Parables: Seeing Myself – Part 2 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life

The world is full of compromise, but we are called to a higher standard. On this episode of Enjoying Everyday Life, Joyce Meyer shares practical ways to display faith and humility.

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

Dive in for yourself with today’s offer. It’s the everyday life Psalms and Proverbs.
It is a great little book.
It’s God’s word of just the Psalms and Proverbs, and those are exactly where you need to go.
Proverbs for wisdom, and the Psalms are so good when you need comfort or when you need to learn a little bit about yourself, and you’ll also get the step by step cards.
These are just beautifully um, designed bible study cards.
They just have a Bible verse on it and a little encouragement that you can put anywhere you want around your house.
In your Bible and your car, give them to someone else as an encouragement, and these 2 will come together.
So reach out today, joycemeyer.org to get those.
This program has been made possible by the friends and partners of Joyce Meyer Ministries.
I’m Joyce Meyer, and I believe God can heal you everywhere you hurt.
How much of your prayers are for what you want And how much of them are for what you really need?
And I can tell you we need spiritual strength much more than we need a bigger house are a date, are that promotion at work, See what god wants to give us for our inner life?
That’s where your real life is at. Amen. God respects persistence.
And I’m gonna tell you something that you may not wanna hear, but I’m gonna tell you that you need to expect opposition.
If you think that being a Christian is a walk in the park on a Sunday afternoon, You have got another thing coming because the devil hates you.
And anytime, especially if you are on the verge of making any kind of progress If you start to read a book that’s gonna help you, if you decide to go to church, if you decide to join a Bible study, if you decide to have a regular prayer time, you decide you’re gonna help more people, you decide you’re gonna give more.
Every time you take a step in the right direction, the devil is gonna take a step and see if he can move you back.
And so you have to be ready to fight the good fight of faith sometimes.
I have 3 scriptures I wanna put up and have you look at them.
1st Corinthians 169, because a wide door for effective service has opened under me, in ephesus, a very promising opportunity.
And with it, there are many adversaries.
You know, little things, like we’re on our way here tonight.
And our driver gets a call.
There’s a wreck on such and such, and traffic is just backed up unbelievably. Yeah.
And I’m I’m just like, well, certainly. Of course.
They give you all these key cards for your hotel rooms, and we get, like, 4 or 5 different people on our team have keys to different rooms, and, uh, none of them worked.
Well, of course. Why don’t you stop being shocked?
I stopped being Well, it’s like, well, I don’t understand why this is happening to me.
You should just laugh and say, of course.
But Let me give you a little message, Devil. I’m not giving up.
I’m not quitting. I’m not giving up.
Romans 1212 says constantly rejoice in hope because of your confidence in Christ.
The steadfast and patient in distress stay devoted to prayer continually seeking wisdom, guidance, and strength.
Not continually seeking for your problem to go away.
And like I said, yes.
We’re all gonna pray for god to deliver us from our problems.
You know, we’re too human not to do that.
But that’s not what you need to camp on top of.
Really, the message in 2nd chronicles where the lord told yahasafat this battle’s mind, not yours.
I mean, if you go back and study that when jehosaphat took his problem to god, he talked to god about a whole lot of things, and then he just kinda mentioned his problem is a side note.
Everything else was prayer and praise and how great god is and how we know you keep your promises and by Oh, by the way, we’ve got 12 different groups of people trying to kill us.
Could you help us with that? Anybody there? Alright.
And then one more, James 112, blessed, happy, spiritually cross was favored by god, man, the favor of god is something else.
Favorite is a man who has steadfast under trial and perseveres when tempted For when he has passed the test and been approved, he will receive the Victor’s crown of life.
Now how many of you love having a good testimony?
Well, have you ever noticed that the word testimony begins with the word test?
So when your deal is over, are you gonna have a testimony, or are you just gonna have the monies?
Yeah.
Don’t be surprised.
Quit being like, well I don’t understand why this is happening to me.
But why not you? It happens to everybody else. You’re not that shocked when it happens to them.
Alright.
Another parable about persistent prayer. Luke 18.
Now Jesus will tell you the disciples are parable to make the point that at all times they ought to pray and not give up and lose heart.
Saying in a certain city, there was a judge who did not fear god and had no respect for man.
And there was a desperate widow in the city, and she kept coming to him and saying, give me justice and legal protection from my adversary.
And for a time, he would not But later, he said to himself, even though I don’t fear god and respect man, because this widow continues to bother me.
I will give her justice and legal protection.
Otherwise, by continually coming, She will be an intolerable annoyance, and she will wear me out.
And will not our just god defend and avenge his elect, his chosen ones who cry out to him day and night, Well, he delay in providing justice on their behalf.
I tell you he will defend and avenge them quickly.
However, when the son of man comes, will he find this kind of persistent faith on the earth?
What does Jesus want when he comes back?
He wants to find you standing strong, still being determined until you draw your last, that you’re gonna have the best life that Jesus died to give you and that you’re gonna be used by god to help other people.
You can still be standing.
I you know, if you’ve been sick for 12 years, keep praying that god will heal Don’t give up on god just because something is taking a long time.
And I I say that God, I am not giving up.
It’s in your word, and I’m not giving up. I don’t know why this is happening.
If you want to tell me, I’d like to know, but, you know, God usually doesn’t tell us too much.
But I’m not quitting. I’m not giving up. Come on.
I don’t want you to forget what I’m saying tonight.
I want you to be stronger and last longer.
None of us deserve what we ask god to do for us.
I think these parables are interesting. I mean, he’s basically inviting us to bother him. Come on.
See if you can annoy me.
Just keep it up and keep it up and keep it up until I finally just give in.
Think about lot when he was in sodom, and god said he was gonna destroy the place.
Because there were no righteous there. Well, lot got bold.
And he said, well, if I can find 5 righteous, Well, I was thinking he started with 50.
If I can find 50, god said, yeah. I’ll do it for 50.
Well, what if I can only find 10? Well, okay. I’ll do it for 10.
Well, god, one more time, can I approach you and say, what if I can only find 5?
You see what I’m saying?
He just kinda kept inching in a little closer, a little closer He didn’t want him to destroy the people there.
And so he just kept narrowing the margin a little bit.
I don’t know what it is about god, but he likes that.
He likes it when we just refuse to give up. You know why?
Because we’re basically saying when we do that, I believe that your word is true.
And I believe that you’re good.
And I don’t believe you’re holding out on me.
I think the enemy is hindering me. And I know that prayer is powerful.
You remember in the book of Daniel when he was fast and praying for 21 days for an answer about something.
And when the answer finally come, God said that from the moment he started praying, he sent an angel with the answer, but the prince, the demonic prince that ruled over that area had been withstanding that angel until finally God had to send the angel Michael to get the job done.
See, god may send out somebody to help you. And if the devil’s able to resist them, you keep praying.
He’ll send out another batch somebody stronger than the last one.
For a time he would not answer her, but later he said to himself, even if I don’t fear god or respect man, this woman’s gonna keep bothering me until I give her what she wants.
You know, the construction and the wording and the meaning in this parable is very similar to the friend at midnight parable.
The judge was unjust. The widow continued to bother him and be persistent until he gave her what she wanted.
It’s kind of an interesting principle that Jesus is using that if you bother people long enough they’ll give in, And they’re evil people, well, I’m a good just god.
So what do you think you could get from me if you just stopped giving up so easy?
The interesting thing about the friend at midnight mentioned in Luke 11 is he wasn’t even asking anything for himself.
He was being that persistent for somebody else.
So I ask you again, how much do you pray for yourself compared to how much you pray for other people?
You can tell a lot about a person’s character, about how they pray.
Now in these two parables and the next one that I’m gonna talk to you about, about 2 men who went up into a temple to pray, We have opportunities to see ourselves.
Let me ask a few questions.
How quick are you to complain when your circumstances answers are uncomfortable. I’m smiling.
You know, any one of us can get through one day without uttering one word of complaint, it would be a minor miracle.
Do you get a little put out when god doesn’t give you what you want?
How do you respond when you have to watch god give someone else what you want and you aren’t getting it?
And you’re pretty sure they don’t deserve it nearly as much as you do.
Oh, man. That’s a flesh burner.
You know, the heart behind our prayer is so important, and god knows our heart.
Are you praying to impress others?
Are you praying just to get your own way or because you truly want to connect with God?
You know, there’s nothing wrong with praying for things that we need for ourselves and other people that don’t neglect growing spiritually and developing your relationship with god.
Work on your heart. David, pray god see my heart and take out anything in it that is not Good.
So if you study David Psalms, you’ll learn so much about what having a good heart means His songs are a great example of praying with an honest, open heart.
Dive in for yourself with today’s offer. It’s the everyday life, Psalms, and Proverbs.
It is a great little book.
It’s it’s god’s word of just the Psalms and Proverbs And those are exactly where you need to go.
Proverbs for wisdom, and the songs are so good when you need comfort or when you need to learn a little bit about yourself and you’ll also get the step by step cards.
These are just beautifully, um, designed bible study cards.
They have a Bible verse on it and a little encouragement that you can put anywhere you want around your house in your Bible and your car.
Give them to someone else as an encouragement and these 2 will come together.
So reach out today, joycemeyer.org to get those. Coming up, go behind the scenes of Joyce Meyer Ministries.
We’ll show you the effort to put enjoying everyday life on the air across Europe, which is all about sharing god’s word there and how these translated teachings are transforming lives.
Life can keep us on our toes. But it isn’t always on point.
Like dancing, staying steady in our time with god requires daily discipline that can seem overwhelming at the start.
Joyce Meyer is here to help you break it down step by step.
These beautiful cards and booklet will help you phi and create a habit that works for you because taking the time to read and study god’s word is one of the greatest investment you will ever make will include a copy of the everyday life Psalms and proverbs, which features verses from the Amplified Version Bible, along with commentary from Joyce.
Right now, get step by step and the everyday life Psalms and proverbs through the Joyce Meyer Ministries app at joycemeyer.org or call at 1807092895.
These are volunteers at our medical and dental outreaches.
And when you use the gifts that god given you to do something for him, he always blesses you for it.
And we invite you to come along with What do you think? Should they should they do that?
Here for a medical dental mission as soon as you possibly can.
There are so many beautiful places around the world.
And wherever we go, cities, small villages, you’ll find amazing culture that’s all their own.
You’ll find a history, and you’ll find people who love their home universally, We love our families, and we have a need to be loved.
We have questions that need answers. We have heartbreak that need healing.
And most of all, we need to know the truth of the gospel, who Jesus is in our lives.
We are here in Germany today.
And we are discovering that there are great opportunities to share Jesus here in the surrounding area.
We are called to go into all the world And together, we are doing just that.
We come back to us by our ministry. My name is.
One of the
little striking story that I love is that woman, not Christian at all, resting on her couch, listening to the television some program was running, and then her cat walks over the remote and changes the program Joyce appears.
It was too far for the remote. So she just listened to it.
Years after, she wrote us and said, I want to give you my thank you My whole life has changed thanks to Joyce, and thanks to my cat.
That’s just one of many stories.
Staff at the Joyce Meyer Ministry’s German Office in Hamburg, here’s in response to Joyce’s teaching of God’s word.
Stories of hope.
Oh, I love this. Hamburg is a media hub for Europe, but Christians in Germany are few.
You see all the churches still, they’re nice to look at, but what about the life inside?
If you think 30 years ago about 90 something percent, uh, were members of 1 of the larger churches.
Now it’s less than 50%.
Like Germany, Bulgaria has also seen acted by Communism as the country’s political climate evolved over the last 30 years.
There is a spiritual back in Bulgaria, and I that the people, they touch their part of their lives.
And that is something that I think not only in Bulgaria, but in the entire region, in the Balkans, we need to do that again.
Stoyle Petkov is the director of Studio 865. Which handles translating Joyce’s books and teachings into Bulgarian.
The wonderful thing is anyone who would see Joyce program here in Bulgaria with Think Joyce speaks Bulgarian.
Because it’s so beautifully done.
So how
do you make that
Well, we were very fortunate to have a professional actress who is also Christian.
She gladly accepted the call. And, uh, since 2010, we are dubbing with her, all the messages, and her voice is really recognized.
So they
The teams in Bulgaria and Germany do much more than dub enjoying everyday life for viewers in Europe.
They’re also translating Joyce’s books.
We have had a lot of feedback on the battlefield of the mind.
Because, um, it is such a practical book, and a lot of people, no matter what culture, at least here in Europe, people are struggling.
Was their thought life.
One of those people is Marilla, who’s now the social media manager at the JMM office in Hamburg.
Joyce’s teachings helped her through a dark time as a teenager and a young adult.
Um, people always said, oh, you’re little shabby.
And guys always laughed at me and said, no. We don’t want you. You’re too fat for us.
And then I asked myself questions that I never had before. Am I good enough the way I am?
Is my body okay? And suddenly these issues that had never really been there before, totally crushing me.
Then I slipped into an eating disorder.
At 16, I became anorexic and simply carried this for many years and slipped further further into it.
I was admitted to a clinic at the age of twenty because I was severely underweight and collapsed.
And I remember that when I packed up my suitcase, I first wanted to take the Bible with me, but then I decided against it because I was angry with God and had no connection with him But then I saw Joyce Meyer’s book Battlefield of the Mind On the Shelf, which I got as a gift when I was sixteen, but I had never read.
In the clinic, I opened the book and devoured the whole book very quickly.
I realized that my thoughts weren’t based on reality.
They always came from the side, but Joyce had given me this image that when fear knocks on our door, then faith has to open up.
2 days later, I actually found an old Bible in a bookshelf in this clinic.
I started looking for anything that contradicted the bias that had ruled my life all the time.
If I focus on believing the right thoughts, the divine thoughts, then I can live in freedom, and then I can start enjoy my life as well.
I am super grateful that Joyce’s content is available in German for me and for many others.
Stories like parallels are the beautiful result as the team continues the translation work, and god touches more and more lives.
The the good thing about us in Germany is we have, so far, only translated half of them, and, you know, how many shares is over So that’s already quite a number.
And there’s still a lot of books to be translated.
How are you keeping up with making sure that that message is where people are looking for it.
In the Bible that says we’re in this world, but not of this world.
And I think it’s important that we never change the message itself because that is god’s word.
It will always remain the same.
But if we wanna reach people, if we wanna fulfill the great commission, We have to be where the people are.
Thanks to digital media, we do what we were dreaming to do because digital digital media gives us possibility to reach the seekers.
Uh, we are not just entertaining somebody on, uh, television in in this moment.
This moment when the message reaches them, we have changed lives.
We want people to reconnect with god. We want people to grow in god.
And, um, that is all hearted Joyce Meyer here in Germany, and I know it is in the US and all the other countries as well.
Every country is different.
As we know, every culture is different.
The content and the message of Jesus Christ is the same, but the way we distribute it has to be adapted in a wonderful way the people in that area needed.
We can’t go through it and see if we have to change something for the special contexts for our country.
So sometimes we change the cover or we change one of the pictures in the magazine.
So that’s more like what the people expect here, especially when it’s so an important mess So it has to look beautiful and it has to look more beautiful than other things.
So for me, it’s a big honor to work for some thing like this.
I had trouble. Oh, what can I do?
Uh, this is so little, but then, I we see the stories of the people who, uh, watch it and, um, who had really big problems in their life and that change a lot.
Does it surprise you? Cause I know it does me at times that, A woman, first of all, from America, is making such an impact in this part of the world.
The reason she’s making an impact is because god is given her gift.
God is the one speaking through her, and god’s words powerful in any part of the world.
And I think the gift he’s given her is to be very practical and to really talk about topics, to be talk about issues that people are facing in on an everyday basis.
As a partner with Joyce Meyer Ministries as a financial praying part of everything that we do, they’re in every one of those places sharing the word of Christ.
It takes all of us together to be able
that we are all doing this together, especially our partners.
I mean, what we do without them. Yeah. But we know she loves helping others.
Hand of hope, you know, in many parts where the need is so big, We wanna join in.
We give some finances, and that’s the way we want to say thank you. How we have been blessed.
So we wanna bless others
They may have the ability to give financially, but maybe not the same gifts that god has given joys.
I mean, we are just here in the middle.
We are just bringing god’s content and god’s words together with the finances, and we channel it to as many people as possible.
People may not realize the impact that they’re having in all of these different parts of the world.
So are they making an impact right here in Germany?
Definitely. Uh, any any dime that is given is given for good.
It creates blessing in many levels.
We help the people in their spiritual need, but we also help them in their physical need.
And I think this combination is a typical thing Jesus would love.
And this seed I think will go on and grow, and we can continue spreading it from many years to come.
Yeah.
We love seeing wherever we go in the world.
The way this message of Christ impacts people’s lives, how it translates to everyone.
Whether it’s through Joyce’s teaching here in Germany, her books, or an outreach that’s happening in India or somewhere else, when we share the love of Jesus people’s lives change.
I know that’s how it’s been in my life, and that’s why it’s so important to me to share this with everyone else they have the same opportunity.
We can join together and do so much more than we ever can alone.
And everywhere we are here in Germany, other to the world when we go, you are there too as a partner with Joyce Meyer Ministries.
So we invite you today. To give us a call to go to our website, joycemeyer.org, and join us in this mission together.
We can see lives change. So make a commitment today to do what you can. Pray about it.
Do what god asked you to do and join us in partnership.
We are so grateful, and I know that it will make a difference in your life Jared.
We hope you enjoy today’s program. For more information, visit joycemeyer.org.
This program has been made possible by the friends and partners of Joyce Meyer Ministries.