Journey to Maturity – Pt 2 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life Teaching

Ready to do some deep cleaning in your soul? Today Joyce Meyer shares how the Holy Spirit helps us “clean house” so that we can become mature believers, on this episode of Enjoying Everyday 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.

Free too.
I’m Joyce Meyer, and I believe god can heal you everywhere you hurt.
If if you want or I want to be what god wants me to be, I might have to put out a little effort just praying is not enough.
Get the job done. I need to study the word. I need to cooperate with god.
I need to pay attention to my spiritual life. If I sin, I need to repent.
If I hurt somebody else, I need to go back and apologize. Are you all with me?
Okay. So after you’re born again, one of the first things you need to do is really understand that god loves you, and he’s made you right with him He’s made you holy.
He has sanctified you, but the holy spirit is the agent in sanctification So it’s interesting because if you read this big, long definition in the vine’s dictionary, it says that we are sanctified, but being sanctified at the same time.
So there’s a whole lot of perfect stuff in us but it’s being perfected in our lives as we grow.
So we have a body we have a soul, and we have a spirit.
Now, all this good stuff has been done as a gift to us in our spirit.
Man, before you just turn everybody inside out, everybody would be great.
But god has to work with us to first clean up our soul, and that’s all that inner stuff that people don’t see, but they see the result of.
It’s like you can be mad at me, but still.
Well, Joyce, We love you with the love of the lord.
Whatever in the world that is, I don’t know. You know?
But I want people to love me truly. Not just some kind of phony way.
Amen? So God uses truth.
To change us. He’s not mean to us. Correction is correction is a blessing.
It took me a lot of years to learn that, but I’ll tell you now, I actually get excited when god corrects me.
You said, well, why in the world would you do that?
Because the That’s one of the ways he shows his love.
Do you know if a parent won’t correct a child? You don’t love them?
If you got a forty year old child living in your house, it won’t work.
Come on. That that’s not Well, I just love him so much. No. No.
I’m sorry, but that’s not love. Mostly, you’re gonna grow up.
And since you’re not doing it here, you’re gonna have to go find somewhere else to do it.
Men? Now when god corrects us, he’s not mean.
He doesn’t punish us. He doesn’t beat on us.
In Psalm 23, the Bible talks about your rod and your staff. They comfort me.
Well, you know, people back in the the day, they took that spare the rod and spoil the child, way, way, way out of context.
And so when I was a kid or a teenager, you didn’t get your cell phone taken away from you.
You got slapped across the face, or you got a belt on your behind.
Now I don’t think that’s the right way to do it.
I don’t think that’s the way god does it, but he has his ways of correcting us.
Let’s just say that you’re working at a job that requires you to compromise your morals in order to work there.
And so you like the money you make, and so you do compromise, you won’t just get out of there, which is what you should do, while god is very capable of causing you to lose that job.
Or let’s just say that you’re hanging out with people that are poisoning your life and dragging you down spiritually, And you know you should get away from them, but you don’t.
Well, maybe they’ll end up hurting you really, really, really bad. Disappointing you and hurting you.
And you just think it’s the most terrible thing, but actually god has done you a big, big favor.
And then?
But that rod and staff The staff was like a looked like a cane on it was made out of a stick, and it had a crook on the end of it.
And when the If a sheep would fall in a pitter in a hole, the shepherd would gently put that crook around his neck and lift it up out of the pit.
And the the rod was a slender stick They didn’t beat the sheep with it.
They would gently if they got off the path, they would gently nudge them back on to the right path.
You see, that’s the way god wants to do us.
He’s our guide, and he wants to anytime we’re getting off that narrow path, he wants to gently nudge us back on to the right path.
Well, what happens in the world today if you fall in a pit?
Well, people don’t treat you like god does. I got a little story.
It’s called the man in the pit.
Very years ago, I came across a piece about someone who fell into a pit and couldn’t get out.
How other people treated that person. Do you ever fall into a pit? I do sometimes. Yeah.
And sometimes I not only need god’s help I need like some personal help.
I need some I need a hug or I need somebody to, you know, God works through people.
He doesn’t just work by himself. He works through people. And we all need encouragement.
We got our friends to be there when we’re hurt. But we we don’t need judgment.
We don’t need criticism. We don’t need to be made to feel guilty. Everybody’s already got enough of that.
There’s times we need to be confident. So this guy’s in a pit.
A subjective person came along and said, I feel for you down there in that pit.
An objective person came along and said, well, it’s logical. Somebody’s gonna fall in the pit.
Why not you? A pharisee said, you know, only bad people fall into pits.
A mathematician calculated how the individual fell into the pit.
A news reported one of the exclusive story on the person in the pit.
A fundamentalist said, you deserve your pit.
A Calvin has said, if you’d been really saved, you would have never fallen in that pit.
And an Armenian said, you were saved and still fell into the pit.
And a charismatic said, I’ll just confess you’re not in the pit.
A realist came along and said, now, brother, that’s a pit.
An IRS worker asked if he was paying taxes on his pit.
Lord had mercy. The county inspector asked if he had a permit to dig the pit.
A self pity person said, you have not seen anything till you see my pit.
An optimist said things could be worse. A pessimist said things will get worse.
But Jesus seeing the man simply reached down and took him by the hand and lifted him out of the pit.
Come on. God gives praise. So god doesn’t treat us the way that people do, thankfully.
John 15, 1 through 3. I’m the vine. My father’s a vine dresser.
Any branch in me, that’s us, you know, that does not bear fruit.
Uh, oh, here we go. That stops bearing fruit.
He cuts away trims off takes away and he cleanses them repeatedly prunes every branch that continues to bear fruit.
So I got this figured out a long time. You’re pruned if you do and pruned if you don’t.
So you might as well go ahead and just try to do things right.
And he’ll prune us, even if I’m bearing good fruit, god will still deal with me, and he’ll prune me.
He’ll keep me trimmed back. In other words, he won’t let you get too big for your breaches.
You’ll keep you pruned back so you’ll bear richer and more excellent fruit.
Now we used to have a tree in our front yard, and it had And they would grow back every year.
We’d have to cut them off what you call sucker branches.
And they’re their branches that are unsightly, they’re in places where they shouldn’t be.
Like, these would come out of the bottom of the tree or some of them would actually be part of the way up the tree.
Well, they’re they’re not doing any good. The only thing they’re doing now get this is sucking the life.
Out of the tree. So the good branches can’t bear fruit.
Now do you have any life suckers in your life?
Come on.
Well, because god loves us, he prunes things off of us that are stealing from us.
And I have this whole set of pruning tools that sometimes I bring when I do any type of message like this, but because of time constraints, I didn’t bring them today.
But, you know, you have everything from little things that looked like pair of scissors.
So these great, big, long, chopper dudes to saws and everything else.
So I want god to get after me when he just got the little things.
You know, I don’t wanna hang on to my sucker branches until he’s gotta get after me with a chainsaw.
Come on. Can you find out what I’m talking about?
Well, One time when I was at work, Dave had somebody come out and pruned that tree, and he pruned it way back I mean, so I thought, what have you done to that tree?
I mean, it was the ugliest thing I had ever seen.
That you should have seen that tree the next year. Oh my gosh. It was so beautiful.
And see, that’s what happens Even if you’re talking about real trees, we’re trying to get this over into where it’s people, but if you prune trees at the right time and the the best time to prune them is in the dormant season, and mature trees will handle pruning much better than younger trees.
That’s why sometimes you’ll see a younger believer getting by with things that you know god wouldn’t put up without a you, and you don’t understand it.
Well, that’s because a younger believer might If god starts pruning them too early, they might just give up and quit, where a more mature person already has a a dependent relationship on god, and they’ll put up with that stuff.
I had a woman in my office one time when I was counseling, and she had just gotten saved.
Just gotten saved. She came to me, she wanted some advice, and in the course of this conversation, she just told me without feeling funny about it at all, that Her and her boyfriend had been living together for a long time.
Well, I thought, well, I’m a tell her, you know, that that’s gotta go.
And, I mean, that’s still a small voice, said no. You don’t tell her nothing?
She’s not ready for that yet. When she’s when the time’s right, I’ll tell her that it’s wrong.
And you see, sometimes we wanna fix everybody And they don’t even comprehend.
There’s anything wrong. Yeah. How many of you know who Chris Cain is? Okay.
Well, I was shopping with her one day, and we went in the store, and the girl asked us what we were doing in town, and Well, first of all, she asked us, you know, are you from here?
No. We’re from oh, what are you doing in town? Well, we’re doing a Christian convinced.
She said, oh, I’m spiritual too. Well, right away, I knew that that was a problem.
How many of you know, when you tell somebody you’re a Christian and they tell you they’re spiritual, that What kind of spiritual that is?
You gotta wait and see. And, uh, so pretty soon, she starts we’re talking and she’s just using all these four letter words and just cussing up a storm and And she said, oh, she said, I guess I couldn’t do that, shouldn’t do that, but she said, you know what?
I believe god cusses. Well, now I’m I’m gonna protect god’s reputation.
So I leaned across that counter, and I said, god does not cuss Chris came snuck in around me and said, but he really loves people that do.
Now You see, I was trying to clean this fish, and we barely caught him.
And that’s what we do.
We don’t always know how when the right time is You gotta be really careful when you start trying to tell other people what’s wrong in their life because it actually could run them off.
So a good gardener knows the right time to print.
And I just want to tell you that I also think that it’s time for some deep cleaning.
How many of you got some stuff in your house that needs to be deep coined?
Well, you know, in Luke chapter 5, there’s a story.
I don’t have time to go there and read it, but the fishermen had been fishing all night and hadn’t caught anything.
They were cleaning up their nets and getting ready to put them up. And Jesus came alone.
He said, have you caught anything, which you already knew they hadn’t? And they said, no.
And he said, well, cast out into the deep and get ready for a haul.
I mean, that whole story if you read it is amazing.
So they they didn’t want to, but Peter basically said because you said to do it, we’ll do it.
And they went out into the deeper water and caught so many fish that the boat was sinking.
And so they had to call partners and other boats and See, when we when we learn how to listen to a deep message or how to read a book, it’s not all fluff or how to how to go deeper in our walk with god and not care more about what god thinks and what people thinks.
When when we when we live like that, then god can bring so much good things into our life that we’ve got an overflow and we can begin to really help and bless other people, which is his will.
Gotta’s not gonna give a bunch of stuff to a bunch of babies.
Yeah.
I gotta let ten year old drive your brand new car. Amen?
And so we need to live a little bit deeper.
A friend of mine, cleaned her closet out, she got her daughter to come over and help her.
And it was something that desperately needed to be done. And when she got finished, she had 150 empty hangers.
That thing was full of clothes that she used to wear before she gained a bunch of weight, and she was saving them for when she lost weight.
You know what?
When you lose weight, celebrate and go out and buy new ones.
Well, you know, a woman cleaning out her closet is a painful thing.
It’s I gotta have help because I might have 10 black blouses and You know what we do?
Even I’ll pull something out that haven’t worn in 2 or 3 years, and I’ll think, well, I’m gonna give that away with them.
I think What? That’s nice. You know what? No. So I’ll put that back.
Then I’ll go well, yeah. But that Then I go to the shoes, and I try them.
And it’s like, well, they hurt my feet, but they’re really pretty. Come on.
And, uh, but you know what we do?
You can have 8 black blouses you like, but 2 that you love And every time you go to get dressed, you’re always gonna pick the one you like the best.
Now, Other than my closet, I’m really good at throwing stuff away, but my husband has a little problem.
I told Dave, he made the message today. Dave has an orange that’s sixty years old.
It’s petrified. It’s as hard as a brick.
But do you think that we could get rid of that orange? No. No.
I may have to bury that orange with Dave. I don’t know. And He loves bags.
I I couldn’t even begin to tell you how many bags this man has.
He has bags with handles. He has plastic. Bags. He has paper bags.
He I mean, he’s got he keeps these little grocery bags, you know, if you come home with the plastic things and he got a place for his stuff.
So what are we gonna do with those? Now my husband rarely ever gets really mad at me.
But when we travel, we have plastic bags like you would get at the cleaners that go over our clothes.
Well, I’m not the most patient thing in the world, so I rip them off.
He takes them off neatly, folds them up, and has a place for the plastic bags.
Well, one day, he saw what I was doing, and he hollered at me.
He was like, you stop that You fold those bags up and you keep them. That’s being wasteful.
I said, David, that bag probably cost a quarter of a penny.
Now I’ve got a few things that I’m like that with.
I’ve got probably 30 or 40 bibles, but I don’t He he just has an issue with socks, underwear, bags, and his orange.
Amen? Sometimes I’ll find a shopping bag full of brand new socks and underwear.
And I’m like, Why do you have all these still in the bank?
He said, well, I buy extra because I really like these.
And when I want some more in 2 or 3 years, I may not have them, so I get them just It’s too tight.
It’s time to invite god, bring correction in my life that’s needed.
And don’t run away from it. Don’t feel guilty and condemned.
The Bible says in Revelation that those whom the lord loves, he tells their faults.
And it says, so be a enthusiastic and burning with zeal when god corrects you.
Amen? Amen. Let’s pray. Father.
I pray that people will take this message to heart.
That they’ll really pay heed to what was said here today and that issues that they’ve been putting off areas that need to be deep cleaned in their life, in their minds, in their attitudes, that they will invite you to come and work in those areas of their life.
And not run away from them.
Help us, god, to grow up and mature and not be baby Christians all of our life.
We want to forget about ourselves, lose sight of ourselves, and offer ourselves to you as a vessel fit for your use.
In Jesus name. Every head bowed and every eye closed.
You know, your journey with god starts with salvation.
And if you’re here today and you just say Joyce, I need to have my sons forgiven.
I wanna become a Christian.
I don’t wanna live the way I’ve been living anymore.
I wanna know god, and I wanna know that he knows me.
And I’d like you to pray for me today. I’m ready to surrender my life to god.
Are you been saved at some time and you’ve backslidden in your far away from god.
Now if that’s you, will you just slip your hand up so I can pray for you?
Let’s see let’s see all those hands. Lots and lots and lots of hands going up. Lots in hands.
Okay. Well, you just do me a favor. Look at me. I’m gonna ask you to stand up.
I’m not gonna bring you down here. But I’m gonna ask you to stand up, and here’s the reason.
I’m not trying to embarrass you, but if you won’t stand up in here, you’ll never stand up out there.
And we have to take a stand.
So if you meant what you said when you lifted your hand, I want you to stand up right now real quick, and I’m gonna pray for you.
Come on. Stand up all over the place. Awesome.
Hallelujah. Okay. I’m I’m gonna pray. I want you to pray this prayer with me.
Father god, I love you. Jesus, I believe in you. I know I’m a sinner.
I’m sorry for the way I’ve lived. I turn away from sin.
And I turn toward you. Please forgive me.
Come and live inside of me. Take my life.
I surrender and make me what you want me to be.
Now I believe that I am saved and you’re gonna teach me.
And I know I’ve got a lot to learn, but I want to learn, and I want to be what you want me to be.
In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Joyce said it earlier, there’s really nothing that makes a person happier than helping other people.
I know that it’s true. It’s true in my own life.
And basically, that’s what partnership with Joyce Meyer Ministries is all about.
You see, we can do a little bit alone, but together, we can combine our efforts and do so much more.
Being a partner means that you make a commitment to pray and give on a monthly basis to join into the efforts here at Joyce Meyer Ministries to help other people right here in the United States and around the world.
Where we are, you are there too. Everywhere we go to help someone, you are a part of it.
And together, we share Christ with others through our program, our website through Joyce’s books, and audio teachings, And we show Christ love for others by meeting their physical needs, medical and dental outreaches, disaster relief rescuing women and girls out of sex trafficking and so much more.
The need is great. We can’t do it on our own, but when you partner with us, Together, we advance the kingdom of god on earth right now.
So please prayerfully consider becoming a partner today.
And continue to watch as we all grow in Christ and become spiritually more mature and have god do wonderful things in our lives And then for that to go through us and out into other people.
We can’t wait to hear from you today.
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The mind actually is the battlefield.
That’s where we win or lose the war with Satan. He said all he gets to say.
I love it.
Today is mine. You start asking god to heal you, and he will restore.
It’s the god of all comfort I am so grateful that I know how to call on