Just as a lamp shines to guide our steps.
God’s word illuminates and guides the way for us in the world today to help direct you on this journey.
We’re offering you the everyday life Bible bound in black leather. Lucks with silver edge pages.
This Bible will make it feel as if Joyce is right beside you.
Personal victory over personal problems comes from spending personal time with God with its blend of amplified text and Joyce’s extensive personal notes and commentary.
The everyday life Bible is one of the most comprehensive and easy to understand Bibles ever published.
Get your copy today for a donation of $55 or more.
Go to Joyce Meyer dot org or call us at 1 807 092895.
This program has been made possible by the friends and partners of Joyce Meyer ministries, Gussie.
That’s a little thing. And so we start down but but God don’t care about that.
But can I tell you today and please remember this?
If we will not obey God in little things, we will never obey God in them.
So I was a Christian a long, long time.
Before I became a serious Christian.
And I want all of us to look at our lives today and just to ask ourselves, am I really serious about?
This? Is Jesus a part of my life all day long or do I just go to him when I have a problem?
If that’s the case, then you’re just dating him.
You’re not married when I began to hunger for the word after I was filled with the Holy Spirit.
And I really started being in churches where the word was really taught, not just doctrine.
We need that. We need good solid doctrine. That’s the foundation we stand on.
But then we need to be taught how to live and we need to say things that people can remember when they leave and things that they can use in their everyday life, not just a bunch of stuff that sounds spiritual and floaty and you know, it was all wonderful, but nobody knows what was said when they go home.
And uh so when I was hearing really anointed messages and I was reading the word, not just to read my chapter a day to get my check mark, the word becomes like a mirror.
And you know, you can have dirt all over you.
But if you don’t ever look in the mirror, you won’t see it.
Well, just, just think about it.
You know, I could have a blob of mud here and dirt, dirt, dirt.
I just you know, all over the place.
But if I never looked in the mirror, I wouldn’t see it.
I mean, some people, to be honest, I mean, even once in a while, somebody that works for me come to work and I think, did you not look in the mirror at all today?
I mean, like have on some shirt that they left in the dryer all night.
And you say, well, that’s not stuff we need to talk about in church.
Yeah, it is because we represent a God of excellence. Excellent.
And when Dave and I started our ministry, interestingly enough, God spoke to my heart and he said, I’m gonna tell you three things to do.
And if you do it, you’ll be success, do everything you do with excellence and excellence just simply means whatever you have.
No matter how little it is, you take care of it with excellence.
You don’t need to be driving a dirty car that’s full of trash.
Ok?
And yes, some people we need to tell them wash your car now that has nothing to do with whether you go to heaven or not.
That’s not the point.
The point is if you’re born again, your name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life.
But I’m talking about, do you want to represent Jesus? Do you want to shine?
And so I love to preach on excellence.
I love to teach on that because to be honest and please don’t take this wrong, but our world has become so casual and everybody wants to be comfortable.
But we, and you can be casual and comfortable and still be excellent.
Amen. And I, I think it makes a difference.
I just think it, I think it makes a difference.
And uh so as I, as I began to look and really look in the word, I realized that I had a lot of dirt.
I mean, just I, I’ve got a list here of just some of the things that I did and I went to church was on the board, evangelism team, blah, blah, bumper sticker on my car.
All this stuff big Jesus Rhinestone, Jesus Pin right here.
I had unforgiveness in my heart. I had anger issues.
I got mad if I didn’t get my way. I was very selfish.
I gossiped. I was judgmental and critical, filled with pride, had a rebellious attitude.
I was controlling manipulative. My thought life definitely needed to be renewed.
But I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t think anything at all about what I thought.
I didn’t realize that I could cast down a bad thought and choose a good one.
And my words, my goodness.
I mean, I had my mouth going all the time, but I didn’t know that words are full of life and death and that we need to carefully choose what we say.
And when you talk about things like the mind and the mouth, I mean, we need to hear those messages over and over and over and over again because there are things that we quickly forget.
God taught me as far as excellence goes.
He said, I want you to be excellent. I’ll tell you the other two things.
God.
God started teaching me a lot of things of all places in the grocery store because I had little kids and I’d go to the grocery store 234 times a week.
And, and uh, one of the first lessons that God taught me about being excellent was to put my grocery cart back in the place marked off for grocery carts.
Now it took me, do you know that we work harder trying to balance that card?
We, we don’t wanna hit somebody’s car so we’ll kick the wheels and try to.
So they won’t roll off and you can, then it’s rolling, you go back and you get it and anything other than just do what it says to do.
Now, here’s the sad thing.
It took me two years, two years to get fully obedient.
And I don’t care if I had to walk a mile in the rain, I would not leave my grocery cart out in the middle of the lot.
Now, now see that’s a little thing and so we start down with what God don’t care about that.
But can I tell you today?
And please remember this if we will not obey God in little things.
We will never obey God in big things.
That’s why I tell you, God was with me in that parking lot and he was watching me in that parking lot.
And who knows? I mean, who knows?
Maybe just, maybe if I would have never put my grocery cart back, maybe I wouldn’t be here today.
And I mean, that because we get our training where we’re at.
If you, if you get to go to Bible college, that’s great.
But I wanna tell you today, you don’t have to go to co to Bible college to be trained for ministry.
You just have to start listening to what God tells you and doing it and then, oh, I had excuses about that grocery cart.
Well, I’m busy, I’m in a hurry. Everybody else leaves theirs out here.
Why do I have to put mine back? But you know what? We’re not everybody else.
We’re not, we’re in the world but not of it. We’re supposed to stand out.
We’re supposed to shine and be different.
Not, not act like we think we’re better than other people because we’re not better than anybody, but we need to be excellent.
The second thing God said is I want you to be a person of integrity.
Don’t ever mess around with the money that I give to you for ministry.
And so we are, We don’t waste money at our ministry.
86% of everything that comes in goes back out from ministry. We need to be people of integrity.
People who treat people the way we would want to be treated if it was us.
And then, and when you have integrity, you don’t treat people that you think are important better than the people that you think are unimportant because you know what God think to God, we’re all the same and we, you know that that’s the first rule of humility is I’m no better than anybody else.
Amen. It took several years for me to even start giving my husband the respect that he deserved.
God had deal with me about that a long time because I just from being abused naturally, I had a bad attitude about any man trying to tell me anything because my dad was controlling and I always said when I get out of here, no man will ever tell me anything.
Well, I had made uh commitments to myself that needed to be broken and I use the abuse in my life as an excuse for bad behavior.
one day I was kinda pray arguing with Lord and I said, well, I wouldn’t have all these problems if I wouldn’t have been abused.
And he said, yeah, that’s right. But don’t use them for an excuse to stay that way.
See, I’ve had problems, you’ve had problems, but we, we can’t use our problems as an excuse for bad behavior.
No. Can we let people with bad behavior?
Pull us down to their level. That’s when we have an opportunity to show God.
I just wrote a book called Loving People that are hard to love.
The world is full of people that are hard to love.
But that’s exactly what God wants us to do is love them anyway.
Because that is one thing that everybody understands, everybody wants and few people have real love.
And I’ll just quickly say about love.
Love is not a feeling and that’s where we get all mixed up. We think it’s a feeling.
There’s four words, four Greek words that are translated love, but they actually they mean different things.
one is the type of is a romantic love. one is a type of friendship.
one is a family love and one is the agape of God, the divine kind of love that is in us because the love of God is poured into our hearts by the Holy Ghost.
When we’re saved, we can love people. We just have to be willing to do it.
And then, and love is not how I feel about somebody.
It’s how I treat them. And we need to be doing more for people.
We need to have more random acts of kindness, just do it just just because you love to give just because you’re like God, you don’t have to know somebody.
You don’t have to like somebody but I need and you need to be extremely generous.
And that’s more than just putting an offering in the plate in church.
It’s everything from giving compliments to forgiving.
You know, a lot of times we pray for God to do things that we could easily do and just don’t want to.
Yeah, one time I was praying for somebody. I don’t know.
I forgot what it was. Now, let’s just say they were behind on the rent. Oh God.
Help Mary Jane rent.
Oh God, help her, give her the money to pay her rent, send somebody to help her out.
You know what the Lord said to me, stop asking me to do things that you could easily do and just don’t want to.
I, I hope you just remember even two of these things you’re clapping about.
I’ll be happy if the middle of next week, you could tell somebody just, just two things.
And I am not kidding you.
I wrote a book called Reduced Me To Love a long time ago that, that didn’t sell.
I tried love revolution Maybe 10 years ago.
And that was the worst selling book I have ever had.
And now loving people that are hard to love is doing OK, but not great.
And it really just spiritually makes me mad.
And I think it’s a, it’s a righteous kind of anger because I don’t like it, that people won’t get what they need.
See, we want everything comfortable.
And I, I’ll be honest with you and I say what I want I guess because I probably won’t be back for a good while.
We need to hear a little more preaching on suffering.
See, you’re not clapping as loud as you work for some of the other stuff.
We need to hear a lot more preaching on sacrificing motives.
Or does it get quiet in a church when you preach on motives?
Because your motive only God knows that.
Did I do it to be seen?
Did I do it to be well thought of?
Did I do it to think well of myself or did I just do it because I love God that I, that I really just do it.
I mean, I can’t tell you how much I want people to serve God with their whole heart, with their whole life.
Ok. One scripture I think I got time for this.
And In John Chapter five, the first eight verses, wonderful, wonderful story.
Later on, there was a Jewish festival, a feast for which Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
And in Jerusalem there was a pool near the sheep gate.
And this pool in the Hebrew is called Bethesda.
And it had, it had five porches or coves or doorways.
And in these lay a great number of sick folk, some blind, some crippled, some paralyzed, shriveled up waiting for the bubbling up of the water.
So here we have this pool of water, five entrances into it and sick people lay all around it once a year only the angel would come and touch the waters and it would bubble up and whoever one person I guess got into it first got healed.
And there was a man there who had been laying there for 38 years waiting for a miracle.
I’ll let you think about that just a minute.
And Jesus came to him.
Verse six, noticed him lying there helpless.
And you would think Jesus kindness himself, Seeing a man laying there for 38 years would have a little pity.
Oh, you poor, poor man, My goodness.
And laying here 38 years, Jesus said, Jesus said to him.
Do you want to become? Well, a question mark amplified says, are you really in earnest about getting?
Well, one translation says, are you really serious about getting wealth?
See, I think that some people just lay around and wait for somebody else to do it for them.
Now, I’ll tell you I got a little fire in me and in 38 years I could have squiggled over to the edge of that pool.
I mean, 38 years is a long time.
You don’t have to wiggle much to get over there in 38 years.
And I would have the attitude. I’m tired of living like this. I’m falling in.
Even if I drowned. I’m gonna be in there first.
I get a lot out of this because I want you to see what happened.
The envelope set and this tells us.
Why he was in that condition, sir.
I have nobody when the water is moving to put me in the pool, I have nobody to do it for me.
Never thought of maybe wiggling, maybe some, maybe, uh, maybe some of you, all you need to do is wiggle a little more.
I have nobody to put me into the pool and somebody always steps down ahead of me.
I love this story. Absolutely love it.
You can tell it in every language I’ve told it in India. I’ve told it in Africa.
It’s everybody gets it. He had an excuse for being there 38 years, nobody was doing for him.
What he could have been doing for himself and somebody else always got ahead of him.
Can I tell you something today?
You can be pitiful or you can be powerful but you’re not gonna be both.
And I spent a lot of years wasted a lot of years feeling sorry for myself.
And I was using what happened to me as an excuse to stay as a non serious Christian that really, I would have gone to heaven.
I did love Jesus and I was born again.
I know I was saving that I would have gone to heaven. But I will tell you this.
Nobody else would have been there because of me and something I’ve been thinking a lot about lately I really believe and I bet you stop coming to church just to get something.
Well, I’m gonna go get my blessing.
Now, how about coming to be a blessing?
Just as a lamp shines to guide our steps.
God’s word illuminates and guides the way for us in the world today to help direct you on this journey.
We’re offering you the everyday life Bible bound in black leather. Lucks with silver edge pages.
This Bible will make it feel as if Joyce is right beside you.
Personal victory over personal problems comes from spending personal time with God with its blend of amplified text and Joyce’s extensive personal notes and commentary.
The everyday life Bible is one of the most comprehensive and easy to understand Bibles ever published.
Get your copy today for a donation of $55 or more.
Go to Joyce Meyer dot org or call us at 1 807 092895.
The Joyce Meyer Conference is back.
If you will start crying out to God on a regular basis, I need more of you in my life.
You better put on your seat belt and get ready for the ride of your life.
Coming to Hampton, Virginia, April 21 and 22 with worship by Matt in Tampa Florida, May 19th and 20th with worship by Pat Barrett.
For more information and a complete conference schedule. Visit Joyce Meyer dot org or call 1866. See Joyce.
Just to have some honest open discussion with friends, you’re part of this group too.
So there’s something for everyone. Never laugh at all.
Just give me a call and we’ll talk it out.
Check out Joyce’s newest podcast and talk it out.
Joyce Meyer dot org slash talk it out at the 2023 Love life women’s conference.
I’ll teach you how to trust God and find calm in the chaos featuring Joyce and her guests, Bishop T D Jenks, Lisa Vere Natalie Grant and Danny go October 19th through the 21st in San Antonio, Texas register today at Joyce Meyer dot org.
So the Bible is God’s manual to help us navigate life.
But life often gets in the way of knowing the Bible, finding the time, knowing where to begin and discovering what this all means to you.
We understand and we’d like to help you at Joyce Meyer dot org slash study.
You’ll find free resources to help you get more out of the Bible, whether you’re a new Christian or have been walking with Christ for years.
So jump in today, the word it’s free, it’s mobile and it’s tailored for you at Joyce Meyer dot org.
It is such a blessing whenever someone writes and shares what God has done in their life and encourages us and it reminds us all that God is working and that we can trust him.
We recently received a wonderful note from Sandy and I want to read it to you.
She says I watch the show every day.
And it has led me back to God after the unexpected death of my sister, who was my best friend and mother figure.
I was very angry with God.
A friend of mine who listens to Joyce would share some of her videos on Facebook.
I started listening just to regain emotional control and found the episodes on the mind and emotions. Very interesting.
I began to listen more often. And now 10 years after the loss of my sister, I love God.
I know that he loves me and loved me.
Even when I was very far from him, I watch every day.
And I am so grateful for the prayers of Joyce Meyer ministries and them for being the good Samaritan when I was the one in the ditch.
That’s really a beautiful example of how even at her most angry, even at her darkest hour, God still loved her.
It’s so encouraging and he will do the same thing for you. God still loves you as well.
And it’s because of people like you are partners that amazing things like this can happen.
If you want to join us in sharing God’s word around the world, would you please consider becoming a partner with us?
It’s so easy to do. Being a partner means that you are in agreement that you’re working together.
So when you partner with Joyce Meyer ministries, you’re praying for us and you’re giving ongoing gifts to help with the ministry to help share the gospel and to help people with their practical needs all over the world.
You can make a huge difference as you join this big family of people who are just doing what they can.
All you need to do is go online. You can find out more about it there.
You can give us a call.
It’s an easy step to take and I think it’s one that will bless you for a long, long time.
We hope you have enjoyed today’s program.
Please contact us or visit Joyce Meyer dot org to share your prayer request or partner with us in sharing Christ and loving people all across the globe.
This program has been made possible by the friends and partners of Joyce Meyer ministries.