Stand Strong in Every Season | Enjoying Everyday Life Teaching | Joyce Meyer

What does it mean to stand firm in your faith…and can you do it? On this episode of Enjoying Everyday Life, Joyce Meyer shares examples from God’s Word and real life to encourage you.

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.

I’m Joyce Meyer, and I believe that God can heal you everywhere you hurt.
Hi, everyone. Welcome to enjoying everyday life.
We have some great things ahead for you today.
Joyce will tell us how to stand strong in every season of life.
With God’s help, you can stay strong no matter what you are facing, And we’ll connect with a friend that you may already be familiar with, but in a different way.
James Brown has been a force in the sports world and has likely graced your television many times.
JB is a leading voice in sports casting, but he and his wife, Dorothy, are also strong voices for Christ.
You’ll hear from them later in the program, so stay tuned for that. Now, here’s Joyce.
Father we thank you for the word this morning and we just appreciate you and all that you do for us in our lives and help us to learn this morning how to stand strong and fight the good fight of faith.
Amen. Alright. Mike, if you could come on out. Mike. Okay.
Brother just be a baby. Okay.
Now in case you weren’t here last night, I’m just giving an example here that when babies are first born, this is kind of what they do, they just curl up and lay around.
Well, eventually as they grow, they learn to sit up. K.
Then from sitting and, you know, even then sometimes they’ll fall over.
It’s kinda, you know, you put pillows all around.
God does that for us, you know, he puts pillows all around us in our life, some we fall we don’t get hurt.
Then eventually you get strong enough in that position and then you learn how to stand.
And then from there, you learn how to walk, little better, Have a little improvement here.
Like, take a nice walk. Okay. Now, run.
Isn’t he nice to help me? All right.
Now, just just for the sake of understanding where I’m going today, Mike, I’d like you to fall down.
Isn’t it wonder to have this kind of power? That’s great.
Fall down, get up, sit up. We’ve known Mike and his wife for 30 years, they’re great.
Mike’s our staff pastor at Joyce Meyer Ministries.
We got so many employees, we gotta have a pastor to keep them all going in the right direction.
And so you know, as baby Christians, we are to develop into mature sons and daughters of God.
That’s really I’m real big on Christian growth.
People ask me all the time, what do you think the church needs?
I I think we just need to grow up.
We need to grow up and do what we’re supposed to be doing and stop murmuring and complaining about everything and thinking everything needs to be padded so nothing hurts us and bothers us and we need to realize who’s alive in us and what we’re equipped to do and get out there and do it.
But God wants us to do everything that he wants us to do from position of being seated in him or having entered his rest.
And so I’m just making the analogy that we’re babies, we learn how to sit, We learn how to sit, that means enter the rest of God.
That’s our first position in God. We learn how to be seated, how to do everything else from God’s rest.
How many of you are with me on that? Everything else has to be done from God’s rest.
Then we finally learn how to stand. Today we’re gonna talk about standing. Then we finally learn how to walk.
Tonight we’re gonna talk about walking and running and so on and so forth. But here’s what I think.
Thanks, Mike. Here’s what I think. I think a lot of people get saved and right away they try to run.
They wanna have a big ministry, they wanna do some big thing, wanna be on the platform, wanna get the greatest promotion at work.
And so they learn a little bit about faith and now they’re using all their faith to get all these big things but they’re not equipped, they’re not rooted and grounded in Christ, they don’t know how they haven’t entered the rest of God yet.
So here’s what we see, we see a lot of instability because a Christian like that who has maybe a little fruit but no roots, they’re okay till a storm comes.
And then every time a storm comes, they’re falling by the wayside wanting to quit and give up.
So we need to learn how to stand and how to stand strong, and listen to what I’m gonna say, how to be the same in hard times as we are in good times.
Amen? Now, that doesn’t mean we’re gonna feel the same in hard times as we do in good times, but it does mean that we don’t have to take our hard times out on somebody else.
I think I might just sort of say that again.
It does mean that we don’t take our difficulties out on somebody else.
We don’t we still keep our commitments. I’m here today, aren’t I? Yes, ma’am. Alright.
We still keep our commitments, we keep giving, we continue in the word, we continue in worship.
I teach a message and I’ve actually thought about writing a book called what to do when you don’t know what to do.
Because so often we’re just like at the end of our rope, we’re like, I just don’t know what to do.
I just don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do.
And you know, the devil sends out a little demon to sit on our shoulders screaming in your ear, what are you gonna do?
What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?
And our friends say, so hey, I heard about your problem, what are you gonna do?
I get so tired of people asking me, what are you gonna do? What are you gonna do?
Well, there are some things that we cannot do that only God can do, but here’s what I try to teach, well here’s what to do when you don’t know what to do.
When you don’t know what to do, keep doing what you do know to do. Amen?
And I can give you a scripture for that a little bit later.
Now, so today we’re gonna talk about standing and the bible has so many great scriptures about standing strong in God, that’s gonna be the first part of the message and then standing against the enemy.
My goodness, we need to know who we are in Christ and we need to know how to resist the devil.
The bible says resist the devil and he will flee.
He has power but he does not have more power than you do as a believer in Jesus Christ.
We do not have to be afraid of trouble.
I’m just gonna preach to them the rest of you and I I said we do not have to be afraid of trouble.
Nobody wants trouble, none of us are going around looking for it, asking for it, but you know what?
The bible says, Jesus said, in the world there will be tribulation. Cheer up.
That’s the first thing to do when trouble comes, cheer up.
Because really what the devil’s after, he don’t want your stuff, he wants your joy.
Because the joy of the lord is your strength.
If he can get us sad, depressed, discouraged, negative, critical, complaining, being jealous of everybody else, then he’s 1.
But I think the real trick for us is say throw your best shot and I’m gonna stand strong in God.
And that’s the attitude that we need to have in life.
I’d rather do everything that I do with all these nice gooey feelings, but I’m going to do through the grace of God.
I want you to get this in your spirit today.
Through the grace of God, I am going to do what God wants me to do.
Whether it’s hard or whether it’s easy, I am going to do what God wants me to do.
And I don’t know what’s going on in all your lives but I’m quite sure that large majority of you here have something going on that could get you discouraged if you let it.
And good for you that you came out this morning and many of you last night, you’ll be here again tonight and possibly in the morning to be encouraged, to be built up and to have your faith strengthened so you can stand strong.
1st Timothy 612, standing strong in God.
Fight the good fight of faith.
Lay hold of the eternal life to which you were summoned and for which you confessed the good confession of faith before many witnesses.
Now let’s just leave it up for just a minute. Fight the good fight of faith.
But fighting the fight of faith is a different kind of fight than any other fight that you have.
It’s not a fight that frustrates you, it’s actually fighting from a position of rest and peace.
It’s a knowing that you’re fighting a battle that you’ve already won because Jesus already said it is finished and all we’re doing is literally now walking it out day by day in our lives.
Now, see the statement, lay hold of the eternal life to which you were summoned? Okay.
You can take the scripture down now.
I’ve decided recently that I don’t think we say enough about eternal life.
I don’t think I have. I don’t think that we say enough about heaven and I’ve got some things that will end up in my message probably tomorrow morning, possibly at night, but I doubt I’ll get that far.
About looking forward to going to heaven.
And, you know, I’m not suggesting that we become so heavenly minded that we’re no earthly good, but neither should we be so earthly minded that we’re not living today for what God has promised us in eternity.
Yes. Eternity is forever. And let me tell you something, the decisions that we make today to go on or to give up, to walk in love or to stay bitter and resentful, To live a life full of anger and unforgiveness or to be merciful and forgiving.
We make decisions all day long every day.
And we need to make more decisions in light of eternity.
We need to realize that this is not all there is.
This is very much like a little hiccup compared to what there is.
I don’t care if you live to be 100 years old, that’s nothing compared to forever and ever and ever and ever and time without end.
I gotta get off that because I’ll mess my message up for tonight if I don’t, but he 1 of the reasons why he’s saying to fight the good fight of faith is with a view of eternity in mind to make sure that we don’t quit and give up now and lose the very best that God has for us.
Let’s live our life now for the promises that we have for a future with God in eternity where there’s no crying and no tears and no sad unforgiveness.
Whatever it is you’re going through right now, can I tell you that when Jesus splits the sky and comes back, you are gonna be very glad that you hung on?
Amen? It’s gonna be like wow, I’m so glad I didn’t give up.
Make a decision today and I’m just feeding your faith, you know, you’re probably already pretty much on track or you wouldn’t have bothered to take time off from work and be here with me this morning, but you’re here today to have your faith fed that whatever you’re going through or whatever you may go through.
Now listen, I I’m not trying to be frightening or negative but not every storm is in the forecast.
And and we need to live ready, not wait until we get a problem and then try to get ready.
We need to stay strong. Every day, I pray the scriptures in Ephesians 3.
For a lot of the people that I love and for myself, strengthen us in the inner man by the power of the Holy Spirit himself in dwelling our innermost being and personality.
God, we strengthen us that we can walk in the world and represent you the way that you want us to represent you.
Look at me and let me tell you something. You’re not here just for you.
I’m not here just for me.
You know, I think sometimes about how long I’ve been doing this and, you know, you come to a conference like this and maybe this is the first 1 you’ve ever been to and I mean we’ve got 1 lady that this is her 5th conference and she lives in Ecuador.
She flies over here for conferences. That’s a hungry woman, amen? Amen?
But this is not my first rodeo.
I’ve been doing this almost 40 years.
And, you know, that’s a long time to do the same thing over and over and over and over and over and over again, but I’m not alive for myself.
I’m not on the planet just to entertain myself. I’m here to bear fruit for God and so are you.
And in the midst of that, I enjoy my life, you can enjoy your life.
But let me tell you something, here’s another big secret, you are never gonna enjoy your life if you’re not living to fulfill God’s purpose for your life.
If you’re just living to entertain yourself, you’re gonna be the most miserable person on the planet.
But if you live for God and you live to love other people and to make other people happy and to help other people, you’ll get so happy you won’t hardly be able to stand yourself.
Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold of the eternal life that God has offered to you.
How many of you agree that we need to live a little bit more with eternity in mind?
And not just be this instantaneous, you know, right now.
2nd Timothy 47, I have fought the good fight.
I have finished the race. I have kept the faith.
Man, you know that must be That must have felt good to the Apostle Paul.
All the things he’d been through, the imprisonments, the beatings, the persecution, you know, all just to do what he felt like God wanted him to do.
He he laid down position and and honor, I mean, he was like a pharisee and well educated and well thought of and had a lot of authority and privilege and power and he laid that all down.
He said it’s all rubbish compared to the priceless privilege of knowing him as my Lord and savior.
And then, you make a decision like that and then it seems like your circumstances turn out bad, then he ended up for his great decision and great sacrifice in jail, being beaten, being persecuted, but he made it to the end.
And you know what? I don’t know about you, but I wanna finish my race.
I wanna do what God has asked me to do and I wanna be standing strong when Christ returns.
And you know what? We we live we we gotta wake up and smell the roses, we’re living in some tough times.
You know, we all say, well we believe we’re living in the last days and we do and, you know, so did the generation before us and the generation before them, but I always feel like this.
If they thought they were living in the last days, but then we’re living in the laster of the last days.
And I don’t know if it’s the last that will be here but it’s laster than it used to be, I know that.
And I know just from how things have changed since I was a teenager, oh my gosh, the morality is just like in the sewer.
I mean it’s just it is bad out there and we need to be strong.
This is a time for believers to be strong.
We cannot just drift downstream and go along with whatever’s going on, this is our time to stand firm.
Amen? And we have to be careful because you know, when everybody else you know is doing something, well, everybody does it and their life seems to be okay.
Yeah, well let me tell you something, the day is gonna come we’re all gonna stand before God and give an account of our life.
And I wanna be able to say, III fought the good fight of faith. I finished I finished my race.
I’m here, Lord.
And I wanna hear him say, well done, thou good and faithful servant.
Let’s live for that. Let’s live to hear him say that.
And you know those of you watching my television, if I could just take just a few moments and just talk personally to you, you know.
I mean, you know, most of these people that are in this building today, they’re probably pretty already hooked into God, they wouldn’t have taken their time to come here, but they’re hungry for the word and and, you know, we probably got some real strong believers in Christ watching today but then there’s a lot of people, you don’t know what you believe, you don’t believe anything, you haven’t made your mind up what you believe or you say you believe in God but you don’t live like you believe in God.
And I wanna just implore you and beg you to understand that forever is a long long time.
The amount of time that we spend on this earth is minor, and you’re gonna spend eternity somewhere else.
Please make sure it’s the right place. Please make sure it’s the right place. Amen?
God stands ready to forgive your sins, Jesus died for you, he took all your sin upon him when he died in your place.
And I know maybe your brain can’t understand that but let your heart rise up right now and say, could it possibly be true?
Could my sins be forgiven? Could I have a relationship with God?
Could I have the confidence that that when my life here is done that I’ll spend eternity in the presence of God?
Is it possible that God would care enough about me to forgive me and to help me live my life and bear good fruit for him.
Yes. It is very, very possible and all you have to do is say, Jesus, I want you.
Come in and live in me.
Now as promised, sportscaster James Brown has experienced great success in life along with some difficult times, and through it all has learned what is most important to pursue, what really matters.
We are honored to introduce him to you away from the sports set where you are accustomed to watching JB.
He and his wife, Dorothy, she’s so lovely.
They’re just wonderful people, and they have a lot of wisdom to share.
We have made it to Super Bowl Sunday. Folks, I’m James Brown, and welcome.
If you’re a football fan, James Brown needs no introduction.
A He’s a legendary voice in the world of sports.
JB is the current host of Inside the NFL and NFL Today, and has hosted a record setting 11 Super Bowls.
He is also a special correspondent for shows like 60 Minutes, CBS Evening News, and 48 Hours.
He’s won countless awards, including being inducted into the sportscasting hall of fame.
There are many other accomplishments to list for James Brown, the sportscaster.
However, his wife Dorothy would say his biggest accomplishments have nothing to do with his career.
James Brown, 1st and foremost, is a child of God.
Many people don’t know that he’s actually an ordained minister.
He speaks at various venues just declaring good news of Jesus Christ.
He’s a very loving man, uh, very caring man, and my husband of, uh, nearly 29 years.
Well, we need to take you guys with us everywhere we go because I I enjoyed hearing that.
Dorothy Brown, she’s been the 1 who has set the pace.
She has bulldog faith, and we as a couple have been blessed as a result.
Well, I think that’s what initially attracted us to Joyce Meyer Ministries is because she, um, to me, she applies the word and it should mix practical application of the word.
And whatever issues you have in life, whatever problems you have, um, there’s an answer, and it’s in it’s found in the word of God.
James and Dorothy’s bibles are well worn today, a sign of countless hours spent pouring over them.
But there was a time when Dorothy says a lack of understanding God’s word caused a lack of purpose in her life.
I was born again when I was 18.
However, in terms of living a, uh, victorious Christian life, it requires knowing what God’s word says about how that’s done, and to know the purpose that he has for your life.
I was living in New York at the time, going to school.
It’s amazing because New York is such a huge city filled with so many people.
But I just remember feeling this sense of loneliness in my heart.
I think that kind of started my search for a deeper meaning in life, which I ultimately was led to by a church that would teach me the love of God.
And it does give you, um, a sense of purpose, a sense of belonging, um, a sense of identity, um, things that we all, I think, are searching for in life.
Um, so I it filled that void for me.
James says his identity was wrapped up in basketball.
Garnering prestigious accolades during both high school and college, he ultimately secured a position with the Atlanta Hawks.
I wanted to play basketball.
That was my purpose, that was what I thought I was excellent at.
And when I got cut by the team, it did begin a search for what my purpose was gonna be.
But I was hanging out with my ball player friends and we would go to happy hours or and clubbing.
But after a short while that got to be real old hat.
There was nothing substantive there at all, And there was an emptiness, and that’s when I asked the Lord I said, Lord, I’ve heard of you Jesus, I’ve heard of you, but I don’t know you.
If you would reveal yourself to me, I’ll serve you. So that’s where I found my purpose.
I had no idea who I was but when you get to learn the word, you get to understand who you are.
I don’t go around in my job.
My boss didn’t hire me to proselytize, but it’s who I am.
Uh, I know when awards have come, that’s a worldly recognition and I appreciate it.
But I know who made that happen.
And I also recognize that on the platform that the Lord places each of us, excuse the vernacular, it ain’t about us.
It is all about Him. 1 of the scriptures that I pray before I get on air is, uh, that I desire to do all things excellently to the Lord and not unto man.
Amen. And I just, as as you were, um, talking about integrity, I was just thinking we just received, um, a financial report, Joyce Meyer financial report in the mail, um, and I love, um, the transparency of the ministry.
I love that they show you what they do with the offerings that we plant partnering with the ministry.
Uh, it’s such a blessing for us because we know how the funds are being used.
To me, it’s also it’s part of our internal inheritance because when you get to heaven, people aren’t gonna ask you how many TVs did you have, how many cars did you drive.
They’re gonna come up and thank you and say, you’re part of the reason that I’m here because you sowed into the ministry that taught the word to us, and we’d be able to, uh, have our lives changed.
And that, to us, is so much more meaningful than any of the materialistic things that you can accumulate here on this earth.
You know?
Where where was the Joyce Meyer, um, retreat that we went to?
Uh, yes. Florida. Mhmm.
And was it the girl initiative that she was calling it?
Yes.
And she gave the example, you know what, in my church I was known as the weeping minister, so I shouldn’t start down this road too much, cause I certainly don’t want to cry in front of you guys.
I’m not even gonna go into it cause it hurt me so much to hear man’s an example of man’s man’s inhumanity to man with a young girl that was being taken advantage of.
And I just sat there, and I just wept. You know, she’s she’s the real deal.
When she shared that and talked from her heart about what they’re doing, nobody can question what she’s doing, the impact that she’s had.
But I will also say, looking at her conferences, it is the the Benetton of colors, of types, and I’ve seen more men in the audience because her advice is practical for everyone.
Thank you, James and Dorothy, for being the influence and the inspiration that you are to so many.
We appreciate you very much, and we just appreciate the Browns, and we hope that you were as inspired as I was by their story.
And remember, God has big things for you too, and we want to thank all of our partners like the Browns who are such an important part of everything that we do here at Joyce Meyer Ministries.
Remember, everywhere we go, you are right there with us. We love you so much. Thanks for being with us.
We’ll see you next time.
Have you been looking for a 365 day devotional?
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There’s a focus verse for all 365 days of the year, along with a prayer starter.
Get your copy of promises for your everyday life devotional at joycemeyer.org/365devo.
The biggest thing that we need to do is learn how to think like God thinks, and the only way you can do that is by knowing the word of God.
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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.
He he says he lost his life today’s mind.
You start asking God to heal you and he will restore.
It’s the God of all comfort, and I am so grateful that I know how to call on God.