Developing Godly Character – Pt 6  Enjoying Everyday Life

We grow in Christ when we come to the understanding that no matter what happens, God is always good. Today on Enjoying Everyday Life, receive this truth and so much more as Joyce Meyer wraps up her series on developing godly character.

3, 2. Never preach.
You no longer have a need to impress people. We don’t need to live to impress one another.
We need to learn how to be free to be ourselves.
I do what I because I’ve seen god’s power transform my own life, and he will do it for you.
The key to everything is found in god’s word.
I’m Joyce Meyer, and I believe that god can heal you everywhere you hurt.
Is there anybody here that ever has any? Stress in your life.
Some people put up both hands, so that’s good. Well, the world is not gonna change.
I want you to listen. The world is not gonna change.
I prayed for years for god to change my circumstances, and then I found out it was actually me.
He wanted change. So would you be willing to change if your circumstances never changed?
Because you see, it’s not really our circumstances that upset us.
It’s the way we react to our circumstances. That upset us.
I’m gonna tell this half of the congregation that because we We think what if I just didn’t have this circumstance, but see, then you wouldn’t be in the world.
Because Jesus said in the world, you will have tribulation.
Tier up I’ve overcome the world.
And so we we really need to get it through our heads that just Praying for our circumstances to go away is not the answer.
We need to pray that god will change us. It’s interesting.
Paul never prayed You you can’t find a place where Paul prayed for people’s bad circumstances to go away.
Which I find interesting because that’s what we do all the time.
God changed this circumstance, changed this person.
But what Paul prayed for the people was that they would handle whatever came with good temper.
I’ve never had anybody come to the altar and ask me to pray for them to have a better attitude toward their circumstances.
They always want their circumstance to go away.
And I think it’s important that I can’t hear for a minute, and we get this because It is a big deception that we have in life that I just want my circumstance to change, or I want my spouse to change.
I want my kids to change.
We always want everybody else to change, but god wants to change us.
It’s his goal for us.
We are predestined, and predestined doesn’t mean it’s happen no matter what you do, it means that god has already predetermined his will.
But how we respond is important.
We’re partners with god, and he has a part we have a part.
And no matter how much he does his part, if we don’t do our part, we’re not gonna and what he wants for our lives.
And so he has already predetermined that we are to be trans formed into the image of Jesus Christ.
That’s his goal for us, that we all become like Jesus.
And so, really, more than we need our circumstances to change, we need the willing to be changed to be whatever god wants us to be.
And I like to teach on spiritual maturity. I intend to teach quite a bit on that this year.
And I believe that spiritual maturity is coming to the pla place where you no longer are always telling god what you want but you start asking him what he wants.
You know, if you have kids, you you raise your kids and you take care of your kids and they reach a certain point where you really you don’t wanna spend the whole rest of your life doing for them, you’d like them to do for you.
Amen?
My kids are all really good. I’m I’m proud of them.
You know, they every one of our children would help us in any way that they possibly could, and and they do a lot.
And that that means a lot to me, and they don’t just come when they want something.
They come because they love us. And God wants us to be that way.
He doesn’t want to he wants us to seek his face, not just his hand.
That’s a big transition in your life when you reach that point.
I remember when god taught me that what a big transition that was for me that I didn’t have to seek his hand all the time, not just what can you do for me, but to just seek him for who he is because I love him.
Amen? Matter of fact, when god was teaching me this, he challenged me.
He said, I don’t want you to ask me for another thing.
It set me until I give you permission to. Wow.
And I’d start to say Well, god, would you do?
And it was life changing.
So I wanna say again, I like to teach on spiritual material, and I’ve been thinking a lot lately.
Like, what’s the simplest way I can explain what it is?
And I think it’s coming to the point where you no longer and it’s not that you can’t ask god for what you want, but but that that’s not your main theme in life.
And we’re all that way when we first come to Christ.
And to be honest, he he does a lot for us to establish relationship with us and to show us that he loves us, but he wants us to come to the point where we’re not just telling him what we want We need to ask god every day.
God, what can I do for you today? Hi. Use me today, lord.
How can I make somebody else happy today? What can I do for somebody else today?
What do I have the I can bless somebody else with today.
We need to be others minded, not just self minded and self centered all the time.
I’ll tell you, secret. You can’t be selfish and unhappy.
So in teaching on stress, I have to tell you first of all that You can’t just pray all the time for your circumstances to change.
You have to want god to change you.
And I really wonder sometimes how many people want god to change them?
Because I’m gonna tell you another little secret. You really can’t change without some suffering.
Don’t worry.
I won’t stay there long, but it’s true. And you say, well, wait a minute.
I thought Jesus did all the suffering.
I’m not talking about getting on the cross like he did, but, you know, anytime you tell your flesh, no, your flesh is gonna suffer.
I don’t care if it’s even just don’t eat the piece of cake.
Your flesh is not gonna like it.
So in order to grow up to mature, spiritually in Christ, which should be our number one goal.
That should be everybody’s number one goal is to grow up and mature See, we are his ambassadors in the Earth.
And I love what 2nd Corinthians 5 20 says. And in the Amplified Bible, I love it.
That we are Christ’s personal representatives that he is making his appeal to the world through us Wow.
Do you know that for some people, you’re the only Jesus LC?
And part of our problem is just to go into church but then not leaving and acting like what we should be acting like.
Christianity don’t need to just stay in here. Come on.
We gotta get it out there where the people are.
And you’re all preachers whether you know it or not, and you don’t You don’t have to preach like I’m preaching, but you preach with your life.
Most of the people that need Jesus are not gonna come into church to find him, but they’re where you work, they’re where you go to school, they’re where you grocery shop, They’re everywhere.
And believe me, people are desperate for somebody to love them.
I mean, we live in a desperate world, and things are so crazy out there people don’t they don’t have anything to hang their hope on.
And we need to start doing random acts of kindness.
Be nice to people you don’t even know for no reason except that’s just how you are.
Amen? And really listen to the Holy Spirit when you’re out about what you might do for somebody else.
I I just feel led to tell you this story.
I went to a coffee shop one day, and I wanted to pour over, and they didn’t do pour overs there.
And she said, let me make you a French press.
And I said, I don’t like French presses are usually too strong.
She said, we’ve got a new press, and she said, I’ll tell you, it is so good.
Let me make it for you. And if you don’t like it, you don’t have pay for it.
I’ll make anything else you want. So sure enough she made it, and it was just absolutely great.
And in the process of talking to her, And let me just say she wasn’t like me at all.
Her hair was about 4 different colors, and she had piercings and tattoos everywhere.
You know, we we need to learn that we can be nice to in fellowship with people that aren’t like us.
Amen? Quit being so snooty religious.
Amen? Sometimes the more radical people are is just a signal sign that they’re looking for love.
And, um, she said, yeah, I really wanna get one of these.
She said, I’m saving out my money because the I got 1.
I’m at home, and they’re just nice because all you really need is hot water.
So you put your coffee in them in the hot water and you press it through and you got a great cup of coffee wherever you’re at.
So she said, yeah, I want to get one of these as soon as I get enough money saved.
Well, I left and I got about yay far down the mall, And the Holy Spirit said, buyer 1.
And I’m thinking, no. Come. I don’t know this girl.
She is gonna think I am stupid.
Besides the way that that, the way the world is today, I I don’t know.
She might think I’m hitting on her or something else.
Um well, I’m just telling you the truth.
What I thought I talk, darling.
But, anyway, You know, I don’t always like it when god tells me to do things for people.
I don’t know, but he does it anyway. And so I, by now, I know enough.
I’m not gonna do any good to disobey him because I’ll be miserable all day.
So I went back and I waited for her to hopefully be as alone as she could be.
You know, if you’re gonna be a fool, you’d like to be it in front of as few people as possible.
So I called her over, and I said, uh, listen.
I said, I I wanna buy you one of those coffee pops out. There was, like, a $110 or something.
Oh, no. No. No. You can’t do that. I said, yeah. I wanna do it for you.
I just I I feel like it’s something, but I’m supposed to do.
And so I gave her the money to buy the coffee pot, and she was crying and just so blessed and so on and so forth.
Well, god’s not finished. So I go ahead and I’m doing my shopping and lo and behold, I go to the bathroom upstairs in another store.
And I’m coming out of the bathroom and she’s coming in and hits me almost right in the face.
And she says to me, now listen, She says, why are you the kindest person in the whole world?
I said, well, I’ll tell you what is a Christian, and god has been so good to me.
And if I can be good to anybody else, I wanna do it.
She said, well, She said, to tell you the truth, I’ve been pretty mad at the man upstairs for a long time because my mother died with cancer, but after this, I might have to rethink it.
See. Now I’m not telling you that the on myself.
I’m just giving you an example of the effect that you can have on people If instead of just going to church and then spending the rest of the week asking god for everything you want, if you’ll ask him what you can do for him.
Corn, does anybody understanding me in here today?
I’m a little off course from where I’m supposed to be going, but I feel like this is important.
You know, I don’t know how much time we have left.
People always ask me, what do you think is gonna happen in the world? I don’t know.
I mean, Jesus has been coming back as long as I’ve been in the church.
So I don’t I don’t know when he’s coming, but one thing’s for sure.
Bible says gonna be like it was the days of silent Gilmore, and I think we passed that up a long time ago.
I mean, the things going on in our world today are crazy.
And so I think we all better be ready for Jesus to come anytime.
Amen? Because The Bible says all over the place that we should watch and pray and be ready and stay awake and be alert.
Not be sleepy Christians and I just want to say again, I think church is wonderful, but so many people think that church is all there is.
Well, I go to church. Well, I can go sit in the garage all night, and that won’t make me a car.
Amen. So just because you come here every Sunday or every Saturday Sunday, my question is what are you doing when you go out there?
That’s the big question. What are you doing when you go out there? Amen?
And that’s the big question for all of us.
What are we doing when we go out there?
So I I’ll just tell you your circumstances will change. You may get out of debt.
You may get a raise. You may get some of the things you want, but, you know, I I hope this isn’t discouraging, but you’re gonna have very few times in life that you’re not gonna have some kind of a issue are a problem.
Amen? It’s not the refrigerator. It’s a stove. It’s not the stove.
It’s the furnace. If it’s not the furnace, it’s the kid.
If it’s not the kid, it’s the husband of, you know, Come on.
You know what I mean? And so we have to learn how to react differently to things.
And you can. You can learn how to react differently to things.
I know because nobody could have been worse than me and having a bad reaction to uncomfortable circumstances.
I mean, we just are addicted to comfort Amen?
When you go to India and you tell them how you got depressed because your air conditioner went for 2 hours.
They’re not very impressed. Amen?
So we’re kind of spoiled And we don’t take any kind of discomfort too easy.
And, boy, the world we live in today, you better tell up a little bit, and you ain’t gonna make it because it is stressful.
Amen? So the first thing you gotta do is be willing to change and trust me.
God will change you if you really want to change.
How can you have less stress in your life? Simplify, simplify, simplify.
Let me just ask a question. How many of your complicated people?
I mean, I’ve I’ve learned, thank god, this has been many years ago, but I mean, I’ll never forget when Dave and I went to church, and this is actually before I was spirit filled and We went to church, and I I love god.
I didn’t know much, but I love the lord, and we were in the young couples group and played volleyball and all the different things you do.
And I can remember on a Sunday after church saying to our little group of friends.
Hey, what next Sunday, why don’t you come on over to the house after church?
And we’ll just throw some hot dogs on the grill and Uh, get some potato chips and potato salad, and we’ll just fellowship and play some games.
Now, you know, that sounds doable, don’t it? But you think I could leave it alone?
No. The hot dogs had to become steaks that I couldn’t afford.
And then we had to plant flowers, so everything looked pretty.
Had to paint the lawn chairs because one of them fixed.
Of course, you had to clean the whole house.
By the time the people got there, I didn’t even like them anymore.
Probably didn’t like most of them when I invited them.
Come on.
I was exhausted when everybody left.
I’m getting ready to make a state you need to hear it.
You’re never free until you no longer have a need to impress people.
Never free till you no longer have a need to impress people.
We don’t need to live to impress one another we need to learn how to be free to be ourselves.
Simplify, simplify, simplify. Things are so complicated.
I remember the leper in India.
When I was in the leper colony, ministering to the lepers, he wanted me to see his home.
And he took me to his home that he was so proud of and so excited about, and it was a a whole dog out of the side of a hill.
It was, I don’t know, maybe 8 feet long and I don’t know, maybe as deep as from here to the edge of the stage.
And it was all dirt, dirt walls, dirt floor.
He had a hammock in there, and over in the corner, he had a few Bennett beat up dishes, and he was so proud of his home.
Honestly, and truly, I have found as I’ve traveled around the world that people who have less or happier than people who have more.
And, you know, they’re happy because they don’t know what they’re missing.
We see what somebody else has.
And then no matter what we have, we’re not happy unless we can
have what they have, if what they have is
a little more than what we have. Let’s stop being so materialistic. Amen?
You got a nice car. Got 47,000 miles on it.
Who cares if it’s seven years old?
Do you really need to go in debt that you can’t afford to go into to buy another new car?
Just Now you might use some of that money to somebody else.
Well, bless God. I’m gonna work all week and give all my money away.
But then just go ahead and be miserable.
7 ways to simplify your life.
Number 1, clean out the clutter.
Get yourself what I call a giveaway box. I keep one going all the time.
And every time you run across something you’re not using, throw it in the box.
Take it to the goodwill.
I take a bunch of stuff to my office because we got 500 employees.
There’s always somebody that wants it. You know, pruning is necessary for growth.
We prune trees, but the word pruning only means to cut back.
That’s all it means to trim away or to cut back.
And we cannot grow as believers unless we allow god to prune us and you’re not gonna grow in peace unless you learn how to prune some of the stuff you’ve got way too much of.
Clutter makes you miserable. The neater your surroundings are, the more peaceful you feel.
What value do you put on peace? I want you to ask yourself what value do you put on peace?
When you decide you want peace bad enough, you’ll have it.
But you won’t have it without making some changes.
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The mind actually is the battlefield.
Where we win or lose the war with Satan. He said all he gets to say. Thank you.
He uses a lot of it. Today’s mine. You start asking god to heal you, and he will door.
It’s the god of all comfort, and I am so grateful that I know how to call on god.