The following program is paid for by the friends and partners of Joyce Meyer Ministries.
While tonight, the title of my message is payday is coming because whatever we sow, we will ultimately reap If we remain in that baby stage of Christianity, always just doing what we want, what we think, and what we feel, we will reap that.
And we really won’t like what we reap, and we’ll probably blame the devil, and we’ll probably blame people.
But the truth is we just never got around to doing what we should have been doing. To start with.
Can somebody say, amen? How many of you know, we love to blame all of our problems on somebody else.
If we can’t find a person, then it’s the devil’s fault.
However, the truth of the matter is is nobody else is in charge of your happiness except you.
Do unto others.
We read this stuff too fast, and we go on to something else and we just don’t get it.
What kind of power has this given us in our lives?
Do you want people to appreciate you? Then start appreciating everybody you meet.
Do you want people to compliment you then start sowing compliments everywhere you go?
When people give you a gift, you want them to give you a really nice gift, something you’d really like to have, then start giving nice gifts.
Don’t buy the cheapest thing you can find. Give people good stuff.
Now a little more understanding on a couple of scriptures that we probably are well aware of.
Enter through the narrow gate. For wide as the gate, the spacious and broad is the way that leads away to destruction, And many are those who are entering through that gate.
A wide gate, a broad path, Not hard to be on.
You can live by your feelings and be on that path.
You can do what you think be on that path.
You can have a bad attitude and be on that path, but it’s gonna lead to destruction.
But the gate is narrow. Contracted by pressure.
And the way is straight and compressed that leads away to life.
And few are those who find it. The Bible says many are called few.
Are chosen. Many are called, but few are willing to take the responsibility to rise up and be the men and women of god.
That god wants them to be.
We can’t wait to feel like doing what’s right to do what’s right.
We do what’s right because it’s right.
We can’t live according to the way we think and what we want.
We’re always telling everybody what we think. I think. I think. Well, I think. Well, I think.
This talks about the broad path and the narrow path.
So few people ever make it all the way through the wilderness and live in the promised land.
So few. And I’m giving my life to try to encourage more people to grow up I love to see people get saved.
And we have hundreds of thousands of people receive Christ.
In our meetings, but I frankly don’t think that’s enough.
I wanna see you go to heaven, but that’s not all I wanna I wanna see you have a good life while you’re here.
I wanna see every one of us become a fruit bearing Christian.
I wanna see every one of us affect other people’s lives and take other people to heaven with us.
I don’t wanna just go myself. I wanna take a crowd.
And that doesn’t happen because we’ve got a bumper sticker and a Ryanstone Jesus pen, and across hanging around our neck.
We gotta have fruit. Fruit. Fruit. I’m in. Amen.
The narrow path to Broad path.
Let’s put these 3 scriptures together, and I think we get a little more understanding.
Whatever you want other people to do for you, Do that for them.
Enter through the narrow gate. That is the narrow gate.
On the narrow path, there’s no room for our fleshly baggage.
On the narrow path, we can’t do what we want, what think what we think and what we feel.
We can’t just talk to anybody any way we wanna talk to them.
You can do that on the broad path, but that’ll lead to destruction.
However, on the narrow path, you’re gonna have to treat people the way you want to be treated.
On the broad path, you wait for somebody to do something right for you, and then maybe if you feel like it should do something right for them.
But on the narrow path, that don’t work. That’s what the narrow path is.
You wanna know what the narrow path is? You gotta get rid of all that fleshly baggage.
And start really living for god’s will.
In god’s economy, you give first and then you receive.
We always wanna receive first and then see if there’s any of it that we don’t want that maybe we could part with.
But that’s not the way it works with god.
Now let’s talk about Jacob for a minute because I think his story is great.
Jacob and E saw were twins. E saw was born first, so he was the oldest.
And under the Old Testament, Jewish way of doing things The firstborn son always got a double portion of the inheritance.
It was called the rights of the firstborn.
When the father died, he would before he died, he would pray That special blessing prayer over the 1st born son, and they just always had a greater portion of everything.
Well, Jacob and E saw his father Isaac knew that it was time for him to die.
So he called the older son he saw.
And he said, I know my time here is just about up.
I wanna pray the blessing prayer over you, and we wanna celebrate with a meal.
So he saw it as a hunter, and he said, I want you to go out into the field and kill an animal and make a special stew.
And then I want you to come and we’re gonna celebrate, and I’m gonna pray this prayer over you.
It was a big thing. A big, big, big thing for them.
Well, Jacob and E saw his mother actually favored Jacob, the younger of the twins, and she wanted him to have the blessing.
But the only way he could get it would be if they tricked Is it?
So she quick made the stew.
Before Esoll could get back with the animal he went to hunt.
And she talked her son into pretending to be esaw.
And one of the things he did was he had to put the skin of a hairy animal on him because esaw was a a hairy man, and Jacob was a smooth skin man.
So he went in and pretended to be the older son esau and receive the prayer of blessing.
Now the thing that’s very interesting to me is even after Isaac realized what he’d done.
He couldn’t take it back. That’s how powerful that prayer was.
Once he’d given it, he said, what I’ve blessed is blessed, and I can’t take it back. Amazing.
Well, of course, then there was problems between Esaw and Jacob.
So Jacob spent a good number of years running and hiding.
You know, do the wrong thing, you always gotta hide.
He got what he thought he wanted by fleshly ways rather than waiting on god to bless and all it did was create fear and misery in his life.
So after a while, he ran into his uncle, laban, and wanted to go to work for him.
And Lavin had a daughter that he really liked.
Her name was Rebecca, and he wanted to marry Rebecca.
And Lavin said, well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll let you marry Rebecca, but you gotta work for me 7 years first.
So for 7 years, he labored and worked for Rebecca, When the 7 years were up and it was time for the wedding, Labin got him drunk.
And he woke up in his tent the next morning.
And he looked over at the woman he’d slept with and married, and it wasn’t Rebecca.
It was her sister, Leah. Well, he was heartbroken. He’d been tricked.
He’d been deceived. How could you do that to me?
Come on now. After 7 years, working for you. Now you’ve lied to me.
You’ve tricked me. You’ve deceived me. I think he totally forgot what he did, Esa.
I wonder how many times we’re all bothered about something that we’ve done.
I mean, about something that somebody’s doing to us.
And we’ve totally forgot that we did the same thing to somebody else and didn’t see it as a problem at all.
Later on in his life, the same thing happened.
His own sons deceived him concerning Joseph, who is his favorite and youngest son.
They were jealous of Joseph, and they took him out into a field to hunt with him, and they ended up selling him to slave traders.
They went back and told Jacob, his father, that he’d been killed by wild animals.
And once again, he was deceived and tricked. You know, god forgave him.
He came to a point in his life where he wanted things straightened out between him and Esaw, and Esaw forgave him, and god forgave him.
But he still had something working in his life because sometimes when you put it on the wheel, it’s gonna keep coming back around.
Now let me explain this because I know that we all know that God is merciful.
But here’s what I wanna tell you, and I thought about this a long time, because I don’t ever want anybody to every time you do something wrong, you’re gonna get banged over the head.
We know that God is merciful.
But here’s what I wanna tell you, and I want you to just listen to this.
Paul said that he received grace because he acted in ignorance.
It’s one thing to be ignorant and not know any butter better.
It’s another thing to sit in church week after week after week after week after week.
Have your whole Bible underlined?
Watch Joyce Meyer on television three times a day.
Watch 5 or 6 other Christian programs.
Here are all the great worship, have all the DVDs, all the CDs.
Have your car with bumper stickers. Tell them, everybody, you’re Christian.
It’s one thing to be totally ignorant and do that kind of stuff.
Then you come to a knowledge of god you repent, And there’s mercy.
And there’s still mercy for us, even now. But we have a much greater responsibility.
And I can tell you something.
I don’t believe that god in his mercy can deliver us from every circumstance that we create by bad behavior.
Because if he does, then we never learn, and we never change, and we never do things any different.
You see, you get quiet when somebody preaches to you like this because we’d rather think we can do whatever we want to and just get by with it.
I didn’t say god wouldn’t love you.
I didn’t say he wouldn’t go to heaven, but I said there is a law that works in the earth of sowing and reaping.
And if you didn’t know anything about it before you walked in here tonight, you’re gonna know about it when you leave.
And that’s gonna give you a greater responsibility to realize the next time that you criticize somebody and go gossip about them to 5 or 6 other people, I mean, it’s time for us to grow up.
What sense does it make to just keep hearing the same messages over and over and over and over again and sit out there and say, amen.
Amen. Praise the lord. Oh, that was good. Hallelujah. Think I’ll buy that DVD.
And then the next time there’s a test, How many messages have you heard on forgiving your enemies and praying for those that hurt you?
100, 200, 300, But I could have talked tonight on bitterness resentment, unforgiveness, and I would had 80% of the people in this room tonight tell me they needed prayer in that area.
Sometimes you don’t need any more prayer.
What you need is to grab yourself by the back of the neck, give yourself a good shaking.
It’s saying I’ve heard everything I need to hear.
Now it’s time for me to do what god is telling me to do.
Rather I feel like it or not.
You don’t have to feel like talking to somebody to talk to him.
I mean, even right now, if Dave would make me mad, I would go home and I would not want to talk to him.
But you know what? I’ve learned. I’ll do it on purpose.
Because I’m not giving the devil any more foothold, any more ground in my life.
You don’t have to feel like praying for somebody to pray.
You don’t have to feel like talking to him to talk to him.
You don’t have to feel like being good to them.
You don’t have to feel like giving your tithe an offering. You don’t have to feel like going to church.
You don’t have to feel like anything. You say god?
Help me. Strengthen me in the inner man.
So I can go out and do what you’re asking me to do instead of just doing what I feel like doing.
Now you’re sowing a seed that’s gonna bring a great wonderful harvest and payday in your life.
Can somebody shout and say amen?
Now just to make sure you understand what I’m saying, I’m not saying that god doesn’t give us mercy.
I’ll tell you what if god didn’t give us mercy, we’d all be dead.
But I do believe that when we’ve been in the word 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, and we’re still going around and around and around the same mountains.
Then it’s time for something to change. Can anybody say, I agree. Amen.
How many of you know better than the gossip? How many still do it?
All the people that know not to.
How may I know better than tell everybody’s secrets?
The Bible says, don’t tell her. Don’t tell people’s secrets. Yeah. We just can’t hardly stand up.
Well, I’m just gonna tell you, and I just don’t tell anybody.
And then we even get spiritual about it. I I’m just gonna tell you so you can pray.
No. You ain’t telling them, so they can pray.
You’re telling them because you just can’t stand not to tell something.
I mean, it’s bad enough to do it. It’s doubly bad to spiritualize it.
And I know because I’ve done it.
I mean, everything I teach you, you should have no problem eating it because it’s coming off my own plate.
I’ve had to eat it first. I’m not preaching out of theory.
I’m preaching out of my life. Hallelujah?
I would never tell you something that I didn’t feel like god had told me first.
God loves you so much.
My goodness, we just have no idea of the life that god has planned for us.
I mean, I was thinking tonight, we don’t even really grasp. God is good.
And god has a good plan.
I don’t imagine there’s anybody that’s ever lived that’s even tapped into 10, 15, 20 percent of god’s good plan.
And I think this thing that I’m sharing tonight is very important.
I feel like that this is really something that we need to grab a hold of.
You can radically change what’s going on in your life if you’ll just begin to do unto others as you want them to do unto you.
I said you can radically change what’s happening in your life.
You talk about people the way you wanna be talked about.
You think about people the way you want them to think about you. You treat them the way.
You want people to treat you.
And you’d be committed to doing it from now until the time Jesus comes back to get you.
And you’re gonna be amazed at what god’s gonna do for you. And you know what?
You may treat this person over here, right, and maybe they’ll never get it, and they’ll never treat you right, but god will still bring you a reward through somebody else over here somewhere.
That’s why I tell people, if you didn’t get the promotion at work that you deserve and somebody got it that don’t even work nearly as hard as you, You still have a good attitude.
You’d be happy for them. You keep doing a good job.
And even if that boss never changes and sees your value, god will either get him out of there and get somebody in the will or he’ll get you out of there and give you a better job somewhere else.
But if you don’t get treated right and then you add bad about it, get a bad attitude, gossip at the lunch table.
I hate this place. Well, you just will stay there. Complain and remain.
Praise and be raised. Come on. I’m doing better in your acting.
Complain and remain. My, my, my, I feel better tonight than I ought to.
I don’t know what’s wrong with me.
Galatian 6.
You know, I like this because I feel like this puts power in my hands.
I feel like, man, this has given me some authority. This has given me some power.
I can change some things in my life if I’ll just begin to Give away what I want.
That’s really what that means. Give away what you want. Wow.
Wow, wow, and double wow. That’s pretty exciting, isn’t it? Give away what you want.
Do not be deceived and deluded and misled verse 7.
God will not allow himself to be snared to scorn, disdained, or mock by mere pretensions or professions, or by his precepts being set aside.
He inevitably deludes himself who attempts to delude god.
For whatever a man sows, that and that only is what he will reap.
He sows to his flesh, lower nature, sensuality will from the flesh reap decay and ruin and destruction.
But he who sows to the spirit will from the spirit reap. Eternal life.
And let us not lose heart and grow weary and faint and acting nobly and doing right.
For in due time, And at the appointed season, We shall reap.
If we do not faint, relax our courage, quit, and give up.
I may not get my reward from the person I’d like to get it from, but god will get it to me one way or the other.
If it don’t come in the front door, it’ll come in the back door.
And if it can’t come through a window, it’ll come down the chimney.
Those that come to god must believe that he is.
And that he is the rewarder.
The rewarder of those who diligently seek him.
Everything in our life. Is a scene.
Every attitude, every action, every thought, all of our words, every prayer, The word of god is called seed that’s planted in our heart.
When it’s watered and nourished, it grows up and becomes fruit bearing trees of righteousness.
The money that we give is called seed.
We take that seed and we plant it in the ground of god’s kingdom.
And it brings a harvest in our own life.
The Bible says if you judge others, you’ll be judged.
But if you sow mercy, you’ll reap mercy.
I could preach a whole sermon here tonight on just being merciful to people.
Giving people the freedom to be themselves.
Don’t try to make them be what you want them to be.
Train up a child in the way they should go according to their own individual bent gift or personality.
As parents, we’re supposed to find out what god wants to do with this kid and help them be what god wants them to be.
Not try to make them be what we wanna be and try to make them fulfill all of our unfulfilled dreams.
Come on.
Some of you are still hurting right now because your parents didn’t know how to let you be who you were.
Some of you felt strange and unusual all your life because you didn’t seem to fit in to what everybody else thought the mold was.
We need to learn how to give people freedom if we want freedom.
We need to learn how to stop pressuring people to be perfect. Hello?
I like people to give me a little space.
You know, made my message and that won’t even be perfect, but I hope you love me enough to like it and come back anyway.
Don’t send me letters about what you didn’t like.
Just in case you didn’t hear me, don’t send me letters about what you didn’t like.
I don’t wanna hear it. I wanna be encouraged. I wanna be discouraged.
You have to be good to older people.
Hallelujah.
I’m gonna play this thing up, boy.
I love this Psalm 126.
Those who sow in tears will reap in joy. Oh my gosh.
Sometimes you gotta do the right thing with tears running down your face.
It’s so hard you feel like it’s just gonna absolutely kill you.
You know, there have been times when Dave has hurt my feelings or made me mad and on I felt like that they were concreted my mouth shut.
It was just like, I could not go in the other room and speak to him if my life depended on it.
It’s not always easy to do what’s right.
Sometimes you gotta do it through gridded teeth and tears.
But those who so in tears will reap in joy. Hallelujah.