Ways the Devil Deceives Us – Pt 3 | Enjoying Everyday Life | Joyce Meyer

Do you tend to think negatively about your life and yourself? On this episode of Enjoying Everyday Life with Joyce Meyer, learn about spiritual tools you can use to change your thoughts, and start enjoying your life!

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.

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1 of the biggest problems that I had, and I think aggressive people are like this.
If God wasn’t doing anything about my situation, I was very happy to take over and try to do it myself.
I’m Joyce Meyer, and I believe that God can heal you everywhere you hurt.
Well, we’re talking today about the devil. Lovely subject.
But he is a real problem in our lives, but he doesn’t have to be if we know how to recognize his work and if we know that we have power and authority over him.
The bible says in Ephesians that all authority in heaven and in earth have been given unto Jesus.
And we are we belong to him, he’s given us his name, he’s actually given us so to speak a power of attorney.
I took care of my mom and my dad and my aunt and as they got older and older and couldn’t take care of themselves, they all gave me a power of attorney over their life what which meant I could act in their behalf, I could actually use their name and get things done.
And when our heavenly father gave us the name of Jesus, he basically did the same thing.
Now, we can’t go around doing things and getting things that aren’t the will of God, but when we use the name of Jesus, it’s We don’t just pray and tack that name onto the end like some little magic charm.
There’s power in the name of Jesus.
And I believe that Let me say again, the bible the bible says that every knee must bow.
There was given unto him a name that is above every name that at the name of Jesus, every knee must bow in heaven, on earth and under the earth.
And so when we speak the name of Jesus, it has a very good effect on the enemy and stops him in his tracks.
And sometimes if you don’t have time to say anything else, you can just say Jesus.
Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. And I’m telling you, there’s power released in that name.
So we have weapons and we also have armor. With weapons, we attack.
With armor, we protect ourselves. And God has given us these things.
Our weapons are not weapons of flesh and blood. They’re spiritual weapons. The word of God is a weapon.
The name of Jesus is a weapon.
Praise and worship is a weapon against the enemy. Prayer is a weapon.
When we pray, we release God to work in our behalf and in our circumstances.
But I’m just talking about some of the different ways that Satan deceives us and he really does it all by putting thoughts into our mind.
You have to realize that every thought you have is not a God thought and every thought you have didn’t even initially start out to be your thought.
It only becomes yours if you take it and begin to meditate on it.
You can make it yours if you want to, but everything that you think is not initially your thought.
You know, I remember when I used to wake up in the morning many years ago, and not every morning, but a lot of mornings I would wake up and just think, I’m depressed.
Now how did I know I was depressed? I wasn’t even up yet.
But the enemy, I believe he especially likes to get control of our thoughts early in the morning.
So I wanna encourage you to be very careful what you lay in bed and think before you ever really get fully awake and get up.
I always try to start my day with thinking some good things even before I get out of bed.
Happy thoughts make a happy life. Happy thoughts make a happy life. Whoo.
Happy thoughts make a happy life.
Now, you know, I can wake up in the morning and think, oh my gosh, I gotta get up.
I don’t wanna go get on that treadmill.
But you know, none of that’s gonna do me any good because I already know I’m going to go do it.
And really, there’s no point in dreading anything that you know you’re gonna go ahead and go do anyway.
So you can change those thoughts.
You can turn those thoughts around and you can think, I’m glad I can get up and do this.
I’m glad I can walk. I’m glad I can talk. I’m glad I can see. I’m glad I can hear.
I’ve got a good life. I love my life. I love God.
I love myself, And and I’m not depressed.
We’re talking about different ways that the enemy tries to deceive us and the different kinds of thoughts that he puts in our minds and so, 1 of the biggest problems that I had and I think aggressive people are like this, if God wasn’t doing anything about my situation, I was very happy to take over and try to do it myself.
It’s called fleshly independence.
And God does not want us to be independent or separate from him.
He wants us to be totally dependent on him. Like a branch and a vine.
John 15. I’m the vine, you’re the branch. Whoever abides in me will bear much fruit.
So if we want our lives to be fruitful and we want them to be good, then we need to learn to depend on Jesus for everything.
So what happens then when there’s things that you want to happen are things that are happening that you don’t want to happen?
Are there somebody in your life that you don’t like some of the stuff they do and you want them to change?
Or you want some of your circumstances to change and maybe you’ve prayed about it.
Sometimes to be honest we don’t even start with prayer.
We try everything we can think of first and then when none of that works, we will finally pray.
But the thing you have to understand is apart from me you can do nothing.
Jesus said. So obviously we can do things, but they’re not things that are ever gonna work long term or bring any real lasting joy into our lives.
And so, we try. I would go to church and I would hear messages.
You know, things I’d never heard before like maybe maybe somebody said something about the words of your mouth like I just shared with you.
Well, I didn’t bother to pray about it. I didn’t bother to ask God to help me.
I just go home and try to change.
Dave maybe would say something, you know, something I needed to change in my life or whatever and I would just first I get mad and then I’d try to change.
And as God called me into ministry and I felt like I was supposed to do some pretty major things, I tried to make my ministry grow.
I was trying everything imaginable, trying to change myself, trying to change Dave, trying to change my kids, trying to make my ministry grow and you know what?
Nothing was working. And the more it didn’t work, the more frustrated I became.
So I just wanna share a few things with you today.
Now, I’m not saying that you can’t control any of your behavior because you certainly can.
God’s given us a fruit of self control.
But by and large, ultimately, you cannot permanently change yourself.
You have to trust God to change you.
You have to trust God to work in your life and help you be the person He wants you to be.
And it happens little by little. I don’t even like the word little.
Don’t care about it at all. But in the earth, there is a law.
I like to call it the law of gradual growth, which means everything that’s alive is growing.
So if you’re alive, you are growing, but the interesting thing is is you can’t see that growth.
The tree in my backyard is growing all the time, but I could stand there and stare at it all day and I would never see it grow.
However, I could go away for maybe 5 years and come back and wow that that’s really grown.
Well see when I first entered into a real serious relationship with God, I had so many problems.
But the more you study the word, now listen to me, the more on 1 hand you become encouraged by what God can do in your life, but also the more you study the word, the more you see what’s wrong with you.
And that part’s like maybe not so much fun.
But it is important, you know why?
Because we cannot even cooperate with God to do anything about something that we’re totally blind to and don’t even realize is happening.
Learn to appreciate God’s chastisement. And when you see something in the word and you can say honestly, you know, I really need to come up higher in that area.
That’s a good thing. Don’t ever let that discourage you or make you feel bad about yourself.
Let me tell you something, God’s chastisement is a sign of his love and I’m so grateful that he loves us too much to leave us alone in the mess that we’re in.
He never tells us, shows us anything that needs to change in our life if he’s not ready to help us change it.
Did you hear me? But you can’t go home and do it on your own.
And it is gonna take time. Little by little.
And I’m telling you after 5 years of being in what I thought was a pretty serious relationship with God, I can remember thinking, I’m not changed at all.
Anybody ever felt like that? I mean, I have just not changed at all. But you know what?
I can look back now and my gosh, I’m like a totally completely different person than the way I was 41 years ago when I began to study the word of God.
And as I said earlier, if you don’t like waiting, then hanging out with God is gonna be frustrating to you because He doesn’t really do anything in a huge hurry.
He takes His time because He’s got eternity to work it all out.
So, and then of course I tried to change Dave all the time and I was trying to change my kids and trying to make my ministry grow and trying trying trying.
And I don’t want this to sound wrong.
I’ll bring balance to it, but God’s not asking us to try. He’s asking us to believe.
He’s asking us to go to him first and say, god no matter how hard I try I cannot do this without you.
But if you’ll give me grace and grace is the power of the Holy Spirit to help us overcome our evil tendencies.
Now it’s also God’s undeserved favor. We we hear that definition all the time.
It’s God forgiving us and being merciful to us and doing things for us that we could never earn or deserve and there’s no real reason for Him to do it.
But it’s even more than that.
And I really wish that more people would bring out the other part of the definition of grace that it’s power, it’s the power of the Holy Spirit coming into our lives to enable us to do with ease what we could never do on our own without God’s help.
I’ll I’ll say it again. I know that was a mouthful.
Grace is the power of the holy spirit coming into our lives to help us do with ease what we could never do on our own with any amount of struggle and effort.
So we need God’s grace for every single thing that we do.
And certainly we need God’s grace to change us, to change the people in our life that need to be changed and we need to trust God with the timing and the process.
Now, there’s a scripture that I’m gonna share with you, Galatians 3 1 through 3, that really was the first scripture that I saw that started opening my eyes to this truth that I’m sharing with you right now.
Oh, you poor and silly and thoughtless and unreflecting and senseless Galatians.
Paul didn’t mince any words. You think I’m tough?
And, I mean, Jesus was even worse.
He called people a bunch of whitewashed tombs full of dead men’s bones.
Who has fascinated or bewitched or cast a spell over you?
Unto whom right before your very eyes Jesus Christ the Messiah was openly and graphically set forth and portrayed as crucified?
He said, okay. Now, you know the message. You know that Jesus died in your place.
So let me ask you a question.
Did you receive the Holy Spirit as a result of obeying the law and doing its works, or was it by hearing the message of the gospel and believing it?
The 500 people who gave their life to the Lord last night, they didn’t do anything to earn that.
They came in sinners, the only thing that my message maybe helped them do was to realize what a mess they were in and how there was no way that they could help themselves.
And so, when the time came to receive Jesus, I’m sure that they were like, I I can’t do this.
I can’t help myself. I need you. You’re the only 1 that can fix my life.
And so, we need to learn and you’re gonna see a scripture here in a minute that says this, we need to learn that the same way that we received Christ is the same way we have to live.
Depending on him for everything. So let me go back verse 2. Let me ask you a question.
Did you receive the Holy Spirit as a result of obeying the law and doing its works?
Or was it by hearing the message of the gospel and believing it?
Was it from observing a law of rituals or from a message of faith?
Are you so foolish and so senseless and so silly?
Having begun your new life spiritually with the holy spirit, are you now reaching perfection by dependence upon the flesh?
So what is this telling us? I can’t depend on my own flesh to perfect my own self.
I have to lean on God.
And I’m sure that there’s some of you here today that you’ve been just pretty frustrated with yourself.
Anybody here? You’ve just been pretty frustrated, like, you know, I’m not where I need to be, you know, my prayers are not right.
Well, first of all, you’re probably doing a little better than what you think you are.
1 thing’s for sure, the devil’s never gonna wake you up in the morning and tell you how far you’ve come.
But he will certainly remind you of how far you have to go And everything that you don’t deserve and what God’s not gonna do for you because you’ve been such a bad person.
That’s why we have to have our minds renewed by the word of God.
Let me tell you something, if you’re gonna go around mad at yourself all the time, you are not gonna enjoy your life because you are 1 person you are never going to get away from.
You, everywhere you go, you’re there.
So you have to learn how to embrace yourself, how to love yourself, how to believe that God is working in you.
Everybody say God is working in me. God is working in me. And I’m changing. Now say this.
I’m not where I need to be. I’m not where I need to be.
But thank God I’m not where I used to be. And I’m not where I used to be.
I’m on my way. I’m on my way. To complete victory.
Something that we receive by faith can become as real to us as something that we see with our eyes.
The deeper we get into a relationship with God, you will come to a point where there are things that you know that you know that you know that you know and you don’t even know how you know but you know that you know.
I know that his resurrection was real. I didn’t see it, but I know it.
God puts things in our hearts the more we fellowship with him.
And I’ll tell you some other things I know. I know that even on my worst day, God still loves me.
And I can tell you something right now and you might as well get a hold of this.
God is never gonna love you any more than He does at this moment right now.
You say, well, you mean if I’m better, he won’t love me more? No.
You know why? Because he already loves you perfectly.
He can’t love you anymore when you behave better because love is not something God does, it’s who he is.
He is love, so he just loves you and he loves you perfectly.
And when we know that, you know, we so desperately wanna know that we are the beloved of God.
Most of our problems come from just not liking ourselves and not knowing who we are in Christ.
We devalue ourselves, the enemy constantly puts thoughts in our mind of what’s wrong with us and what we’re not and tries to get us to compare ourselves with other people and tell us we need to be like them, then that’s another whole journey we get off on that’s nothing but a nightmare.
God’s not gonna help you be somebody else.
You might as well be yourself because everybody else is already taken.
And this salvation is not of yourselves, It’s not of your own doing.
It came not through your own striving, but it is the gift of God. Verse 9, I love this.
Not because of works, we’re talking about works of the flesh.
Not because of works which is the fulfillment of the law’s demands, lest any man should boast.
It is not the result of what anyone can possibly do, so no 1 can pride himself in it or take glory to himself.
I cannot stand here and say that I changed myself because I absolutely did not, Nor can I say that I keep myself because I do not?
God changed us and he’s the 1 that will keep us and he gets all the credit and all the glory.
I am not gonna stand up here and say anything about the great ministry that I’ve built because I have not built it.
And if it was based on what I could do, the thing would fall apart in the next 2 seconds.
This is 1 of the reasons why God lets us do everything that we can possibly do and keep failing and failing and failing until we finally get it.
I cannot do this without God.
I cannot do it without god.
Now, then just Colossians 2:6, as you have therefore received Christ, which we just saw that we receive him by faith, Even Jesus the Lord, so also walk and regulate your lives and conduct yourselves in union with him.
So this is telling me the same way I receive Christ is the same way I gotta live out every day of my life.
I received him by faith, I gotta live by faith.
When I was born again, I totally was dependent on him.
I knew I had nothing to offer God except a messed up miserable sinful life.
I received him as a gift from God and that’s the same way that he wants us to live every single day of our lives.
You can take a lot of pressure off of yourself if you’ll learn how to totally depend on God and everything.
Yeah, it’s good.
Now when it comes to works of the flesh, works of the flesh is our energy trying to do what only God can do.
You say, well how can how can I know if I’m in works of the flesh?
2 very simple things. Works of the flesh don’t work.
I tried to change Dave, it didn’t work.
He still plays sports.
I’ve nagged at him about banging the cereal bowl with a spoon. He still does it.
He’s not gonna change. So I can either keep nagging or I can just shut up and pray that God will give me the grace to listen to the bowl and not be upset.
Somebody here today can be set free.
Instead of being frustrated because you can’t get all the people in your life to change, you could just say, well, god, that’s not working.
You know, I would even get mad at god because he wasn’t changing Dave.
Well, why don’t you change Dave?
Well, maybe God doesn’t think there’s as much wrong with the people in your life as you do.
I mean maybe, I don’t know maybe.
Oh my gosh, I wanted God to deal with Dave.
I felt like God was always dealing with me, but I felt like he never dealt with Dave.
If I said to Dave, let’s you know, uh, give me a list of your faults.
What do you think your weaknesses are? I can guarantee you because I’ve tried it.
He could not come up with 1 thing.
He well, you know what he’d say? I don’t know.
I don’t know. I don’t sit around and think about that all the time.
If I got a problem, God will take care of it.
And I was like, what are my weakness?
While I’m impatient, I’m this, I’m that, I’m something else, I’m something else.
Works of the flesh don’t work. They just don’t work.
But I’ll tell you what does work, prayer. That’s what works.
Take some of the time and energy that you’re using trying to make things happen yourself and pray about it and just tell God, if you can’t make it happen then I guess it’s just not gonna happen.
And I’m gonna be happy either way.
1 of the best examples in the Bible of works of the flesh is with Abraham and Sarah.
God promised them a child and it wasn’t happening.
I’m sure that some of you here today have had a promise from God and it’s not happening yet.
It just wasn’t happening yet, and so Sarah got a bright idea.
You gotta be very careful about bright ideas.
Let me show you her bright idea.
Genesis 16 verse 3.
So Sarah, Abraham’s wife, took Hagar, her Egyptian maid after Abraham had dwelt 10 years in the land of Canaan and gave her to her husband Abram to be his secondary wife.
Now, you know, how many of you know that that just was really stupid?
I mean, that I mean, come on.
I’m not gonna share my husband with anybody.
Well, you know, then they started fighting and arguing just it was a whole mess.
I’m not even gonna get into it.
Then they had Ishmael, and then they had to wait 13 more years to have Isaac.
And Ishmael and Isaac were fighting and, you know, it it just was a huge mess.
So we need to be confident that God will do what needs to be done in our life.
Now we need to do what God shows us to do.
If God shows you to do something, then you need to do it.
If he specifically puts it on your heart to talk to about somebody about something, there’s been times when I have really felt like I needed to talk to Dave about something that maybe I felt like he was doing that was really bothering me.
And what I learned was instead of just barreling in and doing it in my time, to pray about it for a while, and then when I felt like the time was right, to go with a good attitude and talk to him, and most of the time then, he will listen and God can use it to make a change.
1 minute of sincere prayer can accomplish more than a lifetime of works of the flesh trying to make something happen yourself.
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