, I feel, I feel, I don’t feel, I don’t feel.
And, you know, we really just cannot live by our feelings and ever be spiritually mature emotions, tell us how we feel.
But they don’t tell us the truth. Emotions are ever changing.
And usually without any notice, I call them fickle feelings.
You can go to bed feeling one way and wake up the next day feeling a totally different way.
They change daily or sometimes even hourly.
I, I told somebody this week I said our bodies are so interesting.
Like this is a Thursday that I’m here doing this.
But on Tuesday I got up and I just felt really good all day.
And Wednesday I got up and for some reason I just never could get with it that day.
I was just like, I really couldn’t get fully awake or just, I just, I didn’t feel sick, but I just didn’t feel right.
And this morning I woke up and I felt fine again.
And so it’s hard sometimes to figure those things out. But there are some things that we can learn.
We may see something and feel like we want to buy it.
But truth is we probably can’t afford it. And another truth is that we probably don’t even need it.
Have you ever emotionally bought something?
And then two days later think, why did I buy that, or I wish I wouldn’t have bought that and it’s really bad.
If you buy something and agree to make payments on it for five years and you didn’t even take time to think it over.
We need to, I always say, let emotions subside and then decide.
And I’ll tell you a little story that I tell once in a while that helps make this point several years ago, like probably by now, 35 years ago, we didn’t have very much money and I had worked and saved to the point where I had $275 saved.
And that was like a fortune to me back then. And, um, I wanted a good watch.
If I wore a watch, that was not a good meal, it would turn my arm green.
And so I wanted to get something that was good.
And so we were out at the mall one day and I really didn’t go intending to buy my watch.
I didn’t think I had enough money for it, but we went in this jewelry store and there was a really pretty watch there.
You know, they can make something pretty, but that still doesn’t mean it’s really good quality.
It was really pretty and it had some rhinestones on it and they were sparkly and shiny and, and, uh, it was gold plated which that plating can wear off, you know, and I tried it on really liked it and, you know, sales people that are really good at it, they know how to help your feelings, want something more and more.
So, he said, I’ll tell you what, if you’ll buy this today and that’s always the way it is.
You gotta do it right now. If you’ll buy this today, I’ll give you 10% off.
But that’s only good for today.
Well, I was so tempted to just buy that watch, but it would have taken all the money that I had, uh, let’s say it was $259 or whatever.
So with tax, he was taking all my money.
But I’m, I’m learning and already preaching some things on emotional stability by then.
And so I was already saying, let emotions subside and then decide.
So I said, I’ll tell you what I’m gonna, I’m gonna think about it for just a little bit and then if I want it, I’ll come back.
So I went out in the mall and started walking down the mall and I was thinking about, do I really want to spend my money on that?
I just wasn’t sure and walked by a store and there was a suit in the window.
I remember it was a purple suit and it was trimmed in black and it was a suit that it, it cinched in at the waist and then had this little ruffle thing and I just really, really, really liked it.
And then Dave didn’t help because he said, oh, that’s really pretty.
That would look good on you, you need to get that.
And so come on, he says, let’s try it on.
So I went in and I tried it on and sure enough, it looked really good on me.
Bad thing was they even had it in two colors.
They had it in red too and I look good in red and I look good in purple, but the suit, one of them was gonna be take almost all of my money.
Well, now I’ve got a dilemma because I can’t buy the suit and the watch.
So what am I going to do?
So I said, I’ll tell you what, I’m gonna take a walk and I’ll decide if I want it, I’ll come back and I want you to remember this because some of you start needing to take a walk before you buy something or you need to sleep on it.
It’s amazing how we can want something so bad the day we see it.
But if we just go home and sleep on it the next day, we’ll think, you know, that’s not really that important to me.
So I took a walk thinking what do I want to do? What I want to do?
And you know what I end, ended up thinking, you know, what, more than I want that watch and more than I want that suit.
I don’t want to be broke.
I wanted to have enough money that if I wanted to take one of my kids to lunch I could, or if I saw something smaller I wanted that I could buy it and still have some money left.
So I just went home, didn’t buy either one. And you know what?
If you’ll obey God, he’ll bless you.
Couple of weeks later, my husband took money that he had saved and he had saved more than me.
We both had an allowance then and he bought me the watch and the two suits and I still had my money.
Oh, well, that’s the way to live. See, I waited and God bless me.
I wanna encourage you to learn how to wait and to really take time to search your heart and really think about what you want to do what God wants you to do before you just jump off and do something emotional.
Hebrews 5 12.
Paul tells the Christians by this time you ought to be teachers, but you still need someone to teach you the very foundational elementary truths of God’s word all over again.
He said you keep needing to hear the same stuff over and over and over because it’s still not working in your life.
And, you know, no matter how many times we’ve heard something, unless it’s working in our life, we need to hear it again.
He said you need milk, not solid food. Now, what do you mean by that?
Well, you know, a baby has to drink milk for a certain period of time because that’s all their system will handle.
And then you finally start putting them on solid foods, usually stuff that’s all mashed up at first or baby food and you gradually add more and more solids.
Well, the word of God is like that, you know, I can preach you what I would call milk messages or I call them dessert messages and you’ll, you’ll be happy with those.
You’ll love them, you’ll receive them.
I can tell you how much God loves you, how, how wonderfully God has created you and the gifts that you have and the good plan that God has for your life and everybody’s gonna love that.
But if I start teaching on perseverance, patience, going through things that are hard and not giving up on them, giving things away that God tells you to give away that you really don’t want to give away.
Now, that’s another story. A lot of times people don’t receive those messages, they may listen to them but they don’t obey them.
And it’s very interesting to me because I can go into a church service and say, well today I’m gonna preach, I’m gonna preach on how to receive your miracle from God and what everybody will clap and cheer and they’ll be so happy.
But I can say today, I’m gonna teach on um patience.
Oh Nobody collapse or dare I say today, I’m gonna teach on suffering, dead quiet in the room.
You know, as a, a minister of God’s word.
You got to have courage to preach things to people that they really don’t want to hear because the feedback you get from them is not going to be very encouraging to you.
Paul said brothers and sisters, I could not address you as people who live by the spirit, but as people who are still still worldly mere babies or infants in Christ, I gave you milk, not solid food because you were not ready for it.
Indeed. You are still not ready for it for you are still worldly for.
There is jealousy and quarreling among you. Now, that’s interesting.
So he’s saying as long as we are jealous of one another and we quarrel with one another, we’re still baby Christians.
You know why? Because those things are emotionally driven, you hurt my feelings, you made me mad.
So now I’m not gonna forgive you and I’m not gonna talk to you or whatever the case might be and we need to learn how to not let what other people do pull us down to their level.
We need to know what Jesus wants us to do. He never changed.
I mean, no matter what the far he accused him of, no matter what people accused him of, no matter how people treated him, he always remained the same.
And boy, that was such a desire in my heart for such a long time.
II I didn’t want my circumstances to control me.
You know, as long as our circumstances control us, we might as well say that the devil is in charge of our life because he can mess around with our circumstances.
He, he knows just how to push your buttons and which ones to push at what time.
And I’ll tell you a little secret.
One of the times when we’re the most vulnerable is when we’re really tired or when we don’t feel good, you’re much more likely to behave in an ungodly way during those times than other times.
So sometimes you need to just go off somewhere and be quiet.
You know, when I get finished with the conference and I’ve preached three or four times and traveled and I’ve talked and talked and talked and talked and talked many times.
I’ll just tell Dave, I’m probably gonna be pretty quiet today because I’m just recovering and, and he knows that.
And a lot of times I just wanna be by myself and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s better because then I can just rest and recover and come back to being the person that I should be.
Don’t ever make real serious decisions, major decisions when your emotions are high or low.
You see, if you feel really great, you feel like I can do anything and you feel really low.
You feel like, man, I don’t want to do anything.
And I’ve learned, even with me, it’s like when I used to go out of the country and do mission trips two and 34 times a year.
Oh, we would have these big crusades in India or Africa and have hundreds of thousands of people there.
And it was so exciting. Wow.
I would be after I would preach to those people and maybe it was the last session and thousands of people had been saved.
And it was just wonderful. I mean, right, then I, we’d start home.
I’d start making plans on coming back. I want to come back here and do this and that.
And something else. And my son who handled all that, he in the beginning would start making plans.
And then maybe by the time I got home and I was exhausted, I would think, uh I don’t, I don’t know if I want to do that.
And so he kind of learned to wait until my emotions calm down before he really found out what I really wanted to do.
So I want to repeat again, don’t make major decisions when your emotions are extremely high are when they’re low.
Wait till things settle and balance out.
Let me say again, learn how to wait before you make major purchases before you make major decisions.
If you’re an impatient person, you don’t want to wait. You don’t like to wait.
I don’t like to wait. I’m a quick decision maker and it’s challenging for me sometimes to wait.
But boy, you’ll stay out of trouble if you just learn how to wait.
And, you know, I think I’m really talking to some people today that need to hear this because you’re right on the verge of making a decision that maybe is not the right decision for you to make or maybe you’re about to turn something down that God wants you to say yes to just live a little more carefully and you’ll like your life a whole lot better.
And you know, you have to be careful too.
When you have wounded emotions, our emotions can get bruised and they can even, I call it bleeding.
They’re not actually bleeding blood, but you know, your emotions can be wounded and hurt just like your arm or your leg.
And people have been mistreated.
You’ve been abused or you’ve been mistreated, you’ve been cheated on, you’ve been lied to whatever the case might be.
That’s not a good time to make decisions.
And people with wounded emotions, to be honest, don’t make very good decisions.
A lot of times like I’d been, I’d been abused and so I felt like nobody would ever want me and I married the first guy that came along and I knew deep deep, deep down that it was a wrong decision, but I was so afraid that nobody would ever want me.
I did it anyway. And sure enough, it was a five year nightmare.
It’s just not wise to do things out of fear or are just out of emotions, especially if you’ve been wounded, anger, self pity, jealousy, insecurity, guilt and many others.
We’re making people and me miserable. If you’re miserable, you’re gonna make the people around you.
Also miserably how we feel today is often because of something that happened yesterday, our last week or last month or even when we were Children.
If you’re in a bad mood or you’re emotionally upset, being easily angered and impatient.
Look at what happened yesterday that might be causing your problem.
You know, I had an incident one time where I wasn’t sleeping good and I didn’t know why.
And finally I asked God, why am I not sleeping? That?
It’s amazing what God will tell you if you just stop and ask him instead of trying to figure it out yourself.
And immediately I thought of a situation where I had been rude to somebody, but I had not repented nor had I apologized to them.
And as soon as I made the decision that I would apologize to them as soon as it became morning and I repented, ask God to forgive me, I went right to sleep.
You know, if you have un confessed sin in your life, it’s gonna bother you.
If you’re a believer, it’s gonna bother your conscience, you’re not gonna feel good.
And sometimes if we won’t face the truth about what’s going on, then we blame it on things that’s not even really the truth or, you know, you could be in a bad mood today because you ate too much sugar yesterday.
I have a daughter that’s real sensitive to sugar.
She has some low blood sugar issues and if she eats too much sugar it’ll make her grouchy or sometimes even more easily angered.
Know yourself and take care of yourself. Don’t just let your feelings ruin your life.
What was your day yesterday? Like, was it stressful?
Did you sleep good last night? Did you get bad news or maybe have a big disappointment?
Did you get offended? Argue with someone or become angry? Are you holding unforgiveness?
If you have unresolved issues, they will continue poisoning your soul until they are resolved.
We get pretty good at denying things, don’t we?
And the only way they can be resolved is by facing truth and truth is hard to face, especially if that truth is something not so nice about us that we don’t really want to deal with.
Well, I love blaming everything on Dave until God told me it wasn’t Dave’s fault.
It was mine and I didn’t like that, but it was true. I was the problem.
It wasn’t him, it was me.
And one of the things I was doing was giving Dave the responsibility for my joy.
And God said it’s not his job to make you happy. It’s your job to be happy.
And that’s true. We give other people responsibilities that are ours and we need to stop it.
Have an honest conversation with God.
He can help you so much if you’ll just have an honest open conversation with him and whatever you do don’t hold unforgiveness in your heart because you can never really be a joyful person if you have hatred or unforgiveness in your heart for somebody else.
One thing is for sure, toxic emotions will never be resolved by ignoring them emotions that do the most damage are rage, unforgiveness, depression that’s left untreated anger, worry, fear, guilt and frustration.
And I wish I had time to teach on every one of them. But I don’t.
The Bible says a lot about anger in your anger.
Don’t sin, don’t give the devil any foothold.
So you may feel angry but you don’t have to act on it.
You know something I’ve been saying recently that I think is worth hearing today.
And maybe if this is the only thing you remember about today’s teaching, if you remember this, it’ll help you.
You don’t have to feel like doing the right thing in order to do the right thing.
Come on, I’m gonna say it again.
You do not have to feel like doing the right thing in order to do the right thing.
Do you know what Jesus didn’t feel like going to the cross, but he did.
He asked God three times if you can remove this cup from me, please do so.
However, nevertheless, your will be done and not mine.
And that’s what we need to say to God.