People Pleasers | Radio Podcast | Joyce Meyer

Are you a people pleaser? Joyce Meyer shares wisdom on breaking free from the need to please others at the expense of your own peace and God’s calling. With real-life examples and scripture, she teaches how to stand strong in faith, avoid manipulation, and find true freedom in serving God above all else.

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.

[Music] welcome to Enjoying Everyday Life with New York Times bestselling author Joyce Meyer on today’s program Joyce will be teaching from her series the courage to be different it’s okay not to fit in with everyone in today’s society in fact the Bible is full of people who refuse to follow the crowd we must be bold enough to stand up for what’s right no matter the cost now here’s Joyce with today’s teaching today I’m going to teach about the dangers of being a people pleas [Laughter]

her bring it on right at least that’s what I’m going to teach on this morning this afternoon I’ve got something equally good but we’re not going to tell you about that either so this is a unique area because we do want to please people and there’s even a scripture that tells us that we should live to please people but we have to be careful that pleasing people doesn’t mean then that we end up not pleasing God so there’s nothing better than helping people serving people doing things for other people it needs to be

an active part of all of our Lives nobody here should have the attitude well I’m just going to do what I please and I don’t care how it affects anybody else but we have to realize that there are people in in the world that will take advantage of us there are people that are manipulators and controllers and users and abusers and we have to watch out for those kind of people but we also have to make sure that we don’t have the disease to please to where we are so afraid of being rejected that we will always do what

somebody else wants us to do no matter what we want or no matter what we feel that we should do some of you have a real problem with this some of you maybe not so much but I can’t see that everybody in the room could not benefit from this message today so father we thank you for helping us and for setting us free do you often find yourself saying yes when somebody asked you to do them a favor and then later regretting it perhaps you said yes while your heart was screaming no and then you end up feeling like a

victim and you’re resentful are you selfless to a fault do you feel guilty when you say no you know people Pleasers may be people who are often denied affection and love in their childhood or they only received affection when they were being of service or they were doing exactly what everyone wanted them to do in my own childhood for some reason I think just because my father was so miserable himself and you know unhappy people want to make other people unhappy there’s nothing that annoys an unhappy person

more than being around a happy person I mean it’s true they just don’t they don’t like it and so my dad never was much into fun or laughter and I can actually remember as a little girl getting in trouble for laughing and so I learned that I was always accepted when I was working when I was accomplishing when I was doing something for somebody else but that what I wanted to do didn’t seem to be of much value so I became what the world calls a workaholic thinking that I got all my worth and value out of my work now my natural

personality is motivated by accomplishment so I kind of have had a double problem because I am motivated in that direction and I am a leader and I have a lot to do and I’m serious-minded and and all that’s very good but because of this past that I have of rejection I’ve also had to be careful that I don’t do things that I feel like that maybe God doesn’t want me to do just because I don’t want to make somebody mad or I don’t want to disappoint them or I don’t want them not to like me does anybody

understand what I’m talking about here okay especially the thing about anger because my father was a very angry man and you know it continues to amaze me how much we learn in the first few formative years of our life that we don’t even really know that we learned and it just becomes part of us and honestly sometimes it can take you 75 years to get over what you learned in 3 years as a child we spend a lot of time unlearning things that we learned as well as trying to learn things that we need to learn so because my father was

angry and would get violent when he was angry everybody in the house kind of kind of played this game we just all did everything we could to make sure that Dad didn’t get angry and so I still one of my weaknesses today it’s not the only one but it is one and one that I know that I have to watch for and you’re well to know your weaknesses every everybody needs to be bold enough to face your weaknesses because that’s the area where Satan will hit you so you have to be aware of what those weaknesses are so I

don’t like it when people especially in the family are mad at me now there’s some people I couldn’t care less but in my family people that I have to be around all the time I don’t want any upset I don’t even want my kids to be mad at each other I don’t want Dave and one of our kids to be mad at each other I grew up with so much turmoil as a child that I just really am a huge fan of Peace well we all should want peace but we never should start compromising what we believe that God wants us to do

in order to keep it if God says to confront then we’ve got to confront if he says say no then we need to say no so I want to say again there’s nothing wrong with pleasing people but if it means that you don’t please God in order to please people then you’re going to miss your destiny if you do that listen to what the Apostle Paul said I love this Galatians 110 now am I trying to win the favor of men or of God do I seek to please men if I were still seeking popularity with men I would not now be a

bonder servant of the Lord Jesus Christ so you know what he’s really saying there if my goal was to keep everybody around me happy I would have missed my destiny amen I mean that that’s a strong thing to think about I wonder how many people have even turned their back on serving Christ because if they did it was going to mean the loss of friendships or they couldn’t be part of the group anymore matter of fact here’s a scripture that backs that up John 12 12: 42 and 43 and yet in spite of all this many of the leading men the

authorities and the Nobles believed and trusted in Jesus but because of the Pharisees they would not confess it for fear that if they acknowledged him they would be expelled from the synagogue 43 for they love the approval and the praise and the glory that comes from men instead of and more than the glory that comes from God they valued their credit with men more than their credit with God so here are people who believed in Jesus but they wouldn’t talk about it openly they wouldn’t openly go forward with a

full-on relationship with God because they were afraid that they would be asked to leave the church well when God touched my life in 1976 called me to teach I was filled with the Holy Spirit and I got so excited about God I was kind of like the woman we talked about last night who was just so in love with Jesus because what he had done for her that she came to a room where he was eating was so emotional she cried enough tears to wash his feet with her tears broke a bottle of expensive cologne poured the cologne all over him

to anoint him and let her hair down in public something that a woman was not supposed to do and dry hied her feet with his hair and everybody around was astonished that he would even let her do that you know when people that are excited about God really excited about God are with people who are not really excited about God they’re going to call you a religious fanatic a nut you’re overboard you’ve gone too far a religious freak well nobody likes that and to be honest when you get excited about God and your

friends are not excited about God even your friends at church not everybody who goes to church is excited about God Amen a lot of people just go because that’s what they do or that it’s a duty but they don’t they don’t really want to be there they come in late they can’t wait for it to be over they sleep through most of it or play around with their phone and that’s not I mean that that means nothing to God nothing at all but I can tell you if you get excited and the people around you aren’t then

they’re going to want to get rid of you or try to change you and get you to compromise and be like them if you want to really serve God full on now listen to what I’m going to say don’t mean it to be negative but if you’re going to really have a full-on relationship with God you might as well get ready for some rejection because you’re going to get it and it doesn’t bother us much unless it’s people we really love when I got really excited about God I was asked to leave my church they gave me two options

you need to stop talking about this stuff or you’re going to need to leave well me being quiet then was not an option and I’m not sure I’d be much better at it now but this was a big thing for us because Dave grew up in that particular denomination everybody in his family was part of that denomination that’s just who we were our kids went to school there our whole social life revolved around there so for me to be where I’m at today I had to be willing to lose something come on so you know the Bible says if you

want to gain the higher life you got to lose the lower life and if you hang on to the lower life you’ll lose the higher life and I can tell you right now if your friends or your family are sending you a silent message that you are out of their affection if you’re going to continue to do this Jesus thing then let me tell you they do not love you and they are not your friends and you might as well know now rather than later I wonder how many people want more of God in their life want more of God but you know some

people you’ve been stuck in a certain place for so long and that’s where your whole life is and you know that it would just really stir up some stuff if you decided to leave and go somewhere else where you could be fed differently or maybe you’d even just like to go to a Bible study or something but your friends wouldn’t well what are you doing that far you know why are you doing that make decisions for yourself because if you don’t nobody else is going to amen and please let’s remember that we all are going to come