Candid Conversations: Facing The Truth About Yourself | Joyce Meyer

Join us for a candid conversation with Joyce Meyer, where we delve into the importance of facing the truth about ourselves. Joyce shares personal experiences and insights on the transformative power of acknowledging and addressing our flaws. Discover the liberating journey towards self-discovery, humility, and growth as we explore the truth that sets us free.

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.

Joyce, we are going to have such a candid conversation today that I don’t know that I wanna stay.
Very candid. Very.
But we’re talking about something that Probably nobody really wants to deal with, but is so important.
And that is facing the truth about yourself taking a good honest. Look. I know. I know.
So first of all, tell me why. Why do we even have to do that?
Well, anybody who loves Jesus wants to make progress toward being more and more like him.
And we can never get to where we wanna be if we don’t face where we’re at.
So That’s so true.
You
should say that again.
Yeah. You you can never get to where you wanna be if you don’t face where you’re at.
And the Bible says, you shall know the truth and the truth will make you free in John 8.
But it’s not the truth about somebody else. It’s gonna make me free. It’s the truth about me. Yeah.
And so I can start with a story that everybody can relate to.
Years ago, 45 years ago, when I first started this journey with god of being a serious Christian.
I’d been a Christian for a long time, but I was just going to church going home, going to church going home.
I mean, I I was born again.
I did love the lord, but not not enough to really try to live the life he wanted me to live.
And so After I was baptized in the Holy Spirit in 1976, and I got more serious about the word.
I was praying one day for Dave to change. And I mean We’ve all
been there.
I mean, I was really I mean, I was praying, you know. Yeah. Uh, you gotta change that.
Change someone else.
You gotta change them. And I heard the Lord speaking. My heart Dave is not the problem. Ouch.
And I thought, well, who is? There’s only me and him.
That narrows down.
I’ll tell you what. God opened my eyes to what it was like to live with me.
And I cried for 3 days because I really was convinced that it was all him.
Wow. And god just showed me that I was selfish and hard to get along with.
And I got upset every time I didn’t get my own way. And I just felt so bad.
But you know what? I started making some progress after that.
Now I’m not gonna say god never had to do to tell me that again because he did and still does sometimes.
It’s like I’m I’ve just finished a book that’s got a lot in it about selfishness and, uh, wow.
You know what? Yeah. It’s dangerous for me to write these books because us, then I started convict started getting convicted
Sure. Yeah.
About selfishness that I didn’t even really fully realize was there. Mhmm.
And, you know, blame started in the Garden of Eden has been around ever since.
And one of the things that we We just really I started to say good at, but really it’s a bad thing.
We we’re really bad about blaming other people. For our own problems.
Yeah. Blame. Blame is one of those things that, like you said, it’s it’s like a wall that we put up that stops us from what god wants to do in our life because we can’t see, um, that we need a way around that wall.
Um, the when we’re always blaming someone else, then there’s nothing we need to do to fix it because it’s their fault.
With with me, I remember really praying. Someone 39 god search me and know my heart.
And, boy, be ready when you start praying for that.
That sounded spiritual, didn’t
it? For god to exactly. It was it sounded like a great thing to do until god started really talking to me about it, but I’m so glad he did.
Yeah. It’s not fun in the middle of it, but he started talking to me about pride and dealing with pride and all these pride issues that I had that were so hidden They they don’t seem like normal pride.
I didn’t think I thought of myself as better than others or anything like that.
But so many things in my life hinged back to a root of pride. Yeah.
What I wanted people to think about me or not think about me or all of those things.
And god beginning to deal with that many years and has never quit still dealing with it in me today has been so hard, but one of the most important things that god has ever walked me through, but nobody wants to say an issue with pride.
Right.
Yeah. And, you know, I think it’s Psalm 51 6 that says that that god desires truth in the inner being in the inner man.
So what does that mean other than he wants us to be truthful with ourself? About ourself.
And and when we think about this subject, I I think about motives. You know?
Our motives are so important and really it god is more concerned about why we do something than what we did.
Mhmm. You know, like, it it says if you if you give to be seen by other people that you’ve lost your reward.
Yeah.
And, Anytime that I teach on motives, I’ll tell you what the place gets quiet.
My bad. Because I don’t think that we We probably need to form a habit of asking ourselves more often.
Now, why am I doing this? You know, so many people, they have a lot of stress in their life.
And I think if if a person wrote down everything they’re doing and then honestly asked and says, no, why am I doing this?
Why am I doing this? Why am I doing this?
You probably could eliminate a lot of the stress in your life very quickly because so many of the things that we do We do them for the wrong reasons.
Yeah.
Well, I’m doing it because so and so expects me to, or I’m doing it because if I don’t do it, they won’t like me anymore.
You know, I’m doing it. So people think I’m a good good person.
You know, there’s so many things. We just want people to think we’re good.
And I really wanna encourage everybody today to take the time to have a meeting with yourself.
We have meetings with other people all the time, but I’ve found that sometimes I need to have a meeting with Joyce Meyer.
I need to sit down. And, you know, the Bible does say to examine yourself, and that’s not that’s not under condemnation.
This is not about, you know, boy, you’re a terrible person and you need to face it, but you really can’t change.
If you don’t face where you’re at.
I think that’s a really important point because we need to be able to face the truth about ourself.
We also need to face the truth about who god says we are. Right.
So we need to be able to say with confidence.
You know, I am loved and god has put good things in me.
Right.
And these are the things that I’m going to develop. Right.
I also need to know that I’m not a patient person.
Yeah. Right.
And so this is something that god will help me work on.
Right.
So it it’s almost like without one, you you can’t understand fully the other.
Yeah. And it it’s It’s a challenging thing to do because we it it hurts.
How do how do we do it? I mean, how do you walk through that’s okay.
I I just said I’m not a very patient person at times.
Um, how do we face it and deal with it in a positive way?
Well, first of all, we can’t really deal with it ourselves. We have to ask god to help us.
Yeah.
And I You know, I would ask, I would start.
Anybody who wants to start on this journey, I would start by saying, God, I really want to be truthful with myself about myself.
And, you know, maybe I think I am, and I’m not. I don’t know. I don’t wanna be deceased.
You know, the Bible says, I think it’s Jeremiah 17th. It says the heart is deceitful above all else.
Who can know their own heart and mind? So the Bible’s even telling us it’s it’s hard.
It’s it’s hard to really know what’s in your own home.
It is. Yeah.
And this is not judgment. I was just thinking this morning.
Paul said, I don’t even judge myself.
There were other people judging him, and he said, I don’t care what you think. I don’t even judge myself.
God is even god is greater. He knows, and god will show me.
And I think and this would be hard for people to admit.
But if you’re the kind of person who judges others or has maybe it’s easier to look at it like you have an opinion about a lot of things.
Are you have an opinion about what people are doing frequently? Well, I don’t think they should be doing that.
I don’t think they needed to spend their money on that. You know, I I I think. I don’t think.
I think. I think. Then a lot of times people are doing that to deflect from having to look at themselves.
Like, my dad was such a He just was really not a nice man.
I mean, he was not only was he sexually abusive, but he just was mean.
And But he found fault with everybody.
He was constantly judging people, criticizing people, and I believe that he did it to deflect.
If he ever really thought about himself and what he was doing, But he didn’t, and I think that we we cover that up sometimes because he would say, well, I’m just as good as they are.
But we don’t need to be comparing ourselves with people if you’re gonna compare yourself with somebody, compare yourself with Jesus.
Yeah.
And then we’ll all know that we have a long way to go.
And, uh, I think it’s good to know yourself.
I think it’s very healthy to know yourself, you know, like, I know that patience is an issue for me.
It is with most choleric people.
It and it’s interesting with me because I’m not impatient with god, like waiting on god to do something.
I really trust his timing in my life, but I’m impatient like if I have a doctor’s appointment and he or she is not ready to take me at my appointment time and I’ve to sit there 30 minutes?
I don’t like it. And, uh, so sometimes you can be real rotation in one area, but inpatient
Right. Yeah.
And others are you might you might be real humble in a lot of situations, but maybe just have an issue with pride in in 1 or 2 areas.
And so I don’t We we can’t do this without god.
Now, exactly, it is so much about what the Holy Spirit is doing in our life, the work of the Holy Spirit.
Because like you If we’re trying to do it in the flesh, if we’re trying to do it ourselves, it’s probably not going to be successful.
I remember saying to a friend one time, that I was really working on pride in my life.
And they said to me, I I never thought of you as a prideful person.
Well, the pride to me was like, Right.
But instead, you you begin to realize it’s so much more what’s happening in your heart.
It’s so much more your motives, like you said, and the things that are deep within us that only the Holy Spirit can show us and help us deal with.
It’s the inner man
Right.
More than so much other people see that god wants to get down in there and really do something to make a difference in our And like you said, unless we’re willing to be open and say, here I am.
Do what you want. I’m not gonna keep any little part back
Right.
Then we’re gonna miss something that he had. Wonderful for us to have or to do Right.
Or to make a difference for someone else.
I think it’s something that is really important for me to say right now.
I’m for people to hear is We’re not suggesting you do any of this to get god to love you.
Please please understand that it’s not like You don’t have to do it to get god to love you.
He already loves you. But I think when I learned that I wanted to be better because I loved God.
That really helped me.
If if you think you’re trying to do it to get god to love you. We can’t buy god.
He’s not for sale. His love’s not for sale. It’s a free gift.
And god loves every one of us just as much at this moment.
As he would if we had perfect behavior, which we don’t.
So it’s it just I just want people to tuck that away and hang on to it.
It’s like, if you if you really love the lord. Yeah.
You’re like somebody asked me the other day.
How do you manage to forgive people so quickly?
And, uh, because they know that’s something that at this point in my life, I’m able to do.
Yeah. Wasn’t for a lot of years, but I know now how how dangerous really unforgiveness is and and how useless it is.
And and, uh, they said, how are you able to do that?
And I said, well, for one thing, I don’t wanna offend the lord.
And I said, I do it because I love him.
And I have discovered that we will do a lot of things because we love god that we wouldn’t necessarily do for that person.
But Jesus said, if you love me, you will obey me. Mhmm.
He didn’t say if you obey me, I’ll love you. He already loves us. Yeah.
But let’s just, you know, I want people to want to make progress and want to be honest with themselves and truthful with themselves.
Because of their love for god.
Yeah. Uh, that’s that’s beautiful. And I’ve also learned, of course, the hard way, uh, at many occasions, that if I do exactly what you’re saying, then god deals with me in such a loving way.
Absolutely.
And if I refuse to, god’s going to deal with me one way or another.
Yeah.
And I would much rather have it be hand in hand.
He can be more harsh if they make him more.
Yeah. I don’t want it to be a a wall in me that he has to break down.
Yeah.
I’d rather have a soft heart.
Another thing that happens too is if you god will deal with you privately if you let him.
But if you won’t, he will end up dealing with you publicly.
Oh, yeah. Nobody wants that.
Much more painful.
Yeah. This is great stuff, and it’s a really good encouragement for people.
Um, thank you for the reminder and for talking through it with us.
And now I’ve been reminded too, so I
We’re all gonna be honest.
Alright.