Interrupted by God – Part 1 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life Teaching
Interrupted by God – Part 1 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life Teaching
God has great opportunities lined up for you! On this episode of Enjoying Everyday Life with Joyce Meyer, be encouraged to follow His lead anytime, even when it doesn’t seem to make sense.
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.
I’m Joyce Meyer.
I’ve seen god’s power transform my own life, and he will do it for you.
This morning, I wanna talk to you about being interrupted by god.
Yes. Well, we can kinda see that everybody needs that, right?
You know, um, most of us have some kind of a plan for the day.
I mean, I know there are people who just kind of fly by the seat of their pants and they never know what they’re gonna do, but you know, most of us have some kind of a plan.
And how about if we start the day by lifting our plan up to god and say, now, this is what I have planned, but I just want you to know I’m available for you.
And if at any time you need to interrupt my plan because you need me to do something else, then please help me hear you and be quick to obey.
How many of you think that sounds good?
You know, I always say that if you wanna be used by God, you don’t need ability, you just need availability.
You’d be amazed how many people think they can’t do anything for god because they can’t find any special talent they have, but god can give you the talent to do whatever he wants you to do if you’re just available.
Interrupted by god. God rarely asks us to do anything when it’s convenient.
Actually, when he calls, he seems to not care too much at all about what we’re doing.
Because whatever we’re doing is not as important as what god wants us to do.
I’m gonna say that one more time.
Whatever we’re doing is not nearly as important as what god wants us to do. Amen.
So Paul told Timothy to preach the gospel in season or out.
Rather it was convenient or inconvenient.
But there’s a little something else I want you to see about 2nd Timothy 4 2.
Because I think in some instances, we’ve gotten a little bit off track.
And if we go to church and we hear anything other than something that just makes us feel good, then we don’t like the sermon.
But Paul told Timothy, preach the word, be ready in season and out, Reprove, which means correct, rebuke, which means correct a little bit harder.
And exhort it, which means to edify and make people feel good about themselves.
But I’ll tell you if if If you go to a church where your behavior is never confronted and where you can always just be really comfortable I think sometimes Well, I kind of enjoy making people squirming their seats a little bit.
You know, it’s kinda You you can kinda tell when you’re saying something that people would really rather not hear, but you know, it’s the stuff that we would rather not hear that we need to hear.
And, you know, most people who teach or preach, they love it when people say Amen or they’re shaking their heads, and Dave always tells me don’t be so concerned about everybody clapping and saying amen about everything you say.
They clap for the stuff they already know and agree with. When they’re quiet.
Come on.
When they’re quiet, You’re saying something that’s kinda like, uh-oh. Am I understanding this right?
You know, a lot of times when god begins to deal with us about something that is gonna be a little bit uncomfortable for us, we we tell god, oh, no, not that.
I’m I’m not ready for that yet.
But whatever god wants to deal with us about, There’s an anointing at that time for god to deal with us about that thing.
And many times, we wanna wait for our own timing, and then things can be really, really, really difficult.
You know, after we’re born again, our number one job is to grow up. Amen?
And we need more mature Christians. And mature Christians are stable.
They’re not up and down and all over the place based on what their circumstances are doing.
And mature Christians are very prompt about obeying God because they know that god is smarter than they are.
And that his way is always best.
Well, Felix was a man who’d been hearing about the gospel and hearing about Paul in particular, and he wanted to learn more.
And so in acts 2425, it says, and as he reasoned, Paul went to him and he says, and he reasoned with him about righteousness, which I guess challenged Felix’s behavior, and about self control.
And he tried to talk to him about the upcoming judgment.
You see, I think we need to be reminded more often that the day will come for every one of us, not some of us, every one of us when we will stand before god and give an account of our life.
The day will come for every one of us And I think we need to think about that sometimes when we will stand before god and give an account of our lives.
Now, obviously, if we’re true believers in Jesus Christ, this judgment is not gonna be about whether or not we’re gonna get into heaven.
But I think for Christians, It’s important what we do with our time.
I think it’s important how we treat people.
How many of you think that how you treat people is important to God. Can I tell you something?
I think it’s the most important thing to God.
I think the way we treat other people, especially people who can’t do anything for us.
Especially people who can’t do anything for us.
I think it says more about our character than probably anything else.
We need to get about the business of loving one another and not just talking about loving one another.
Amen? So I guess in a way today is a little bit about calling all of us to a higher level of obedience.
And, uh, obedience really is always a sacrifice. It’s some kind of sacrificed.
If god asked me to do something for somebody, it’s going to take some of my time.
It’s gonna take some of my money. It’s gonna take some of my effort.
If I wanna grow tomatoes, which I don’t, but if I did, and I had a package of tomato seeds, I could not ever have a garden full of tomatoes unless I sacrificed my seed.
And so seed, of course, can be money, it can be time, but I believe that every act of obedience or disobedience is a seed that we sow that will bring a harvest in our life.
It’ll either bring a harvest that we really like, or it will bring a harvest that we don’t like.
The word convenient, and let me just say that I think in our society, we’re pretty addicted to convenience and comfort worked.
Does anybody agree? I said to my daughter, 3 months ago.
I said, you know what I’ve realized about myself? She said, what?
I said, I really don’t like to be uncomfortable.
And I
most of us, you know, we just we’re just not always very tough.
You know, you go to some of these other places like Third World Countries or Developing Countries.
And and I mean, the things that they don’t have.
And many of them are happier than we are with all the stuff that we’ve got.
Matter of fact, one of the things we complain about is all the stuff we have that we have to take care of.
So Um, we need to get ready to obey god quickly and do whatever it is he wants us to do.
In Ecclesiastes 11 4, it says he who observes the wind will not sow, and he who regards the clouds will not reap.
And really what that is basically saying is if you when god asks you to do something, if you won’t do it unless all of your circumstances are perfect, then you’ll never end up sowing.
And if you don’t sow, you’ll never end up reaping.
So we we need to get the understanding that God purposely puts us in positions very often in life where we won’t like it and it’s not convenient and it’s not comfortable.
And even though we do not understand the purpose, There is a purpose for what god is doing.
And it’s usually got something to do with our spiritual growth. Now, I’ll tell you a story.
There was a great preacher around the turn of the century called Billy Sunday. Anybody were here?
Billy Sunday. Okay. He was like the Billy Graham of that day.
And he had been a professional baseball player. And, um, he heard the gospel.
Got saved and felt called to be an evangelist.
And so he just became a great, great, great. Man of god.
Now leaving that there for a minute, there was a local pastor, pastor of a local church in Chicago, is where Billy Sunday was also from.
And one night, he woke up in the middle of the night and felt like god was telling him to go down to the Chicago train station and preach in the middle of the night.
Well, he thought, well, that’s silly and rolled over and went back to sleep.
And it wasn’t very long, and same thing happened again. And he thought, well, that that’s ridiculous.
What sense does that make? Rolled over and went back to sleep and in a few minutes woke up and still felt the same thing.
I wonder how many times God gives us an opportunity to do something, but because we think it’s silly, Or it doesn’t make any sense.
We just kinda blow it off and don’t do it.
Well, I guess the man was mature enough to finally realize it was god talking to him and all it didn’t make any sense at all.
He gets up in the middle of the night, gets dressed, goes down to the train station, and he ends up actually one level below where the trains were running.
And there was nobody down there, but he just preached to A gospel message, just a plain basic gospel message.
As far as he knew, he was not preaching to anybody, didn’t see anybody, didn’t hear anybody, went back home, went to bed, never had any idea why he was there, or what was going on.
Well, years later, he went to a Billy Sunday meeting. And Billy told how he was saved.
He said, yeah, 1 night, the middle of the night, I was at the Chicago train station.
And, I heard somebody preach, and I couldn’t see him, but I heard him preaching the gospel.
And that’s when I received Christ, and god called me to be and evangelist.
So I want you to remember that you’re out and about, you are the hands and feet of Jesus.
And I can tell you the work that needs to be done in the world is not gonna be done by a handful of preachers on a platform.
We have to train you up that you go out and do the work of the ministry And so I’d like you to really just make a decision today that you’re gonna agree with god to be promptly obedient to what he tells you.
And I’m not suggesting just doing stupid things without checking it out or, you know, if something sounds really weird, then I would pray about it more than once, but always remember just because it doesn’t make any sense to you doesn’t mean that it’s not god.
Just because it doesn’t make any sense to you doesn’t mean that it’s not God we try to apply our human understanding to what we sense in our heart that God wants, But god’s thoughts are above our thoughts, and his ways are above our ways.
I remember a time when I was going to lunch with a friend, And I had another friend that I went to lunch with a lot, her and I actually spent a lot of time together.
And now I’m going to lunch with this other person, but I kept feeling like I should invite this other friend to go.
And, um, in one way, I really kinda wanted to spend some private time with this other friend, but because I really felt like it was God, I thought, okay.
So I called her, and I asked her, her name was Joan.
I said, Joan, would you like to go to lunch with me and so and so today?
She said, Oh, I would love to I appreciate you asking, but I’m spending the day with my mom.
Well, I was a younger believer then, and so that kinda confused me.
And I said to god, well, you know, I thought you I felt so sure that you told me to ask her to lunch.
He said, I did. I didn’t tell you she’d go. I just told you to ask her.
Come on, is anybody ready to start obeying god even if it doesn’t really make a lot of sense to you.
See, I believe that life can and should be and will be a real adventure.
If we really, every day, say to god, I’m available for you Whatever you want.
It could be smiling at someone.
It could be telling somebody that the color they’ve got on looks good on them.
I don’t think we realize how many people out in the world are desperate just to believe that somebody sees them.
So We’re gonna obey god, whether it’s convenient or whether it’s inconvenient.
Now, Let’s look at a few people that god called at very inconvenient times and see how they responded.
Oh, and by the way, do you know that as far as I can tell, every person that Jesus healed, he was on his way to do something else.
Come on. I want you to understand that.
He was headed to Jerusalem and blind bartimaeus cried out Jesus, thou Son of David, help me.
And the Bible says the Amplified Bible says, and Jesus stood still. Don’t you love that?
He’s going somewhere, and he stood still.
I wonder how many times we’re in a rush to get somewhere that’s really not even all that important.
And we passed by the man lying on the side of the road bleeding because we’ve got our plan, and we don’t wanna be inconvenienced.
Wonder how many more people we could help if we were willing to make a little bit of a sacrifice to do it.
Mathew 418 through 22. While walking by the sea of Galilee, Jesus saw 2 brothers, Simon, who’s called Peter and Andrew, his brother, casting a net into the sea for they were fishermen.
And he said to them, follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.
Immediately, they left their nets. And followed him.
You know, we read this stuff, and I don’t think that we think that much about it, but if you really stop and think about this, How amazing is that?
They didn’t, I guess, didn’t know who Jesus was. Maybe they’d heard about him.
Maybe they hadn’t heard about him. And I don’t know.
Maybe we could say, Well, there must have been something really special about Jesus that people would do that, but Whatever the case is, they had a plan.
These people were businessmen. They had fishing businesses.
If we go on and read verse 21, says in going on from there, he saw 2 other brothers, James, the son of Zebedee, and John his brother, in the boat with Zebedee, their father, mending their nets, and he called them.
And immediately, they left the boat and their father. And followed him.
They just walked off from everything, like when god called Abraham to leave everything that he knew and was comfortable with and go to a place that I will show you.
He wouldn’t even tell him where he was where he was gonna send him.
And if we get around to it, you’ll see. I mean, Abraham basically just wandered around for years years.
And, you know, pitch attempt one place, and then pretty soon, god told him to move, and he’d pitch attempt somewhere else, and god would tell him to move.
And, you know, he’s doing all this stuff, because god had told him if you’ll do this, I’ll bless you and I’ll make you a blessing.
Well, how many of us are willing to wait? For years.
The test of faith We don’t get what we want, the moment that we want it.
God leads us the long hard way because many times we’re not ready for the thing that god’s got ready for us.
God may have something really major for you to do but maybe you’re not spiritually mature enough yet to handle it.
So god has to take you a couple of trips in the wilderness. Come on.
Because we don’t grow up in our good times. We grow up in hard times.
That’s when we do our growing.
When it’s inconvenient, when it’s uncomfortable, when people are not treating us knives and we love them anyway, When they keep hurting us over and over and because god said to, we forgive them, even though we don’t think it’s right or fair and it doesn’t feel good, We need to start doing things just because god said to do it, and we don’t have to know why or when we’re gonna get a breakthrough.
Not everything that god asks us to do is convenient, but everything god asks us to do, he does give us the grace to do it.
I always say that god gives you the grace for the place.
Even, like, if you’re raising a special needs child, I believe that god will give you the grace to do that.
I know a young woman that has 2 special needs children, they’re twins, and and then she has 2 other boys.
And it’s it’s amazing what it takes for her to take care of all these kids.
And you you just you look at people and you think, I don’t know how you do it.
I just don’t know how you do it.
Well, people do whatever god wants them to do by the grace of god, which means he gives us the ability to do it.
Maybe right now, and you’re kinda you’re in kind of a difficult marriage, but you you believe god wants you to stick it out.
Well, you know what? You don’t have to be miserable and unhappy the whole time you’re in that situation.
If you’re in the place, god wants you to be in, then he’ll give you the grace to be in that place.
And that means that you can be in an uncomfortable place and still have joy.
Come on. There’s somebody that I’m trying to talk to this morning.
Can you not Be comfortable and still be happy.
I see not too many heads going this way.
You’re kinda, like, Now while I’m not perfect at it either, remember, I got the revelation a few weeks ago that I don’t like being uncomfortable.
So If you don’t need this message, I’ll preach to myself.
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The mind actually is the battlefield.
That’s where win or lose the war with Satan. He said all he gets to Satan. Thank you.
He uses a lot of it. Today’s mind.
You start asking god to heal you, and he will store is the god of all comfort, and I am so grateful that I know how to call on god.
