Loving Your Life and Loving Yourself | Joyce Meyer | Radio Podcast
A 15-minute teaching applying practical principles from God’s Word to 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.
Welcome to enjoying everyday life with New York Times best selling author Joyce Meyer.
On today’s program, Joyce will be teaching from her series how to succeed at being yourself.
God created each one of us to be different.
He knows all of our faults and weaknesses, yet still loves us as we are.
When we begin to understand god’s unconditional love and who we are in Christ, then we can stop trying so hard and just enjoy each as it comes.
Now here’s Joyce with today’s teaching.
Well, how many of you could use liking yourself a little bit better?
I mean, seriously, how many of you know that you maybe got kind of a bad attitude toward yourself and you need to come up higher on how you feel about yourself?
This is to me. This is one of the most important things that god has given me to teach people.
And I wanna start by just reading you a little bit out of this book this lady that I know wrote called Joyce Meyer.
It’s called how to succeed at being yourself. Do you like yourself?
Most people don’t like themselves. You know?
I have many years of experience with people trying to help them be whole, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, socially.
I felt it was a major breakthrough when I simply discovered that most people really don’t like themselves.
Some of them know it, while others don’t even have a clue that it’s the root of many of the other problems in their life.
Self rejection and even self hatred are the root causes of many relationship problems.
God wants us to have great relationships.
I have found the Bible to be a book about relationships I find teaching in it about my relationship with god, with other people, and with myself.
Do you know that you have a relationship with yourself?
Now think about that because maybe you’ve never thought about that.
You only think about your relationship with the people at work or your relationship with your children or your spouse, but you have a relationship with yourself, and you have a much more active relationship with yourself than you do with anybody else.
And you never get away from yourself.
You can never go anywhere in your whole life where you’re not gonna be It sounds funny, but we need to really understand that that everywhere you go, there you are.
I mean, not for one second.
Of one day, your whole life can you ever get away from you.
So if you don’t like yourself, You are in for 1 miserably wretched life.
How many of you know how miserable it is just to have to spend an hour or 2?
With somebody that you just really don’t like.
Well, you know, I spent many, many, many years of my life not liking myself.
And for me, it all got started because I was sexually abused by my dad, and so I had a root of shame in my life.
I was ashamed of who I was. I didn’t I didn’t understand that what he did to me wasn’t my fault.
And so because he did it, I thought something was wrong with me, and so I became ashamed of who I was.
And when you have that kind of poison buried deep in your soul, then everything that you ever try to do after that is colored and poisoned by that.
Now maybe you didn’t have anything, you know, really bad like that happened to you, but even in the world that we live in today, don’t you sometimes feel like that there’s always this vague little message that you’re just not quite what you ought to be.
Anybody feel that pressure?
You know, it’s like, you know, look the way the models do on the magazines and, you know, this, this, that, that, and something else.
And so It’s very easy in a success driven society to start to feel like you just don’t quite measure up.
And then the next step that most people take then is they start comparing themselves with other people that they think are okay Really, the thing you don’t know is they probably have some of the same problems you do.
And then We not only compare ourselves with people, but we then try to be like them.
And if the truth were known, many of them are looking at you wishing they were like you, and they’re trying to be like you are.
Because all of us have strengths and all of us have weaknesses.
And the biggest mistake that you can make is to concentrate on your weaknesses.
Now, obviously, we wanna let god work with us to overcome moral weaknesses and to overcome attitude problems.
But when it comes to gifting, to what you’re able to do because of your gifts from god or what you’re not able to do because of your gifts from god.
It doesn’t do you one bit of good to concentrate on and work on your weaknesses because let’s just say that you’re a 2 in an area, Let’s just say like a singing.
You know? Well, yeah, I mean, you ought to be really glad Jackie led the worship tonight because you wouldn’t be nearly as happy right now if I would have done it.
But there was a time in my life when a girl that I knew and was a little bit jealous of, played a guitar and led worship, and she was misarts and crafts and Susie homemaker.
And I was just anything but your normal woman, And, uh, we may talk a little bit more about that another time, but I decided I wanted to try to do some of the things she did.
And so one of the things I tried to do is learn the guitar.
The only problem was I almost failed music in school. And, uh, my I have short fingers.
I have little short fingers, and I could not get them around the neck of the guitar.
And so I’m sitting, spending my time trying to learn how to play the guitar because I didn’t wanna just preach.
I wanted to sing and preach. And see, a lot of people are like that.
They’re not satisfied with what they can do.
So they’re always trying to do something they’re not good at.
Well, let’s just say that I was a 2 as a singer.
Well, are as a musician, well, you know, if I would have worked hard enough long enough, maybe I could have finally become a 4, as a guitar player.
But, you know, the world is not lining up to spend money to get fours.
Are you with me?
But now if if I had a natural gift at speaking and let’s just say just naturally gifted god.
I started out at 7. And so now I developed that gift, and I pray about that gift.
And I learned better communication skills.
And now, wow, maybe in a couple of years, I can become a 9 or even a 10.
Well, you know what? Everybody wants the nines and tens.
But nobody’s looking for the twos and threes and fours.
And everybody can be a 9 or a 10 if you will just concentrate on what you’re already naturally gifted for and naturally good at and develop that, rather than looking at your weaknesses and thinking because you don’t have that gift, something’s wrong with you.
So now you have to work real hard and try to develop what god never wanted you to do anyway.
Amen? How many of you’re getting this? Okay.
I thought I wasn’t a regular woman, and I don’t know exactly what a regular woman is, but I do know I’m not one.
And, um, you know, and and really, it’s just the world’s image of what a regular woman is.
You know? And, uh, I’ve never been like anybody else.
I’ve always been just a little bit different and part of that’s because of the call on my life.
But we just we have different personalities. We have different giftings. People like different things.
Some people love to grow gardens, and so I don’t like either one. You know?
I wanna go shopping and eat out.
I mean, I could care less about I don’t wanna make my clothes.
I wanna buy them. I don’t wanna can my vegetables.
I wanna go to a good restaurant and sit down and have somebody wait on me. Hallelujah.
But now, you know, there are people who just really don’t care one thing about that.
They love to cook. They love to sew. And, you know, that’s great. Praise the lord.
But see, we’ve gotta get an understanding that just because we don’t all like the same thing, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us.
Come on now. Let’s get a little freedom.
I always say every pastor’s wife doesn’t have to lead the ladies group and play the piano.
You know, we just we get these boxes that we wanna put people in. You know?
And I want some people this weekend to break out of the box.
I I believe they’re I believe there’s some people here tonight that that somebody stuck you in a box or they made a mold for you and stuck you in it a long time ago.
And you’re trying so hard to be something that you’re not and you don’t have any joy and you don’t feel fulfilled, but you’ve never had the nerve or the boldness to say, you know what?
That’s not me. That’s not me, and I’m not gonna try to be something I’m not anymore.
I am gonna find out what god has for me, and I am gonna do it with all of my heart Now if you go to matthew2237, First of all, they start out in verse 36 asking Jesus, which of the commandments are the most important.
Which ones are light? Which ones are heavy, they said?
So here comes the heavy word from Jesus.
Verse 37, he replied, you shall love the lord your god with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your money.
And by the way, just to throw this out for your consideration.
Your soul is your mind, your will, your emotions.
And so don’t ever accuse people of just being emotional in worship.
Because the Bible says you shall love the lord your god with all of your soul, and that means with all of your emotions, You don’t just get excited at a football game or get excited when you get a new outfit.
You get excited about god. Obviously, we can be quiet and we can be reverent.
And that’s great and awesome too, but that’s not the only way to worship god.
And I don’t wanna see people get queues of being fanatics or just emotional.
And, you know, there’s common sense.
You don’t wanna just get so worked up, you know, that nobody around you can even enjoy what they’re doing or can even hear themselves.
Obviously, we have control over ourselves.
But there’s not one thing wrong with clapping and lifting your hands and jumping up and down a little bit and acting like you might maybe be in enjoying being in church.
So he says, you shall love the lord your god with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.
In verse 39 says well, first, he says, verses 38.
This is the great and the most important principle in the first commandment.
Loving god is the first and the most important thing we have to do.
Secondly, you shall love your neighbor as you do yourself.
Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Well, guess what?
If you don’t love yourself, you’re not gonna be able to love anybody else.
If you don’t get along with you, you’re not gonna get along with anybody else.
If you don’t have a good relationship with you, you are not gonna have a good relationship with the other people in your life The greatest gift that you can give to the world is a healthy physically healthy, mentally healthy, and emotionally healthy.
And I believe when somebody doesn’t like themselves, It’s equivalent to being emotionally ill.
It’s not the way that god wants us to function in this life.
You are not supposed to have negative feelings about yourself.
It’s another reason why we have to deal with religious spirits because all they do is make you feel guilty and bad and give you 5 more rules to follow every time you listen to them, and you’re already not following all the others.
And so all you feel is worse than you did when you went.
The word that I preach is a strong word, and it will bring correction to your life But when you leave, you will feel better than you did when you came in.
And you should. You should not go to church and go out feeling like, a rat and a bum and a no good nothing that will never amount to anything.
Amen. Love the lord your god with all your hearts, soul, mind, and strength.
Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
God wants us to succeed in everything he calls and equips us to do, which is why today’s resource offering is perfect for diving deeper into this topic.
We pray Joyce’s newest release, the pathway to success will help guide you toward true godly success.
Available now for your gift of any out. Order at joycemeyer.org or call toll free at 1807890089.
Ladies, we’re going to Tampa.
Sunny skies, beautiful weather, and god’s word. It’s the perfect getaway.
Join us for the 2024 Love Life Women’s conference, September 12th through 14th in Tampa, Florida, with Joyce Meyer.
Priscilla fire. Kristine King and worship with Tayah and Riley Clemens. Register today at joycemeyer.org/lovely
Thanks for listening to enjoying everyday life.
Joyce Meyer Ministries mission is to share Christ and love people.
Together, we can do so much more.
On today’s program, Joyce will be teaching from her series how to succeed at being yourself.
God created each one of us to be different.
He knows all of our faults and weaknesses, yet still loves us as we are.
When we begin to understand god’s unconditional love and who we are in Christ, then we can stop trying so hard and just enjoy each as it comes.
Now here’s Joyce with today’s teaching.
Well, how many of you could use liking yourself a little bit better?
I mean, seriously, how many of you know that you maybe got kind of a bad attitude toward yourself and you need to come up higher on how you feel about yourself?
This is to me. This is one of the most important things that god has given me to teach people.
And I wanna start by just reading you a little bit out of this book this lady that I know wrote called Joyce Meyer.
It’s called how to succeed at being yourself. Do you like yourself?
Most people don’t like themselves. You know?
I have many years of experience with people trying to help them be whole, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, socially.
I felt it was a major breakthrough when I simply discovered that most people really don’t like themselves.
Some of them know it, while others don’t even have a clue that it’s the root of many of the other problems in their life.
Self rejection and even self hatred are the root causes of many relationship problems.
God wants us to have great relationships.
I have found the Bible to be a book about relationships I find teaching in it about my relationship with god, with other people, and with myself.
Do you know that you have a relationship with yourself?
Now think about that because maybe you’ve never thought about that.
You only think about your relationship with the people at work or your relationship with your children or your spouse, but you have a relationship with yourself, and you have a much more active relationship with yourself than you do with anybody else.
And you never get away from yourself.
You can never go anywhere in your whole life where you’re not gonna be It sounds funny, but we need to really understand that that everywhere you go, there you are.
I mean, not for one second.
Of one day, your whole life can you ever get away from you.
So if you don’t like yourself, You are in for 1 miserably wretched life.
How many of you know how miserable it is just to have to spend an hour or 2?
With somebody that you just really don’t like.
Well, you know, I spent many, many, many years of my life not liking myself.
And for me, it all got started because I was sexually abused by my dad, and so I had a root of shame in my life.
I was ashamed of who I was. I didn’t I didn’t understand that what he did to me wasn’t my fault.
And so because he did it, I thought something was wrong with me, and so I became ashamed of who I was.
And when you have that kind of poison buried deep in your soul, then everything that you ever try to do after that is colored and poisoned by that.
Now maybe you didn’t have anything, you know, really bad like that happened to you, but even in the world that we live in today, don’t you sometimes feel like that there’s always this vague little message that you’re just not quite what you ought to be.
Anybody feel that pressure?
You know, it’s like, you know, look the way the models do on the magazines and, you know, this, this, that, that, and something else.
And so It’s very easy in a success driven society to start to feel like you just don’t quite measure up.
And then the next step that most people take then is they start comparing themselves with other people that they think are okay Really, the thing you don’t know is they probably have some of the same problems you do.
And then We not only compare ourselves with people, but we then try to be like them.
And if the truth were known, many of them are looking at you wishing they were like you, and they’re trying to be like you are.
Because all of us have strengths and all of us have weaknesses.
And the biggest mistake that you can make is to concentrate on your weaknesses.
Now, obviously, we wanna let god work with us to overcome moral weaknesses and to overcome attitude problems.
But when it comes to gifting, to what you’re able to do because of your gifts from god or what you’re not able to do because of your gifts from god.
It doesn’t do you one bit of good to concentrate on and work on your weaknesses because let’s just say that you’re a 2 in an area, Let’s just say like a singing.
You know? Well, yeah, I mean, you ought to be really glad Jackie led the worship tonight because you wouldn’t be nearly as happy right now if I would have done it.
But there was a time in my life when a girl that I knew and was a little bit jealous of, played a guitar and led worship, and she was misarts and crafts and Susie homemaker.
And I was just anything but your normal woman, And, uh, we may talk a little bit more about that another time, but I decided I wanted to try to do some of the things she did.
And so one of the things I tried to do is learn the guitar.
The only problem was I almost failed music in school. And, uh, my I have short fingers.
I have little short fingers, and I could not get them around the neck of the guitar.
And so I’m sitting, spending my time trying to learn how to play the guitar because I didn’t wanna just preach.
I wanted to sing and preach. And see, a lot of people are like that.
They’re not satisfied with what they can do.
So they’re always trying to do something they’re not good at.
Well, let’s just say that I was a 2 as a singer.
Well, are as a musician, well, you know, if I would have worked hard enough long enough, maybe I could have finally become a 4, as a guitar player.
But, you know, the world is not lining up to spend money to get fours.
Are you with me?
But now if if I had a natural gift at speaking and let’s just say just naturally gifted god.
I started out at 7. And so now I developed that gift, and I pray about that gift.
And I learned better communication skills.
And now, wow, maybe in a couple of years, I can become a 9 or even a 10.
Well, you know what? Everybody wants the nines and tens.
But nobody’s looking for the twos and threes and fours.
And everybody can be a 9 or a 10 if you will just concentrate on what you’re already naturally gifted for and naturally good at and develop that, rather than looking at your weaknesses and thinking because you don’t have that gift, something’s wrong with you.
So now you have to work real hard and try to develop what god never wanted you to do anyway.
Amen? How many of you’re getting this? Okay.
I thought I wasn’t a regular woman, and I don’t know exactly what a regular woman is, but I do know I’m not one.
And, um, you know, and and really, it’s just the world’s image of what a regular woman is.
You know? And, uh, I’ve never been like anybody else.
I’ve always been just a little bit different and part of that’s because of the call on my life.
But we just we have different personalities. We have different giftings. People like different things.
Some people love to grow gardens, and so I don’t like either one. You know?
I wanna go shopping and eat out.
I mean, I could care less about I don’t wanna make my clothes.
I wanna buy them. I don’t wanna can my vegetables.
I wanna go to a good restaurant and sit down and have somebody wait on me. Hallelujah.
But now, you know, there are people who just really don’t care one thing about that.
They love to cook. They love to sew. And, you know, that’s great. Praise the lord.
But see, we’ve gotta get an understanding that just because we don’t all like the same thing, that doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with us.
Come on now. Let’s get a little freedom.
I always say every pastor’s wife doesn’t have to lead the ladies group and play the piano.
You know, we just we get these boxes that we wanna put people in. You know?
And I want some people this weekend to break out of the box.
I I believe they’re I believe there’s some people here tonight that that somebody stuck you in a box or they made a mold for you and stuck you in it a long time ago.
And you’re trying so hard to be something that you’re not and you don’t have any joy and you don’t feel fulfilled, but you’ve never had the nerve or the boldness to say, you know what?
That’s not me. That’s not me, and I’m not gonna try to be something I’m not anymore.
I am gonna find out what god has for me, and I am gonna do it with all of my heart Now if you go to matthew2237, First of all, they start out in verse 36 asking Jesus, which of the commandments are the most important.
Which ones are light? Which ones are heavy, they said?
So here comes the heavy word from Jesus.
Verse 37, he replied, you shall love the lord your god with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your money.
And by the way, just to throw this out for your consideration.
Your soul is your mind, your will, your emotions.
And so don’t ever accuse people of just being emotional in worship.
Because the Bible says you shall love the lord your god with all of your soul, and that means with all of your emotions, You don’t just get excited at a football game or get excited when you get a new outfit.
You get excited about god. Obviously, we can be quiet and we can be reverent.
And that’s great and awesome too, but that’s not the only way to worship god.
And I don’t wanna see people get queues of being fanatics or just emotional.
And, you know, there’s common sense.
You don’t wanna just get so worked up, you know, that nobody around you can even enjoy what they’re doing or can even hear themselves.
Obviously, we have control over ourselves.
But there’s not one thing wrong with clapping and lifting your hands and jumping up and down a little bit and acting like you might maybe be in enjoying being in church.
So he says, you shall love the lord your god with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, with all your strength.
In verse 39 says well, first, he says, verses 38.
This is the great and the most important principle in the first commandment.
Loving god is the first and the most important thing we have to do.
Secondly, you shall love your neighbor as you do yourself.
Love your neighbor as you love yourself. Well, guess what?
If you don’t love yourself, you’re not gonna be able to love anybody else.
If you don’t get along with you, you’re not gonna get along with anybody else.
If you don’t have a good relationship with you, you are not gonna have a good relationship with the other people in your life The greatest gift that you can give to the world is a healthy physically healthy, mentally healthy, and emotionally healthy.
And I believe when somebody doesn’t like themselves, It’s equivalent to being emotionally ill.
It’s not the way that god wants us to function in this life.
You are not supposed to have negative feelings about yourself.
It’s another reason why we have to deal with religious spirits because all they do is make you feel guilty and bad and give you 5 more rules to follow every time you listen to them, and you’re already not following all the others.
And so all you feel is worse than you did when you went.
The word that I preach is a strong word, and it will bring correction to your life But when you leave, you will feel better than you did when you came in.
And you should. You should not go to church and go out feeling like, a rat and a bum and a no good nothing that will never amount to anything.
Amen. Love the lord your god with all your hearts, soul, mind, and strength.
Love your neighbor as you love yourself.
God wants us to succeed in everything he calls and equips us to do, which is why today’s resource offering is perfect for diving deeper into this topic.
We pray Joyce’s newest release, the pathway to success will help guide you toward true godly success.
Available now for your gift of any out. Order at joycemeyer.org or call toll free at 1807890089.
Ladies, we’re going to Tampa.
Sunny skies, beautiful weather, and god’s word. It’s the perfect getaway.
Join us for the 2024 Love Life Women’s conference, September 12th through 14th in Tampa, Florida, with Joyce Meyer.
Priscilla fire. Kristine King and worship with Tayah and Riley Clemens. Register today at joycemeyer.org/lovely
Thanks for listening to enjoying everyday life.
Joyce Meyer Ministries mission is to share Christ and love people.
Together, we can do so much more.
