The Test of Trust – Part 1 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life Teaching
The Test of Trust – Part 1 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life Teaching
Life is unpredictable, but God is faithful! Discover comforting verses that will carry you through difficult times, on this episode of Enjoying Everyday Life with Joyce Meyer.
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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.
I wanna really encourage you before I even get into my sermon.
I wanna read you just a couple things out of the Bible.
I was thinking about this today, and I felt like god wanted me to do this.
First of all, god knows right where you’re at, and he feels everything that you feel.
We don’t wanna forget that we’ve got a savior who took on a human farm, and he came down here and suffered the same things that we go through.
And he understands whatever you’re going through right now, he understands any promises that he will not not just take away all of our problems, but he will redeem our problems.
He will redeem the pain. And I heard somebody put it like this recently.
I thought this was a good way to put it. Uh, he he recycles our pain.
And turns it into something else.
You know, we have a recycling trash can at home.
We’re supposed to divide up the trash and the stuff that can be recycled, then they take it off and whatever they do to it.
They make something else out of it. And who knows?
Maybe a year later, you got it back in your house, but It’s it’s in a totally different form than what it was when you sent it off to the trash dump.
And, you know, god can do that with our pain.
I know that from my own life of being abused for so many years by my dad and having such a tough beginning, but god has redeemed it.
He’s taken it and used it.
Who would have ever thought when you’re going through something like that that could have turned out like this.
See? And And I I really want you to believe right now that if you’re hurting, if you’ve lost a loved one, if you’ve lost your job.
If you’re hurting financially, if your heart’s broken over a breakup, if you’re sick, you’ve you got pain in your body all the time.
You know, when you’ve got pain all the time, nobody really gets it. No.
You have to have been there to really understand And sometimes pain is a lonely place because you’re watching everybody else have their happy little life and you’re hurting all the time.
And we need to have more compassion, I think.
On people that are going through difficult things and not just flip off cute little answers, you know, when we think that we’re giving them advice.
Well, just trust god and everything will work out okay.
Well, why don’t you do that when you have a problem? Amen?
We can give better advice than we take. Well, just be patient. Now, hold on.
Please don’t tell me that. Why don’t why don’t you just say, hey, I’m here for you.
I know you’re hurting.
But more importantly, god knows you’re hurting, and he is Emmanuel, the one who has promised to be with us to never leave us nor forsake us.
God doesn’t always deliver us from everything when we want to be delivered, but he does promise to be with us in it.
Amen? And that’s a lot more valuable than what you might think that it is.
I was thinking about Psalm 139, and this is just a Psalm that proves that whatever’s going on in your life God knew about it before it ever happened to you.
Oh lord, you have searched me and known me.
You know, when I sit down and when I get up, you discern my thoughts so far off.
God knows our thoughts before we think them.
You search out my path and my lying down, and you are acquainted with all my ways. Oh my.
Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, lord, you know it altogether.
He knows what we’re gonna say before we say it. And I love this next verse.
You hem me in behind them before, and you lay your hand upon me.
Does anybody get the depth of that?
You ever feel like god’s got you in a place? You can’t go back. You can’t go forward.
And it is very uncomfortable.
And you know God is doing something, but you sure don’t know what it is and you really wish he’d get it over with.
Amen? Look at that. You hem me in behind and before.
God will let us get into places that are uncomfortable.
Places we don’t wanna be around people.
We don’t like Let alone try to love them.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me.
It’s too high. I cannot attain it.
Can I just say one thing right now before going any further?
Save yourself a lot of trouble and stop trying to figure god out.
Because you’re just not gonna do it.
God is a mystery.
The way he does things, and just about the time you think you’ve got to figure out how he’s gonna do it, he’s gonna surprise you and do it a new way that you’ve never seen him do it before.
Amen? Where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your presence?
God’s everywhere. If I go to heaven, you’re there.
If I make my bed and she, oh, you’re there.
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the outermost parts of the sea, even there, your hand shall lead me.
Your right hand shall hold me. He’s holding you right now.
I say surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light about me is like night even the darkness is not dark to you.
The night is as bright as the day for darkness as I was light with you.
For you did farm my inward parts, you’re not a mistake.
You knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you for I’m fearfully and wonderfully made.
You’re not weird.
You’re wonderfully made, and you’re just not like anybody else on the planet. Amen?
And I love this part He’s talking about how god made him.
And he said, wonderful. Are your works? You are wonderful.
The devil just doesn’t want you to know it.
My soul knows that very well, just a little bit more.
My frame was not hidden from you when I was being made in secret.
Intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unfarmed subs substance.
And in your book, were written every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when it was yet, there was not one of them.
So before you ever We’re born, and god knew you’d be here tonight.
And I don’t believe that he does things for no purpose.
I’m here for a purpose. You’re here for a purpose. We’ve come together at just the right time.
And god’s gonna do some things. Okay. Why? God why?
The question that never goes away. Why?
And you can ask it all you want to.
But it’s the question that rarely gets an answer.
Even Jesus said, my god my god, why have you forsaken me?
He didn’t get an answer. The Bible doesn’t say that god said anything back to him.
So the next thing Jesus said was end to your hands. I commit my spirit. I love that.
I mean, all of our pain together would never equal what Jesus went through on the cross for us.
We don’t even begin to fathom. Yeah.
How many of you know how heavy and icky and awful it makes you feel when you do something like you mess up really bad.
I mean, not not like one of these
little sins. I mean, you really just Okay.
Now just imagine having every sin of every human that ever lived put on you all at one time and trying to bear that.
I can’t even fathom the pain. And he said, Why have you forsaken me?
We often feel in our pain that we’ve been forsaken, but we never are.
Because he’s Emmanuel god with us, always with us, in us, under us, around us, never leaves us in our forsakes us.
And I just feel very strongly tonight that I’m supposed to press on you that no matter what you’re going through, god is with you, and he will redeem it he’ll make something beautiful out of it.
Now this doesn’t all just happen magically.
There are things that you will need to do to cooperate with god.
I’m not gonna give you a list of do these five things and your problems will be over.
There is no such list. I’m just gonna tell you to follow God. Follow god.
Whatever he shows you to do, do it.
And if there’s nothing for you to do, then stand firm and wait on him.
Sometimes he takes a lot longer than we’d like, but he knows what he’s doing.
The only time you realize that is after you’ve gone through it and you look back and see the good things that came out of what you went through.
How many of you can say that you would not be the person you are today if you had not gone through some of the things that you went through?
So the question never goes away is why.
But yet Proverbs 35 through 7 says trust in the lord with all your heart and do not lean to your own understanding.
In all your ways, acknowledge him, and he will direct your path.
Be not wise in your own eyes. I love that.
It’s almost like saying, don’t even think that you’re smart enough to solve your own problems.
If I could just do a Joyce Meyer translation on that, that’s what I would say.
Don’t even think that you’re smart enough to figure out what you should do in this situation.
And I love this. It will be healing to your flesh and refreshment to your bones.
In other words, when we stop trying to figure everything out, just turn everything over to god.
It’s healthy. It’s, you know, a lot of people, and I I don’t say this in a judgmental way at all because I’ve had my share of physical issues, but a lot of people that are sick are just sick because they worry all the time.
And their their their mind never shuts down.
They’re constantly thinking about something constantly trying to figure something out worrying about something all the time, upset about something all the time.
Angry about something all the time.
When I look back at how I was, 42 years ago, when I started this journey with god, and how I am today.
I can honestly say I am definitely not the same person.
Now you may not feel like God is changing.
You are doing anything in your life because it happens just little tiny bits.
And sometimes when you’ve got a mountain of problems, you may go 5 years and feel like you haven’t changed that much at all, but really you have.
It’s just the devil wants you to focus on what’s what’s still wrong with you. Amen?
Instead of looking at how far you’ve come. Don’t look at how far you have to go.
Look at how far you’ve come. And don’t look at what you don’t have.
Look around you at what you do have and be thankful for those things.
There are tests that come into our life.
And a smart person learns to pass the tests right away.
Because in in god’s economy, in his school of life, you never fail.
You just get to keep taking the test over and over and over and over until you finally pass it.
I’ll give you an example. When god first started when I, you know, I was a Christian a long time before I got serious with god.
I had the ticket to heaven, but I had no victory here at all.
I believed in Jesus. I I loved him as much as I knew how to, but I had every kind of character problem that you could possibly have.
I mean, I was not a nice person, but I went to church every week, and was even on the evangelism team.
It it’s amazing how religious we can be without being Christlike. Come on.
And so I was very impatient.
I’m still impatient, but not very impatient, like I used to know.
After 42 years, thank god I’ve made a little progress, but I I still have a ways to go.
And not so much being impatient with god, but just stuff.
And people and slow people, people that how many of you know what I’m talking about?
You know? And I had important things to do, and I was always in a hurry.
And I didn’t like it if other people didn’t keep on my schedule.
And so the only way that god can get you to realize some things in your life is to keep letting you go through things that bring it out of you.
I always say you never know how juicy an orange is till you squeeze it.
I remember one day buying paying a dollar for an orange, and this was like a long time ago when that was just like ridiculous.
But it was so pretty.
It was the most beautiful orange, and I was so hungry.
And I took it out to my car, and I cracked it open, and it was dry and tasteless.
You know, that’s the way a lot of Christians are. They’re fine until you squeeze them.
You put a little pressure on it and here comes the real me.
And see, god can’t change us until we come into agreement with him and ask him for his help.
So we have to meet ourselves.
We have to see ourselves as we really are, not just the way we think we are.
I can think that I’m a forgiving person.
Until somebody really hurts me, and god deals with me to forgive.
I can think that I am very, very unselfish until god asked me to give up something that I really, really like.
You know, nobody minds getting rid of all the junk in your closet that you have worn for 10 years.
We send that to goodwill and think that we’re big givers.
Well, they did you a favor taking it off your hands.
But what about when god asked you to give away your favorite something? Are you only something?
But, you know, something god has taught me is once he puts his hand on something, and claims it for kingdom work.
If you keep it, you’ll never enjoy it after that. Anyway, god used clerks in stores.
To just about drive me crazy.
I mean, every time I’d go to the grocery store, I I got so many lessons in the grocery store.
It was ridiculous. Every time that I went to the grocery store, I would get a clerk that had there were somebody in front of me that had no prices on their items, and you’d have to go through all that rigmarole or waiting for them to try to find somebody to get the prices and on and on and on.
And and then maybe somebody didn’t have enough money to start taking stuff out.
Well, now I would just pay for the groceries, but back then, I was not nearly that generous.
And, So I finally got spiritual enough.
I started praying about which line to get in.
Even that did work.
And I finally knew that god had my number when I went to a department store one day, and tried to buy something.
I could find no clerk. So we went from slow clerk to no clerk.
It’s amazing how sometimes every 2 seconds, somebody can say, Can I help you?
Can I direct you to something? Did you hear about our sale?
And it’s like, please don’t tell me about that sale one more time. Twenty people are talking about sale.
And then you wanna buy some and you can’t find anybody to take your money. It’s a setup.
You might as well just say.
I know what’s going on. And I’m going to pass my pass. Listen to this.
We’re only promoted after we’ve passed our tests.
So every time you’re going through a test, you need to just say I’ve got a promotion coming.
Come on. I’ve got a promotion coming.
Nobody goes to 2nd grade without passing tests at the end of 1st grade.
Nobody goes to 3rd grade without passing tests at the end of 2nd grade.
We understand that it happens in 4th grade, 5th grade, 6th grade, 7th grade, 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th, 12th, and on into college.
Why would it be any different when you step out into life?
We have to pass our test. These are spiritual tests.
Before we are promoted, and there’s so many great scriptures that back this up.
And, you know, I’m talking mainly tonight about the not the major disasters that come into our life.
You know, I don’t I don’t think god uses those things to test us.
That’s the devil just trying to bring destruction into your life.
But I do believe that god will him us in behind and before and lay his hand on us and put us in places.
I mean, How many of you have prayed? God changed me.
Well, oh god.
Make me patient. Well, you know what?
The Greek, the original Greek, for the word patience, says it’s a fruit of the spirit that only grows under trial.
You can’t get it any other way.
Because how can you be patient if you have nothing to be patient about?
How can you learn to love the unlovely if everybody that you’re around is a sweet lovely person that’s just like you and does everything you want them to do.
So if you’re working next to somebody, the top It’s not gonna do you any good to quit that job.
You’ll get another one because you’ll just get some more on the next job.
James 112 through 14 blessed is the man who remained steadfast under trial.
For when he has stood the test, He will receive the crown of life, which god has promised to those who love him.
Let no one say when he’s tempted, I’m being tempted by god for god cannot be tempted evil, and he himself tempts no one.
But each person is tempted when he’s lord and enticed by his own desire.
In other words, god never tempts us to sin.
And when we’re in difficult times, that’s really when we are tempted to sin and do things that we shouldn’t do.
But he uses those times to bring things out of us that we don’t really know.
Like, for example, I have never one time in my life been tempted to rob a bank.
Now I just have not.
Has anybody here ever been tempted to rob a bank? Yeah. A look. Hands are up.
You know, I that’s not an issue for me, but I’ve been tempted to stay mad at people that have hurt me.
I’ve already told you that I mean, trials, it it says trials will bring out patients.
Well, let me tell you that brought a lot of stuff out of me before we ever got around to patients.
So we have to know ourselves. We have to get to know ourselves.
And when you see things, that come out that surprise even you.
You don’t have to feel guilty and condemned.
Thank god that he cares enough about you to show you those things so you can repent and ask god to help you get delivered from them.
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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 Thank you, sir.
He uses a lot of it. Today’s mine. You start asking god to heal you, and he will restore.
Is the god of all come and I am so grateful that I know how to call on
