12 Ways To Increase Your Happiness Part 2 | Joyce Meyer | Radio Podcast

Discover how God’s word is the foundation for peace and joy, and learn practical steps to cultivate happiness in your life, including deciding to be happy regardless of circumstances and giving your life away to God’s purpose. Tune in for insightful teachings that will uplift and inspire you on your journey to a more fulfilling life.

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.

Welcome to enjoying everyday life with New York Times best selling author Joyce Meyer.
On today’s program, Joyce will be teaching from her series, ways to increase your happiness.
God is the source of every good thing, and believing his word is the foundation for peace and joy.
Our thoughts are connected to our feelings. So if we want to feel better, we need to think better.
Now here’s Joyce with today’s teaching.
Alrighty. Now I have way too much information today and not nearly enough time to preach it.
Dave said, what’s new? So I started yesterday morning doing a two part series on ways to increase your happiness.
I actually have 12 ways.
I got through 3 yesterday morning, and obviously I’m not gonna do justice to 9 today, so we’re gonna kinda just see how god leads.
And I’ll give them all to you, but I’m not gonna be able to teach completely on all of them.
First of all, our goal is not just to be happy, although that’s a good goal in itself, but our goal is to glorify god.
In everything that we do.
And I I personally believe that sad face Christians don’t glorify god.
They’re not a great advertisement for salvation.
So we need to live our lives in such a way and even have an appearance about us that makes people want to have what we have.
And so I think that the joy of the lord, which is our strength and peace and patients and different things like that are very important for us as believers if we really want to be used by god.
And so Psalm 5 11 says, let those who love your name be joyful in you and be in high spirits.
So god doesn’t want us just to have a a little little bit in him.
He he, you know, every once in a while, he wants us to be really happy and really in a good mood and notify our face so the world can tell that we’ve got something that they need.
Ma’am? And, you know, after having lived a long time, I’ve come to the conclusion that really what do we really the bottom line of what what does everybody want?
You know what? They just wanna be happy.
I mean, when you go out and go shopping, you’re doing it because you wanna do something that makes you happy.
You know, we eat because it makes us happy. We overeat sometimes because it makes us happy. You know?
We we wanna be in relationships because they make us happy. You know?
So happiness is just like something that everybody wants, but sadly, many people go about getting it all the wrong way.
Now I’m gonna give you number 12 first. I did that yesterday morning.
And number 12 is decide to be happy.
You’re never gonna be happy if you don’t decide, you’re gonna be happy in spite of your circumstances.
Amen? Can you decide to be happy in spite of your circumstances?
Well, I never thought about it.
You know, happiness, our true godly joy is not supposed to be based on what is happening.
Although if you look at the Webster’s dictionary definition, at least the one of the original dictionaries written in 1828, It says that happiness is the product of having something good happen to you, but it’s also the product of expecting something good to happen to you.
And that’s what I love that even if something good isn’t happening to me right now, there is no devil in hell can keep me from expecting something good to happen to me.
The enemy might be able to mess with your circumstances, but he cannot mess with your heart and your hope.
You can be full of hope and expect good things to happen if you decide to.
So I’m gonna say it again. Maybe a lot of times today decide to be happy.
And don’t wait for your circumstances to dictate to you that you can have that happiness.
Decide to be happy. Everybody say, I’m gonna be happy. I’ve decided.
I will not waste another day being unhappy.
I am happy. Now the number one thing yeah.
The number one thing that we talked about yesterday is that, um, if you wanna be happy, you’ve gotta believe what the word of god says about you.
And, uh, especially about you and who you are. And here’s the bottom line.
You’re never gonna enjoy your life if you don’t enjoy yourself.
So I, you know, can’t go over all that information again, but let me just tell you, if you don’t like yourself, then you might as well, you really need to quickly get over it and make another decision.
Because you are stuck with you for the rest of your life.
I mean, that’s really not rocket science, but it really was life changing me when I realized that everywhere I went there I was.
So you’re never gonna get away from yourself, not one second so you might as well come to some kind of terms of peace and say, I like me.
With all my flaws and all my weirdness, I like me, and god is changing me next year.
I won’t be exactly the way I am now.
But while I’m in the process of changing, I’m not gonna be at war with myself. I like me.
Can everybody say I like me?
Number 2 thing that we talked about yesterday was living one day at a time and enjoying it.
That’s very understandable. The third thing that we talked about was staying in peace.
And I thought that was one of the the strongest points of yesterday morning’s message.
You weren’t here yesterday morning. But the good news is, is you can always get a copy of the teaching.
Now number 4, Big thing we wanna talk about today.
If you wanna be happy, you gotta learn to give your life away.
In god’s economy, what you try to cling to and keep is what you end up losing.
And what you’re willing to give away, you get back with interest multiplied many times over.
Whatever you give to god, you get something better back. Isn’t that interesting?
Whatever you give to god, you get something better back.
So if you give yourself away, you say, God, here I am, you take me, you do with me what you wanna do, use me in your kingdom, use me to help people, use me to be a blessing to people, and don’t just pray that one time in your life.
Pray that every day. Every single day I ask god, show me what I can do for you today, lord, and show me what I can do to be a blessing to other people.
Show me what I can give, show me who I can encourage.
You see, I lived a long time where I was the center of my universe, and I can tell you that it will never make you happy.
Selfish people are not happy people. Amen? And that’s a tweet.
Is that the right word? Do we tweet things like that? Yeah. That’s it. We tweet that.
I get them all mixed up. You know? You can’t be happy and selfish at the same time.
And your life is yours to do what you want to with.
You can spend your whole life just with you as the center of your universe and believing that ever you should be the center of everybody else’s universe, but you’re just gonna be miserable.
And so you can decide today I’m gonna give my life away.
I’m just gonna give it to god and tell him to do what he wants to with it.
Matthew 16 24. Then Jesus said to his disciples, if anyone desires to be my disciple, let him deny himself.
Disregard lose sight of and forget himself and his own interest.
Now, you know, forget yourself doesn’t mean you’re not gonna take care of yourself.
But it just means that you’re just not gonna have yourself on your mind all the time.
And then Get up in the morning and first things, start thinking about how you can be a blessing to somebody else or think about god, but do something besides think about yourself.
And take up your cross and follow me.
Now, you know, there’s been a lot of conversation about carrying the cross.
Well, this, you know, This problem is my cross to bear. This sickness is my cross to bear.
You know, this tragedy is my cross to bear. No. That’s not biblical.
The cross that we carry is to forget ourselves, lose sight of ourselves, and all of our own interests, and say, here I am, god, a vessel empty of myself.
You fill me full of you and do what you want to with me and through me today.
Come on. That is shouting ground right there. Amen.
Now I might as well tell you, if you’re not used to living that way, you will go through culture shock.
It will be hard in the beginning because we are very accustomed to being on the throne of our life and everything we think about ourselves first in everything.
And it’s difficult in the beginning because there is a dying A dying that takes place, but I’m gonna prove to you today that in order to really live, you have to die first.
And I’m not talking about leaving the earth and going to heaven.
That’s the ultimate dying to live, but actually, if you ever wanna have a real life, a real quality of life where you feel like your life really counts and it matters for something, then you have to be willing to die to self to not get your way and to learn to be happy about it.
Yeah. Well, you’re not as happy as I hope you get.
Some of you are thinking, well, I already don’t get my way.
Well, yeah, but you’re not happy about it. Verse 25.
For whoever, when I, like, we’re gonna go back to 24 again because I wanna make sure you get all this.
Then Jesus said to his disciples, if anybody desires be my disciple, let him deny himself, disregard, lose sight of, forget himself in his own interest, and take up his cross and follow me.
Cleaves steadfastly to me, conform wholly to my example in living, and if need be in dying also.
For whoever is bent on saving his temporal life, his comfort and security here shall lose it eternal life, and whoever loses his life, his comfort and security here, for my sake, we don’t do this because it feels good.
We’re not even really doing it for other people, we’re doing it for his sake.
And let me clarify again that forgetting yourself and losing sight of yourself all your own interest.
That doesn’t mean that you never get to do anything you wanna do.
It doesn’t mean that you never make any good plans for yourself. Let’s don’t take this out of context.
What it really means is is you’re not going to just live for just you and nothing else.
I encourage people to take care of themselves.
I encourage people to Stay balanced and to do things for yourself that you enjoy doing, but that’s a totally different thing than than everything being about you.
Amen? For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life?
His blessed life in the kingdom of god.
Or what would a man give in exchange for his blessed life in the kingdom of god?
So I believe that we should learn to live and give live and give. I get up every day.
Everything is not about what’s coming to me. Everything is about god working through me.
To be honest, I don’t even have anything to give that’s worth having if I don’t first receive all of god that I can possibly receive and then let him flow through me.
Amen? Trust me. You don’t want what I’ve got to give you.
But I’ve done my best to let god flow through me this weekend so you can have more of him in your life, and that’s what god wants us to do for every person that we meet.
Now, John 12 24 through 26 are just amazing scriptures, and I’m gonna work part of this message around this.
So watch this. John chapter 12 verse 24.
I assure you, and most solemnly, I tell you, Most solemnly, I tell you.
It’s okay occasionally to get solemn in church unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies it remains just one grain.
It never becomes more, but lives by itself alone.
But if it dies, it produces many others and yields a rich harvest.
With god on our side, every day is a new opportunity to enjoy the wonderful life he has given us.
Today, we’re offering Joyce’s book 20 ways to make every day along with the companion comprehensive study guide.
Joyce will guide you through simple practical changes we can all make which lead to real results.
Available now for a gift of $25 or more to the ministry. Order@joycemeyer.org.
We’re called Toll Free, at 1807890089.
Have you struggled to discover god’s plan for your life Maybe you’ve tried and tried to hear god’s voice, but nothing seems to change.
If that sounds familiar, I’ve got some good news in my book, Finding God’s will for Your Life.
I wanna take you on a journey to peace as we explore with the will says about god’s purposes for us.
You can say goodbye to the struggle and trust that god has a good plan for you.
Finding god’s will your life. Order your copy today at joycemeyer.org.
Thanks for listening to enjoying everyday life.
Joyce Meyer Ministries is to share Christ