Your Way vs. God’s Way – Pt 2 | Joyce Meyer | Enjoying Everyday Life

A mature believer can submit to God’s authority, no matter what that might mean. Learn why it gets easier over time, on this episode of Enjoying Everyday Life with Joyce Meyer.

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.

In Joyce’s new book, The Pathway To Success, you’ll learn what true success is.
You’ll discover the steps to grow your spiritual maturity and how to discover or rediscover god’s purpose for your life.
God doesn’t want our lives to become placement or Hoham, he wants us to stay stirred up, achieving new dreams, and never settling for anything less than his best.
He has success for all of us. So get this book and start your pathway to success.
And you can get it today for your gift of any amount.
The great thing about this is it’s all scripture based you’ll find out how to have success in the way that god wants for you in a way that will make a huge difference in your life.
And it’s for any amount because we really know that god has good things for you and we want to see you get there.
This program is made possible by the partners of Joyce Meyer Ministries.
I’m Joyce Meyer.
I’ve seen god’s power transform my own life, and he will do it for you.
Out of control and loving it.
And I’m not talking about you being out of control and doing whatever you wanna do.
I’m talking about stop trying to control other people and circumstances and even sometimes god.
And learn how to let go of that stress, and you’ll love it.
There’s two ways we can look at this. First of all, you don’t wanna let anybody control you.
That’s not god’s will for your life. It’s not good for them, and it’s not good for you.
And you don’t wanna be trying to control other people.
The desire to control is rooted in selfishness.
1st Corinthians 13, 45, Love is patient and kind.
Love does not envy our boast. It is not arrogant.
Are rude, it does not insist on its own way.
Say that with me. Love does not insist on its own way.
It is not ir irritable, and it is not resentful.
Proverbs 1310 says that Only by pride comes strife.
You you can’t have strife unless there’s a pride problem.
Proverbs 16:5, everyone who is arrogant in heart is an abomination to the lord. Wow.
Be assured he will not go unpunished. Isaiah 2, 11, and 12.
The haughty looks of man shall be brought low, and the lofty pride of man shall be humbled, and the lord alone will be exalted in that day.
For the lord of hosts has a day against all that is proud and lofty, against all that is lifted up, and it shall be brought low.
Good. 3 people like that.
Bibles is humble yourself under the mighty hand of god that in due time, he might in in, Exult you.
I’m sorry to insult you. But honestly, and truly, if you’ve been around long enough, you know, will give you an opportunity to humble yourself, but if you don’t, he will do it for you.
Usually publicly, and it can be pretty painful.
So I highly recommend doing it yourself while you can do it in private. You’re right. God, I’m wrong.
Amen.
Now It’s also pride that causes us to feel that we must always give our opinion about things.
That are actually none of our business.
You know, there’s 3 scriptures just as plain as they can be, that tell us to mind our own business.
So how many of you kinda like to get into other people’s business?
Come on. I don’t want one of these down here things. How many of you?
Like Dave and I used to live live next door to a single man that owned a a big house.
And We just couldn’t figure out why this single guy wanted a house with four bedrooms in it.
It’s like, you know, What a waste of money.
Now keep in mind, we didn’t even know this guy’s first name.
But One day we’re driving out and so they they were, I said, well, maybe he did it for an investment and then The other one said, well, but he could have found a lot better investments than that because he’s gotta take care of this big place.
And so we spent maybe 10 minutes planning this guy’s financial future, and we didn’t didn’t even know his name.
Can I tell you that in Romans 14, the Bible says every man will give an account of himself?
God’s not gonna ask you about anybody else. Not gonna ask you about your husband.
Not gonna ask you about your kids, your friends. He’s gonna ask you about you.
And another way, we can keep a lot of stress out of our life.
Now, come on.
Another way we can keep a lot of stress out of our life is just by staying out of other people’s business.
You don’t even need to have an opinion where you don’t have any responsibility.
Not even an opinion.
Well, I think, well, I think, well, nobody cares what you think.
And nobody wants to know what you think.
The only time we really should give an opinion is if it’s asked for, And then we need to do it carefully.
2nd thessalonians 311, for we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but being busy bodies.
1st, thessalonians 411 and to aspire to live quietly and to mind your own affairs, and to work with your own hands.
And 1st, Peter, 415, but let none of you suffer as a murderer or a thief are an evildoer are as a medler.
And you know what I think is interesting about that?
A medler is in a list with murderer, thief, and evildoer.
I just noticed it today. I thought, wow. Those are heavy hitters.
You know, most of us wouldn’t think that being a little nosy was a problem.
But I mean, it’s right up there with a bunch of serious stuff.
Sometimes I have to say to myself, Joyce. It’s not in your business. It’s not in your business.
It’s not here, but isn’t it? Come on. Anybody besides me ever have a problem with this?
Now this doesn’t mean we never correct a person who’s in sin or try to help them in any way, but there’s a difference in genuinely trying to help somebody and trying to get into their business when you don’t need to.
Great example in John 21 beginning in verse 18.
This is Jesus talking to Peter.
Truly, truly, I say to you, when you were young, You used to dress yourself and walk wherever you wanted to go.
But when you are old, you will stretch out your hands, and another will dress you and carry you where you do not want to go.
So he’s given Peter the the heads up that things are gonna be a little more difficult for him.
In life now than they have been. And I don’t think that he was talking about young in years.
I think he was talking about when you were younger in the lord, And, you know, when you’re younger in the lord, to be honest, you do pretty much just do what you wanna do and pray for god to bless it.
And And a lot of times, he does for a period of time because he’s establishing a father child loving relationship with you.
But just like when our own children grow up, we don’t want to have to keep taking care of them all the time.
We want a transition to come at some point where they say, Mom, dad, what can I do for you?
And so Jesus is saying, when you were young, you pretty much did what you wanted to, but things are gonna change now, and I’m gonna lead you into some things that may not be the most fun for you, but it’s what I need.
And in verse 19, it says this, he said show by what kind of death he was going to glorify god.
You know, Peter was crucified upside down on a cross.
And then after saying that, he just said to him, follow me.
Now Peter just needed at that point to say, yes, lord.
But Peter turned and saw the disciple whom Jesus loved. That happened to be John.
John wrote the book of John, and he referred to himself over and over as I am the disciple whom Jesus loved.
Now I know Peter’s personality well enough to know that just got all over him.
But, yeah, you’re the designer. I’m engaged with Forbes.
I mean, you know, these were people just like we are.
I mean, it’s even a little bit aggravating to me to hear John say that.
So I can imagine how Peter felt about it.
And, I mean, these guys had problems just like we would have problems if we were in a group, they were jealous of each other.
They competed with each other. And I think that knowing Peter’s personality, that he probably just had a hard time with all the ooey gooey, you know, John laid on Jesus breast dinner.
They just had this great, loving relationship. And, you know, Peter always wanted to run the show.
So he’s gotten the bad news that things are gonna be all hard for him toward the end.
He sees John, and he and he says, When Peter saw him, he said, Jesus, what about this man?
What’s what’s gonna happen to him?
Well, you know, we’re not really good at it if we’re having a hard time and everybody else is having a good old time.
At least if we’re going to be miserable, we’d like some of our friends to be miserable with us.
And Jesus said, verse 22, if it’s my will that he remains until I come, what is that to you?
You follow me. So Jesus just told Peter, mind your own business.
Now think about it for a minute. We’re having a problem.
We’ve been having a problem for a long time.
Maybe you’re a single girl and you haven’t had a date in 12 years.
And your friend who’s not nearly as attractive as you are in your opinion.
She just can’t beat the guys off with a stick.
They’re just after her all the time. And so you don’t like it.
And You love her with the love of the lord, but you don’t really like her.
How many of you know about that? I love you with the love of the lord.
I can’t stand you, but I love you with the love of the lord. See?
And all you have to do You don’t have to try to figure out why you haven’t had a date and she has.
You have to tell god how unfair it is.
You just have to remember that god has a personalized individualized perfect plan for each one of us.
And we might as well just quit looking at other people trying to figure out why we don’t have what they have.
Pastors can get into the same thing.
Get jealous of another pastor because he’s got a bigger church and You’ve got this, and you’ve got that.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You know? You know, anybody that’s successful is always gonna have a certain amount of people that aren’t gonna like him.
You know why? Jealousy. Just plain jealousy.
So I’m just gonna say it the sweetest, kindest, nicest way that I know how to mind your own business.
Third reason we may try to control people is because we’re afraid of being taken advantage of.
After being sexually abused by my father, who was did it all through control, manipulation, and control.
He didn’t force me physically, but he forced me with fear.
And my father controlled everything that went on in our house.
What he wanted to watch on television is what you watched. You ate what he wanted to eat.
You got up. When he got up, you went to bed, when he went to bed.
And somewhere along the line in the middle of all that, I started making promises to myself.
When I get out of here, nobody is gonna ever tell me what to do again.
So when you make those kind of vows to yourself, inner vows, then I married the first guy that came along, and he was basically a con man and a thief.
And so he was always lying and manipulative.
And so, but the time I went through my dad and my first husband.
And then wonderful Dave came along. I took it all out on him.
And so when Dave would try to give me a little bit of advice or, like, Dave is very protective of me.
And so He’s always trying to tell me things to keep me from getting hurt.
Like, how to get out of the bathtub and, you know, just stuff that I am like, See, I would take it like Why do you always have to try to tell me what to do?
But he really he was trying to love me.
But because I had this stuff inside me from the past, I couldn’t take it that way.
I always took it like he was trying to control me and that really wasn’t what he was trying to do at all.
And I’m I’m sharing this because I believe many of you have been heard in the past, And you may be doing the same thing that I was doing.
You may be now a couple of husbands down the road And you can’t keep blaming the new guy for everything that the old guys did Come on.
Because it’s just not fair. It’s just not fair to do that.
And so I had to actually come to a point where I repented for those inner vows that I made.
Nobody’s ever gonna control me again. Nobody’s ever gonna control me again.
And I had to come full circle back to realizing that God establishes order everywhere you go.
And everywhere you go, you need to know who’s in con who’s in charge, who has the authority, and you need to be willing to come under that authority.
And I’m up here preaching tonight, but this is Joel’s house.
And so he’s sitting down there, but he’s really the one in control.
Because if he told me not to do something, then I better not do it.
And we need to be willing to come under authority.
Now, listen to me, we have so much rebellion in the world today.
It is unbelievable how rebellious people are. And the Bible says that rebellion is the spirit of Antichrist.
And we need to be very careful about this attitude that’s creeping up on everybody that nobody’s gonna tell me what to do.
I’m gonna do what I please.
When god establishes order, it’s not so one person can control another but it’s so you can have peace.
Everybody obviously can’t be in charge.
Somebody has to always be the person that calls the final shots and everything, that person also is the one with the responsibility.
Now probably none of you have any problem coming under authority, do you?
You know what?
You have no business ever being in authority if you don’t know how to come under authority.
I worked for a a man for a long time that was not very easy to work with.
And he wasn’t very fair in a lot of ways.
And god used that situation to teach me how to be submissive with a decent attitude, even with somebody that I really didn’t agree with, But I learned so much out of that experience.
You know, sometimes everything you learn is not pleasant.
Like, from being mistreated, I learned not to mistreat people.
Because I knew how it felt from having it done to me.
If you have a leadership personality, see yourself as a leader, not a boss.
Because if you say I’m the boss, then you’re gonna be bossy.
But if you see yourself as a leader, then you’ll know that means that you have to set a good example for people, not just be telling them what they need to be, but leading them by example.
Into what they need to be.
So we might try to control because we’re afraid of being taken advantage of are the 4th thing is we may try to control people just because we’ve got a strong temperament.
And our temperament the temperament that god gives us does play into things.
I was listening to a a I’ve been listening to a man named Martin Lloyd Jones who they say was probably the best bible teacher of this century, and he’s just really a very good bible teacher.
And he interestly enough from that era, you wouldn’t think that you’d hear people talk about this, but he talks a lot about how our temperament plays into the way that we handle things.
And he said, like, some people are just never gonna be as cheery as some other people.
You know, some people are they just have a a a deeper, more melancholy personality, and they would be more inclined toward getting depressed, you know, where other people, they just, like, can bubble through life every single day, and everything’s a big joke to them.
You know, Dave gets up in the morning and he gets up singing, and I just don’t even wanna talk or talk to or see a human until I have my coffee.
Amen? It’s like the only person that I can stand to talk to that time of the morning is Jesus.
But if you give me about an hour, I’ll be okay.
So if you if you have a strong personality, you have to you have to be careful that you’re balanced with it, that you’re not trying to tell everybody in the world what to do, know when you’re in control and when you need to come under control.
Amen? Now there is only One thing in your life that god has told you to control, and that is yourself.
So instead of trying to control everybody else, we need to use more self control.
2nd Timothy 17, god has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and self control.
So don’t ever say again, I just don’t have any self control.
You may not be using it, but you have it.
And the more you use it, the easier it will be to use it.
Paul said every athlete exercises self control in all things. And they do a good athlete.
I mean, they observe a bedtime. They exercise. They eat certain ways.
They, you know, and he says they do it to win a wreath that is perishable.
So you think about what some of these sports people do are like a body builder.
What they go through trying to train just to stand on a stage and show off their muscles.
And are like to get a wreath of flowers or a ribbon or a trophy.
They do all that just for that, but he says, we’re doing it for a reward that is imperishable.
So if they’re willing to discipline themselves to that degree just to win something that’s already in the process of rotting when they take it home, how much more should we be willing to control ourselves in order to have what god has promised us which is eternal life with him.
So 2 scriptures, both in 1st Corinthians First Corinthians 9, 25 through 27.
Every athlete exercises self control in all things, they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable So I do not run aimlessly.
I do not box as one beating the air, but I discipline my body and I keep it under control.
After preaching to others, I myself should be disqualified. Well, the amplified Bible says, but I buffet my body.
However, I think we misread that for a long time when we thought it said, I buffet my body.
Right here, Paul says, I buffet my body.
Same spelling. Different pronunciation. 1st Corinthians 612.
All things are lawful for me, but not all things are helpful.
All things are lawful for me, but I will not be dominated by anything.
Talk about freedom.
Once we accept that our lives are in god’s hands so many things change. Our stress level decreases.
And that doesn’t mean that we’re exempt from going through hard things.
It just means that we can go through them better knowing that whatever happens, god is in control, and we can trust him.
Like Joyce said, spiritual maturity is staying happy even when we don’t get what we want.
And staying happy when you think about it really is success.
In Joyce’s new book, The Pathway To Success, you’ll learn what true success is.
You’ll discover the steps to grow your spiritual maturity and how to discover or rediscover god’s purpose for your life.
God doesn’t want our lives to become complacent or ho He wants us to stay stirred up, achieving new dreams, and never settling for anything less than his best.
He has success for all of us.
So get this book and start your pathway to success, and you can get it today for your gift of any amount.
The great thing about this is it’s all scripturally based.
You’ll find out how to have success in the way that god wants for you in a way that will make a huge difference in your life.
And it’s for any amount because we really know that god has good things for you, and we want to see you get there.
Now don’t go away. I’ll be right back to tell you about how god helped a woman go from desperation to success and fulfillment.
These are volunteers at our medical and dental outreaches.
And when you use the gifts that god has given you to do something for him, he always blesses you for it.
Amen. And we invite you to come along with us. What do you think?
Should they should they do You can go to our website and find out more information, but volunteer for a medical emission as soon as you possibly can.
So the Bible is god’s manual to help us navigate life.
But life often gets in the way of knowing the Bible, finding the time, knowing where to begin, and discovering what this all means to you.
We understand, and we’d like to help.
At joycemeyer.org/study, you’ll find free resources to help you get more out of the Bible.
Whether you’re a new Christian or have been walking with Christ for years. So jump in today.
The word, it’s free, it’s mobile, and it’s tailored for you at joycemeyer.org.
Did you know that no matter what you are facing, god can help you.
1 of our Joyce Fire Ministry partners emailed us saying this, God greatly impacted my life through Joyce Meyer Ministries.
Thanks to her teachings, I’ve been clean and sober for 23 years 8 months.
I went from food stamps and living in government housing to earning my master’s degree and selling real estate.
And this year, god answered one of the biggest prayers by giving me the opportunity to attend the love life women’s conference with my daughter-in-law, Thank you for helping me turn my life around.
You know what? I I don’t know what you desperately want to change in your life.
It’s so easy to get in a place where we know we need change, but we just don’t know how to do it.
But god does know, and he knows exactly what you need.
And he has a plan for everything that you need in your life.
Our prayer for you today is that he helps and your point of need just like he did for Miranda who shared this story.
So don’t give up. We love sharing the truth of god’s word and Joyce’s Bible teaching every single day because we know what a difference it makes And if you’ve experienced that in your own life and you want to share it like we all do, you can tell the world by partnering with Joyce Meyer Ministries.
You can go to joycemeyer.org/partnership, become a partner, and help people like Miranda and so many others around the world who just need to know that there is a god who loves them and is there for them.
And there is no better success than sharing Christ and helping people, and you can do it every day as a partner.
All you have to do to be a partner is to give on an ongoing basis to pray for us and to be a part of Joyce Meyer Ministries.
And then everywhere we go around the world, you are there too. Reach out today and join us.
We love you so much. We pray you have a great day. We’ll see you next time.
For more information, visit joycemeyer.org.
This program has been made possible by the partners of Joyce Meyer Ministries.