Victory Demands Self-Control – Part 1 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life

We need to learn how to resist temptation! On this episode of Enjoying Everyday Life, Joyce Meyer shares about good decisions you can make that will bring you peace, joy, and security in the long run.

Joyce Meyer, one of the world’s leading practical Bible teachers and New York Times best-selling author, shares encouragement and advice to help us enjoy our daily lives.

With a heart to share Christ and love people, Joyce’s messages help people in all walks of life to grow in their faith, learn to study the Bible, find healing from the wounds of life, get answers to life’s questions and encounter the love of God in a powerful way.

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I’m Joyce Meyer.
Seen god’s power transform my own life, and he will do it for you.
To say I’m not a disciplined person, is actually not true.
You have the fruit of self control. You may not be using it, but you have it.
So stop saying, I just can’t control myself in that area because what’s in your power to do is in your power not to do.
If you can say yes to something, you can say no to it. The choice is yours.
The more you discipline yourself, god’s given us self control, He doesn’t control us.
He hasn’t given us the right to control other people. He wants us to control ourselves.
Now in second Timothy chapter 1 verse 7, a very well known verse, it says for god gave us not a spirit of fear, but of power and love and self control.
Different translations say different things, but the ESV Bible, which is Now supposed to be the most accurate translation calls it self control.
Actually, the Amplified Bible, which I’ve used extensively for a number of years, says it this way.
For god did not give us a spirit of timidity, of cowardice, of craven, and cringing, and phoning fear, but he has given us a spirit of power and of love and of a calm and a well balanced mind and a spirit of discipline and self control.
So everybody say right now, I have discipline, and I have self control.
And I use them both.
Now you know, a lot of people are very, very talented.
It’s amazing to me the talent that some people have.
But it’s also kind of a known fact, not with everybody, of course, but some people that are very talented are also very undisciplined.
And I know one person, for example, she is talented in so many different things that she can’t seem to settle on any one thing and really do anything with it because she’ll get halfway into that.
Then she gets another idea, and they’re all good ideas.
But sooner or later, you gotta harness your power and focus it into into one thing.
Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates.
There’s plenty of movement, but you never know if it’s gonna be forward, backward, or sideways.
Amen? Harry Truman said this, in reading the lives of great men, I found that the first victory they won was over themselves.
Self discipline with all of them came first.
And I don’t believe that any person can do anything great just because they have natural talent, not just because they want to, until you first can manage yourself.
You’re not going to be able to manage anything or anyone else very well.
Don’t try to manage your children if you’re not gonna show a good example of self control in front of them.
Amen? You should be more excited about that than that, but, you know, telling our kids to do something while doing the opposite of what we told them actually does more harm than if we would have just kept quiet to begin with.
Don’t correct your child for lying.
If when the phone rings, you’re gonna tell them whoever that is, just tell them I’m not here.
Hey, man?
Like I say all the time, you’re all preachers But you say a lot more with your actions than you do with your words.
God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power and love and a sound mind.
Now, you know, I think in our society, we need to toughen up a little bit.
I’m gonna say it again. I think we need to toughen up a little bit.
And we have to be very careful as parents that we don’t just and and I get it, man.
I I am tempted in the same way. I I can’t stand to see my kids suffer.
And we had 3 teenagers and then felt like God want us to have a baby.
And when I told Dave I wanted to have a baby, he thought I’d lost my mind.
And he said, we we’ve got 3 teenagers.
We can do whatever we want to do, but I really felt like god wanted me to have a baby.
Well, it’s a good thing I had him because now he’s the CEO of our ministry, but because he was our baby, in particular, I don’t know.
Maybe I was older just because he was the baby. I just I wanted to protect him from everything.
And I probably went a little bit overboard.
How many of you could say today you’ve gone a little bit overboard and trying to protect your children.
And so sometimes we have to love our children enough to back off and let them go through some things because people who don’t go through anything never develop any real strength to deal with issues in the world.
There’s a little story that I tell sometimes about a an an eagle egg, whenever it’s time for the egalet to hatch, It has a little, um, bone type thing on the top of its beak that it uses to peck away at that shell to try to break it open, and it takes a long time.
Well, the temptation sometimes for people watching that is to break it open and help them but it actually is the worst thing that you can do for them because what they’re doing while they’re breaking that shell is building the tenacity that they’re gonna need.
To actually be those magnificent eagles that we all admire when we see them flying around.
And so if if we want our children to do great things, we can’t rescue them nor can we want somebody else to rescue us from everything?
I always say the only way out is through.
So I’m telling you today, if you really wanna be a mature, strong, vibrant believer, you will have to go through some things that are not very comfortable and learn how to go through it, hold your head up high, and not worrying about it all the time.
Amen? So often, we try to get out of hard things, but just saying well, it’s just too hard.
That is just an excuse, and it is a lie that Satan puts in everybody’s head.
I can’t it’s too hard. I can’t exercise. It’s too hard. I can’t lose weight.
I get too hungry. I try to resist overspending But I’m just weak in that area.
One woman’s husband had told her I want you to stop. Buying things on the credit card.
We’ve gotta get out of debt, and I wanna get these credit cards paid off.
And I want you to promise me that you will not go out to the mall and keep buying stuff.
Well, she had to go out there to pick something up, and she knew she wasn’t supposed to shop, but she saw a dress that, of course, was on sale and last day on sale.
And thought it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.
So first mistake was she tried it on. Say, we gotta get smarter.
She tried it on, and, of course, it looked amazing on her. Just amazing.
And so she bought it. Hit it.
Didn’t tell her husband she bought it.
And then he saw the bill when it came in and wanted to know what was going on.
And she said, oh, honey. She said, I tried so hard to resist buying that dress.
And I just couldn’t. He said, well, you should have said, get thee behind me, Satan.
And she said, I did, and he told me it looked better from behind then in the front.
Now You all know how we are.
If we want it bad enough, we can make up all kinds of excuses about why we should have it.
And if we don’t want to do something bad enough, then we wanna do it.
We’ll find some way to wiggle our way out of it.
But we need to stop saying it’s too hard because god will never lead us to do anything that we cannot do.
Amen? Can you at least give me that?
God will not lead us to do anything that we cannot do.
You can say no to anything if you know what the consequences are going to be if you don’t.
I wanna say it again.
You can say no to anything If you know that the consequences are going to be bad enough.
And I’ll tell you what I believe, I believe that We’re all bearing the burden of consequences in our life.
That we’re blaming on this thing and that thing and some other thing.
But I can tell you, and I hope I don’t hurt anybody’s feelings, but A lot of our problems are more our own fault than we like to think that they are.
I’m telling you blame is one of the devil’s favorite things to do because as long as I’m blaming somebody else, I’m not taking responsibility.
And until I take responsibility, nothing can be done about it because whoever I’m blaming is not gonna come and fix it.
And I can pray all I want to and god helps me, but he doesn’t do everything for us.
The Holy Spirit, the Greek word for the Holy Spirit is a word paraklethos, and that word means the helper.
And so god gave us the Holy Spirit.
When Jesus ascended on high, he sent the Holy Spirit to represent him to act on his behalf He came to live on the inside of us not to do everything for us, but to help us do what god asked us to do.
Let’s get it through our heads that god is not just going to do everything for us while we do nothing but sit and whine about our problems.
Well, you might as well clap because it’s true.
The consequences of certain things brings death.
And when I’m talking about death in this way, I’m not talking about no longer breathing and being in a grave.
Actually in the Amplified Bible, it says the type of death that’s being talked about, and especially in Romans 6 where we’re gonna read a couple of verses, it says it’s the consequences of sin, for example, brings death, but it says death that comprises all the miseries that one can imagine both here and here after.
So how many miserable Christians are walking the earth.
You know, it’s one thing to be a miserable sinner.
But it’s another thing entirely to be a miserable believer.
We’re supposed to be the happy group. Amen?
We’re supposed to be the one spreading joy. Our lives are supposed to be salty.
We’re supposed to make other people thirsty to have a life like ours.
Well, today, we are going to talk about having better health, getting healthier, and how important rest is in all of that.
That’s often one we don’t think about. In fact, my friend, Erin, was just sick and through the weekend.
And she said, you know, it’s amazing what Russ will do for you when you actually do it.
Yeah.
Because people like us so often just barrel through everything and don’t get the rest that we need.
Today in the world, it’s a very busy and noisy place. Yeah.
And most people Not everybody, of course, but most people are trying to do more than what they can manage and not be full of stress all the time.
Mhmm. And it’s stress that makes you sick.
The less stress you have mean, all I have to do is look at myself and Dave.
I mean, I’ve had a lot of different issues, health issues in my life.
But I’ve also been, you know, and Dave is very laid back and easygoing and doesn’t worry about anything and never does and cast your care.
And, I mean, he just feels good all the time. Yeah. You know?
So the stress really does make a big difference.
And one of the things that we can do, I tell people all the time, Make a list of everything you’re doing.
Cross off the ones that aren’t bearing any good fruit.
Cross off the ones that you’re doing for a wrong reason.
And if all you have left are the ones that god is really leading you to do, you’ll find that god will never give you so much to do that you have to be stressed out to do it.
That’s a good encouragement because it it does seem like there are so many good things to do.
Right.
You can definitely fill every waking moment.
That’s right.
Was something that’s really good, but that doesn’t mean that it’s bearing fruit
Right.
Or that god is asking you to do it.
And a lot of times, Ginger, what happens is god maybe tells us do something at one time far a time, but maybe we like it.
And so god gets done with it, but we wanna keep doing it because it’s something Yeah.
That we wanna do. And, you know, an example that you know, with me is I did mission trips out of the country for years years years.
I went three times a year, 2 to 3 weeks each time, and we would go to several different countries and do crusades and seminars and you know, dedicate wells and, you know, different things.
And, uh
All really good things.
All really good things. And but when I hit about 70, years old.
Not seventy miles an hour, but seventy years old.
You’re always at seventy miles an hour.
I started noticing that it was just getting harder for me to get over the jet lag.
So we cut it down to 2 trips a year, and then we cut down the from the 3 weeks to 2 weeks.
And generally, that’s what you you know, you gradually begin to cut things out of your life.
And so I I did them for another couple of years. And then god started shutting doors.
It was like, I would have issues I couldn’t get a visa. Mhmm.
Our we get there in our permits for the parade ground that we needed.
Would be pulled at the last minute. We made the trip Yeah. For nothing.
And, uh, then finally one country, I got blacklisted, they wouldn’t let me in anymore because somebody from a different religion complained about me preaching the gospel.
And, Sometimes we’re slow learners, but I’ve learned in my life when the grace of god is no longer on something.
When god’s grace is on something, it’s easy. You have desire.
You may get tired, but it doesn’t completely wear you out. You rust a little bit.
You bounce right back. And so I had to give that up. I didn’t want to. Still don’t want to.
I’d still love to go. Every time you and the team go, I’m like, I wish I could go. Yeah.
But it’s not if I want to finish what god’s called me to do, then only a fool thinks they can always do what they’ve always done.
And so I would imagine that most people listening to us right now probably more than feel bad than feel good.
A lot of them may have been to the doctor time and time again, and the doctor will say, I can’t find anything wrong with you, which makes you mad, or I’d go to the doctor and they’d say it’s stress, and that would stress me out more because I got mad because they told me it was stress.
I didn’t wanna hear that. And, you know, I just really wanna, like, give me something to take so I’ll feel better, and I can just keep living my life as crazy as I wanna live it.
And we just can’t do that.
We have to you’re always need to be you it’s kinda like you start and you add things and add things and add things.
And then for a period of time, you do those things, but then you have to start cutting things out, cutting them out, cutting them cutting my it’s the cycle of life, and everybody goes through it.
And so
No matter what age we are.
No matter what age you We
have different phases in our life that god’s asking us to do different things and things that we have to focus on.
And but one of the things that I think is really interesting about what you’re sharing with the overseas trips is it doesn’t mean that God stopped doing that work, you know, that the hand of hope outreach is everything’s continuing it it was just a time for it to look a little bit different.
Yeah.
It’s just that I can’t personally go there. I’m still behind them all.
I’m still involved in them all.
You know, but I just I did 67, I think, mission trips out of the country.
And, uh, you know, the day will come when you won’t be able to go.
You know, it’s we we just can’t do the same thing forever, but, you know, when I couldn’t go god provided you and when you can’t go, god will provide somebody else because the whole thing belongs to god anyway.
So I don’t know why we think that god can’t run the world without us.
That is very true. We like to think that we’re wrong, but
And, uh, I, you know, it’s awful to feel bad all the time.
To just be tired all the time or just to feel bad and you don’t even really know what’s wrong or even worse to have, you know, high blood pressure from stress all the time or headaches from stress all the time.
And we just need to take better care of ourself.
And there’s just a handful of things that we can mention today that will help people if they’ll do them.
Get enough sleep. The doctors say 7 to 8 hours a night. Mhmm.
Once in a while, you can go on 5 or hours, but you can’t do that night after night after night.
Now there are a few people that’s all the sleep they need, but they’re very far They’re very few and far between.
Yeah. My husband had a sister.
She’s gone home to be with the Lord now, but she only needed 5 hours sleep a night.
My trainer, the guy that’s my physical trainer, he only sleeps about 5 hours a night.
That’s all that’s all he needs. But I need 8 hour sleep a night.
If I wanna if I wanna feel good, I need 8 hours sleep a night.
Once in a while, I can get 7, but most of the time, I need 8 hour sleep a night.
People need to drink a lot more water than what they do. Water itself gives you energy.
And most people don’t drink enough water.
You know, I’m really big on drinking enough water, but I find myself even I carry water with me all the time, but there’s a difference in drinking it and sipping it.
And sometimes I have a tendency.
I’ll take a little sip of water But if I’ll just take 3 or 4 big drinks of water, three times of doing that, and I can drink 16 ounces of water.
Yeah.
Well, they say you should drink half your body weight in ounces of water.
So I weigh about £129, £130. That means I need to drink about 65 ounces of water a day.
So I know how many bottles that is. I need to drink it.
Some people think, well, my gosh, with what I weigh, I’d have to drown myself.
But water will help you drinking a lot of water. We’ll help you lose weight.
It washes the toxins out of your body. And it get water gives you energy.
Another thing that we tend to do is we breathe real shallow, or I have a tendency to hold my breath.
I don’t know why, but I’ll find
A lot of us do.
I’ll find myself holding my breath, and we’re supposed to do deep But if you watch a baby when they breathe, their belly goes in and out, not their chest, their belly goes in and out.
And we’re supposed to learn how to breathe through our diaphragm, not not just as real shallow breathing, deep breathing.
And you even if you do it three, four, five times a day, just take take a few minutes and do five deep deep breaths, you know, you take it in slow, let it out slow.
That also gives you energy, and it it helps your body. It helps your brain.
You get the, uh, what you need, the oxygen you need to your to your brain and all the parts of your body.
Another thing that people need is exercise. Now I’m not saying you have to have a trainer exercise.
If you hate that, don’t do it. Go out and walk. Play tennis. Do something.
But I lift I lift weights. I have a trainer.
I used to walk five miles a day, but then I started having some issues with my back and I haven’t been able to do that but I’m looking forward to getting back to walking.
I’ll probably never try to walk five miles a day.
Again, there was a season for that, but that season is over.
But just walking is a great way to get exercise.
And they’re actually saying now that sitting is the new cancer. Yeah. That people sit so much.
It’s having such a devastating effect on them because we we sit at our computers.
We sit at our TVs. We We you walk out the door, you sit in your car, you drive everywhere.
We just don’t get the exercise that people used to get naturally, so we have to get it on purpose.
And if you don’t get that, that’s bad also. I mean, it’s really bad.
Sleep, water, don’t live on junk food.
I’m not saying you can never have anything sweet or you can never have a potato chip, but you can’t live on stuff like that.
You have to eat good, nutritious food. Don’t live on fast food.
It’s full of all kinds of chemicals and fat.
And, I mean, just just the sodium alone.
Oh, yeah.
In fast food. It’s just like mind boggling.
And it For some people, it’ll be a total change because they’re they’re used to just mistreating their bodies.
But our bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit.
That means god lives in us, and we’re his representatives in the earth.
And so we need to look and feel the best that we can.
I always say, you know, we may not all start out with the same amount of good stuff to work with, but you can take what you have and do the best you can with it.
Right.
And, uh, I want people to feel good. I wanna feel good.
And I know that in the in the world that we live in today, to be honest, if you wanna feel good, you gotta work at it.
Mhmm. That is very true. Well, thank you for the encouragement.
I think we we need to drink our water and get up out of these chairs. Now
they’re doing. Alright.
Thank you.
Good idea.
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