The Painless Path – Part 1

Why go through life wounded on the inside? On this episode of Enjoying Everyday Life, Joyce Meyer encourages you to courageously face your pain, receive healing from God, and go on enjoying your life!
“Here’s one of my favorite statements: We are never going to enjoy stability, we are never going to enjoy spiritual maturity until we learn how to do what’s right when it feels wrong, and every time you do what’s right by a decision of your will using discipline and self control to go beyond how you feel, the more painful it is in your flesh, the more you’re growing spiritually at that particular moment.”
― Joyce Meyer

Just a reminder, you can watch full episodes on my app or join me at Joyce Meyer dot org.
I’ll see you soon. We are so work accomplishment oriented in our Western society that I think sometimes we forget after God worked for six days creating everything he rested.
And so Adam’s first full day on the earth was a day of rest and we just, we, we get it upside down.
We glorify work over everything else and of course we should work and not be lazy, but God wants you to enjoy your life.
He wants you to enjoy yourself. He want you to enjoy your family, your kids don’t just raise your kids.
Enjoy your kids. Don’t just be married to somebody enjoy them.
The bible says that a a wife should enjoy her husband. Amen, spicy.
And um and you need, you need to enjoy yourself.
You have a home, take time to enjoy it.
Don’t just gripe because you got to clean it all the time. Enjoy it.
Like I said this morning, if you hate your job, then go get one you can enjoy.
Don’t spend your life doing stuff that you hate. You’ve only got one life.
How about making a decision to live it?
How many of you need to enjoy your life more than what you do?
You know, we don’t want to just exist and drift from day to day and just be in this survival mode all the time.
You know, when I was growing up, I just, I basically just tried to survive every day and I look forward to the day when I was 18 and could leave home and hopefully have a happy life.
But I thought when I walked away from the problems that I grew up in that I didn’t have a problem anymore, but I really just took it with me.
It was etched in my soul and it was adversely affecting every single area of my life until I started, not just going to church on Sunday, but actually being a full time serious Christian, you know, there’s a big difference in just going to church on Sunday and really being committed to learning how to live the life that Jesus died to give you.
I think somebody watching by television needs to hear that.
There’s a big difference in just going to church, putting in your time, getting your check mark on your church calendar.
There’s a difference in that and really being serious about your walk with God and being committed to really learning how to be Christ like and to live the life that Jesus really died to give you.
Now, I wanna talk to you for a minute about the painless path, you know, getting hard hearts.
But oddly enough getting well hurts too.
You come to a point where it doesn’t hurt anymore.
But part of the reason why so many people stay broken is because there’s also pain in the healing process.
You know, you can injure yourself and the injury hurts.
But while you’re in the healing process, it still hurts, doesn’t it?
So I want you to understand if you’re one of these people that decided with me this morning that you’re gonna, you’re ready for a life upgrade.
You want to not just be here and breathe, but you want to have the life, the best upgraded life that Jesus died to give you.
I’m just gonna be honest with you and tell you that it’s not just going to all be easy for one thing to get.
Well, you have to face a lot of things about where you’re at.
Jesus said, if you continue in my word, you’ll know the truth and the truth will make you free.
Well, it’s not the truth about somebody else that’s gonna make you free.
It’s the truth about me facing a truth about me that I had problems that I was manipulative and controlling that I was insecure, no matter the fact that I acted bold, really way down deep inside.
I was insecure. Being honest with yourself about yourself is the bravest thing that you can ever do in your life.
You see, God knows you and he loves you anyway and you need to learn how to know you and love you anyway.
I don’t like everything I do, but I do like myself.
I actually think that we are insulting God if we hate ourselves and refuse to have a good relationship with ourselves because we’re not the epitome of the perfection that we think that we should be.
Jesus didn’t die for perfect people.
He died for people that are imperfect and will continue to have some imperfections till he comes back to get us.
The Bible says he didn’t come for those that were well, but he came for those that were sick. Amen.
And so I qualify for help from God and you do too.
But in the natural, it’s just the way we are, our flesh is always gonna look for a painless path.
And so that’s why I want to just be clear with you that if you really want to get well, yeah, there’s gonna be some challenges to it and it’s not gonna happen super quick.
It happens little by little God changes you from glory to glory.
But the good news is is if you’re on your way to full recovery, at least you’re on your way somewhere.
Did you hear me? And that’s better than just being stuck nowhere.
There’s two kinds of pain we can talk about today.
The pain of change or the pain of never changing.
And you know what the thought of staying the same is really scary to me.
I mean, it just makes me shiver to think that I could still be the way that I used to be 42 years ago.
There’s been a lot of pain getting from there to here.
Oh, but there’s been more joy than pain.
And I certainly am glad that God gave me the grace to not give up.
And you have to keep in mind that every little bit of progress you get, you can then share that progress with somebody else.
People need to see people overcome.
They need the courage to realize, well, if you can do it, then maybe I can do it.
There’s a saying my husband’s always had fast and fragile. Slow and solid.
What comes together fast can also come apart fast of what is built slowly can become solid.
I don’t know if you’ve noticed it or not, but God’s not in a hurry.
Has anybody realized that God’s not in a hurry? You know why?
Because he’s more interested in quality than quantity. Amen.
Don’t get stuck in the trap of just trying to see how much of your Bible you can read every day.
So you can feel proud of yourself.
God would rather that you stare at two verses for an hour and get something out of it than to read seven chapters and not know what you read when you got done of all the people we need to stop trying to impress.
It’s God. Did you hear me? Because He knows us.
So quality over quantity don’t be in such a hurry.
We need to wise up that just stop looking for everything to be easy.
We need to toughen up a little bit and be willing to go through whatever we need to go through to have what we say that we want to have.
You know, a lot of people are jealous of successful people or they’re jealous of people that I don’t know, stay in shape and, you know, still look good in their forties or fifties or whatever and you’re jealous of somebody’s home or jealous of somebody’s job or maybe you, you’re old enough to retire and you don’t have hardly anything and you’re jealous of people that, you know, that have got this nice income level.
Now at retirement, we need to stop being jealous of people that are blessed if we don’t want to do what they did to get what they’ve got.
Want to hear more from Joyce on this topic.
We’ve got to cover, visit us in the Joyce Meyer app or at Joyce Meyer dot org today.