The Test of Faithfulness – Part 1 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday LIfe Teaching
The Test of Faithfulness – Part 1 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday LIfe Teaching
What is faithfulness and how can we display it in our everyday lives? On this episode of Enjoying Everyday Life, Joyce Meyer shares scriptures and practical stories to explain.
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 do what I do because I’ve seen god’s power transform my own life, and he will do it for you.
The key to everything is found in god’s word.
I’m Joyce Meyer, and I believe that god can heal you everywhere you hurt.
You know, faithfulness is on the endangered character list.
I don’t know if you realize it or not, but we’re in serious trouble in our society today because The things that we should be displaying the most seem to be disappearing more and more and more all the time.
We’re just on a steady decline.
And I can tell you if anybody is gonna model good character to the world, it’s gonna have to be the believer because you’re not the only place we can even hope to be taught that anymore is from the word of god.
And it’s something we need to do a lot of teaching on in our churches.
I remember when god first started putting this ministry on my heart, and it’s very interesting to me.
I probably didn’t realize at the time, what an important thing God was putting in my heart, but this is this is what I felt like God spoke in my heart.
There’s 3 things I’m gonna ask you to do, and if you do them, your ministry will be blessed.
Remember, this has been, like, 42 years ago. And here’s what he said to me.
Whatever you do, do it with excellence.
Be a person of integrity and keep the strife out of your life and out of your ministry.
Those three things.
And just to quickly tell you what that means to me excellence is not perfection.
It just simply means that whatever you have to work with, you do the best you can with men.
In other words, you might have an old automobile, and you’d love to have a new one.
But you know what? Until god gives you that new one, you should keep the one you’ve got And, you know, a lot of people think Well, this this ain’t gonna do me any good.
I got some real problems, lady, talking to me about my problems.
Well, see, the things that I’m talking about today they go they go back to root character issues.
And no matter what else we think we need or want, if we don’t have really strong godly character, we’re never gonna be able to maintain the rest of it.
And so we need to start with some of the stuff that is really important And the Bible says, you will know them by their fruit.
You will know them by their fruit.
A good tree doesn’t give bad fruit. It gives good fruit.
And to be honest with you, I think that people, if if you’re a Christian, I think people should recognize after being around you for a short period of time that there’s something different about you without you having to even tell them that you’re a believer.
I’d say with with with somebody, by the time somebody’s been around you a half an hour, they should be suspicious that you must be one of those Christians.
And, you know, one of the things that has hurt the reputation of Christianity so much is just the way a lot of Christians behave.
Now, you know, obviously, not everybody it’s a Christian misbehaves.
There’s wonderful people with many godly virtues and godly attitudes, but If you’re a Christian and you’re gonna do something, do it right.
Don’t do it halfway or sloppy or mediocre.
And yes, I think things like keeping your car clean are important.
I think it’s important not to have a bump sticker on your car and break the speed limit going down the highway.
If you’re not handicapped, I don’t think you should park in a handicapped parking space.
Amen. And especially don’t do it at church.
Come on. I’m just gonna be mama this afternoon.
Okay? Because here’s the thing that concerns me.
We now probably have at least 2 generations of people that grew up without seeing any of this or hearing any of it.
And I won’t tell you who it is because if I did, you’d know his name right away.
The very well known minister Was at one of my conferences about 2 years ago?
And in that conference, I did a message on excellence.
And I talked about some of the things that I talk about, like putting your grocery cart back where it’s supposed to go and, you know, things like that.
And this man in all sincerity came to me when the teaching was over.
Now keep in mind, this is a guy that’s in seminars all the time has been preaching several years, very popular.
And he said, I have never heard anything like that in my life.
He said that was amazing.
And I I just couldn’t believe it.
That here’s this person that’s standing up in front of all these people and doesn’t even know that it’s important that he put his shopping cart back where it belongs.
Now I’m sorry if this is too simple for you.
But doesn’t that kinda come under the golden rule thing?
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you? Amen?
And I’m not gonna teach all this stuff on excellence today, but to be excellent means that you go the extra mile.
That you don’t just stop it mediocre, but you go beyond that.
It means that you Don’t get to work late every day and take an hour and 10 minutes for lunch instead of an hour for lunch.
It means that you don’t play around on your computer doing your own personal stuff when nobody’s looking.
And when the boss walks in the room, you pretend like you’re working.
But you got your fish on your bumper.
So long as we’ve got our fish, we’re okay. We’re Christians.
Is anybody awake out there?
And I don’t know why, but from the time god called me to do this, He really took a lot of time dealing with me personally about things like this.
That it’s important to keep your word, to do what you tell people that you’re going to do.
Amen? I was just thinking about something this morning that I would rather not thought of.
Sometimes god reminds me of things I wish that that I’m trying to forget, and I wish he’d forget it too.
But even things like this, I was going for physical therapy from my back, And I had several sessions with the lady, and I was getting good, and she was actually gonna have a surgery herself.
And so we agreed that, I wouldn’t come back for about 6 weeks, and then I would come back and check-in with her.
Well, I’m doing good now, and so I just don’t wanna go back.
And to be honest, I don’t know.
She probably don’t care if I come back or not, but god reminded me that I told her that I would come back and check-in with her.
And I believe, and you may think that I’m as goofy as the day is long, But I believe that if I don’t do the things that I say that I’m going to do, especially after god reminding me if I still didn’t do it.
Now, I believe that that could adversely affect the anointing on my life.
You say, well, what’s that got to do with the anointing?
Well, I don’t believe god anoints dishonesty. Are you with me? Yeah.
And see, Here’s the thing, even if I’m not gonna go back and see her, I need to place a phone call and let her know that I’ll come in if she wants me to, but I’m really doing good and I don’t feel any need to.
But the last thing I should do is just not do what I said I would do and ignore the whole thing.
And boy is the world full of that today. Oh my gosh.
Doesn’t it just make you wanna pull your hair out when you take off work?
To meet a repairman.
And he doesn’t show up and doesn’t even call, and you have to try to call the company again, and they say, Oh, we just got busy.
So rude. Do whatever you do with excellence.
So how many of you got that part? K? And here’s the thing.
And this is of all the things I say today, this is gonna be the most important.
Do it, especially when nobody’s looking.
Because who you are when nobody is looking is who you really are.
Come on.
Who you are when nobody’s looking is who you really are.
What we do to impress other people doesn’t say that much about us.
It’s what we do when nobody is looking because we realize that god is always looking.
And after all, he’s the one that we should be pleasing.
Our reward comes from him. It doesn’t come from other people watching us.
And I’ll tell you what, if you’ll be faithful in small things come on.
God will make you ruler over great things. I wanna say it again.
If you will be faithful in small things, God will make you ruler over great things.
Be a person of integrity. The lord said.
What does that mean? It do what you say you’re gonna do? Be honest.
You know, and and and we just do a lot of loose talking.
Oh, uh, I’ll call you in a couple of weeks, and we’ll go out to lunch.
And you no more intend to call them and go out to lunch?
You’re not even really paying any attention to what you’re saying. You’re just filling up airspace.
Hey, man?
I remember I was preaching in Florida one time at a church, and we liked the couple who pastored the church, and we’d been there a few times.
And I said to them, why don’t you guys come to Saint Louis sometime?
And We can hang out and we’ll take you to see the arch and blah blah blah blah blah.
Spend several days together. Well, lo and behold, a couple weeks went by and they called and said, well, we’re ready to come.
And I thought, where are you going?
I do want them to come to my house.
When I invited him, it never occurred to me.
They’d come. Come on. Are you there?
And, well, when they called, it was not a good time.
Not that it ever would have been, but it was not a good time.
And I said to God, oh god, what am I gonna do?
And I knew, I right away. He said, this is what you’re gonna do.
You’re gonna bring them to Saint Louis.
If you don’t wanna keep them in your house, put them in a nice hotel and pay for it.
You’re gonna spend 3 days with them.
And you’re gonna learn Come on.
You’re gonna learn to stop saying things that you don’t really mean.
You know what?
My parents I guess they did the best and they knew how to, but they just really weren’t very good parents.
Not only was my dad abusive, but my mother put up with him and thought she was being faithful in what she had wasn’t faithfulness.
It was just ridiculous. You know, because she end up ruining her life.
And, thankfully, because of the grace of god, not mine, but my brother’s life was ruined, and you never helped somebody when you let them abuse and mistreat you and think you’re being faithful in a relationship.
That’s that’s not That’s not faithfulness.
But I don’t ever remember my parents sitting with me and teaching me any life principles like this.
You don’t learn this stuff in school.
You learn a bunch of stuff you’re never gonna use once you get out of there, but you can get out and not know how to keep a balanced checkbook or how to tell the truth or nobody tells you the things that really are gonna make a difference because they’re not interested in telling you the things that god wants you to know.
And so many of you are probably just like I was, you if you learned it at all, you’re gonna have to learn it from god.
Amen? And the whole goal that we should have is, yes, to love Jesus to receive him, but also to become like him, to be Christ like, and to get out in the world and let people know this is what Jesus is like.
Jesus said, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the father.
And we need to be able to, at least in some way, say, if you’ve seen me, you’ve seen a little bit of Jesus.
And I’m gonna tell you something.
We do not have the privilege to act like the world.
God’s words has come you out from among them and be separate.
Now that doesn’t mean to act like we think we’re better than everybody else or that we won’t have anything to do with sinners.
You can’t help people if you hide from them all the time.
But there is a message there that you cannot follow God and be like the world.
I know I may be messing with some of your lives a little bit right now, but you you’ll be glad.
Eventually, this is one of those ouch hallelujah sessions.
While you’re in here, it’s out. And later, you’ll say hallelujah, man. I’m glad I learned that.
Amen? And then the whole thing about strife So many households are full of strife.
Some people don’t even know what that is. Do you know?
We’ve had people ask us, what is integrity?
We could take a camera and go to a man on the street interview and just ask what do you what do you think integrity is?
And a lot of people aren’t even gonna know.
That’s how much we’ve slid in society today.
And, you know, there was a time when a person’s word was their bond.
I mean, you didn’t need a fifteen page contract.
It’s amazing what all you gotta sign today just to get Your teeth cleaned.
I mean, I went for physical therapy.
I mean, I’m getting physical therapy on my feet, you know.
Getting to the point where this hurts, and that hurts, and something else hurts.
And and, uh, one of the questions was how many people were in your father’s family?
And I thought, what does that have to do with getting physical therapy on my feet?
And then I had to sign an initial, my name, and probably twelve places.
And I know exactly what I was signing.
If you kill me while I’m doing this physical therapy, it’s not your fault.
Nobody today wants to be accountable for anything.
Amen? Amen. I wanna just act however I wanna act, but it’s not my fault.
We had a situation recently where we have an electric gate that goes into a little courtyard at our house where the garages are.
And it had needed some repairs, and so we had it repaired, spent, I don’t know, several $100 getting it repaired.
And When they hooked it up, they must have made some kind of mistake because when Dave drove through it, it opened up but it closed on his car.
And so he had to go ahead and get through the gate, so it left a big scratch mark.
On the side of his car. Well, several $100 to fix that scratch.
Now, you know, we could have called the company and said, you know, you need to take care of this, but there’s no way that they would have taken care of It would have not been their fault that the gate they just fixed, they hooked up wrong, and it but I I I remember a day when There was integrity in the world.
And if that wouldn’t happen, you would have called the company and they just said, oh, man, we’re sorry.
We’ll take care of that car.
And these things that are slipping away from us, believe it or not, that’s a large part of what’s wrong in the world today.
We think all these little things don’t matter, but it’s the little foxes that spoil the vine.
And I can tell you right now, if you wanna have some big blessings poured into your life, you go home from here, and you make a commitment to god to start really paying attention to the little things in your life.
And I can tell you, you will get some big changes. Are you hearing me? Amen?
Faithfulness, a faithful person is somebody that finishes what they start, Keep their word.
They don’t quit when the excitement or the newness of something wears off.
Now I have to sit down just a minute and talk to you about that first for a second.
Because I cannot even imagine how many people miss an amazing plan that God has for their life.
Because when it’s no longer exciting, they wanna go find something else that is exciting.
Happens in marriages?
I’ve been married 52 years, not because I get goosebumps every time Dave walks in the house.
Come on. Are you there?
You think when all those gooey feelings are not there, that that means you don’t love the person anymore.
That’s not love. That’s a goose bump.
That comes from a physical attraction, but love is a lot more than just a physical attraction.
First of all, I didn’t even know what love was when I told Dave I would marry him.
I had been so mistreated in my life and had already been through one bad marriage where he was unfaithful.
And after 18 years with my dad, and then 5 years with another guy that was about half crazy, I didn’t know what love was.
I didn’t know how to give it. I didn’t know how to receive it.
But after 52 years, I know what love is. Amen.
Stop switching what you’re gonna do every few days because what you started to do isn’t exciting anymore.
Anything new is exciting. Everybody claps and cheers when you start something new.
But I wonder how many people missed their destiny because they never finished what they started because when it gets hard or it’s not exciting anymore, are nobodies around clapping and cheering, and it’s just left to you and god alone.
You know, it’s easy to sit here and listen to me.
I’m doing all the work. Man, you having a good time.
You didn’t have to pay to come. We got a beautiful building in here. Great music.
Nice teaching. Your work starts when you leave.
And you go home. And then what are you gonna do with it?
Are you just gonna file away in one of your messages you’ve heard in your life, and you bought 2 books, and you’ll stick them on the shelf and never read them.
But I went to the Joyce Meyer Conference.
Are you gonna maybe at least, surely, out of 3 hours of preaching, you could pick out just three things or maybe even 2.
I’d even take one that you could go home and stick with that thing with god until you get a breakthrough in
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The biggest thing that we need to do is learn how 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 with Satan. He said all he gets to Satan. He uses it.
He uses it a little bit. Today’s mind. You start asking god to heal you, and he will door.
It’s the god of all comfort, and I am so grateful that I know how to call on god.
