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Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Get in Balance

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Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening].

—1 Corinthians 13:7

We all get emotional occasionally, or lose our temper once in a while. But if you are out of balance in either one of these areas, it is very important to get back in balance if you want your day to go right.

If your feelings get hurt because someone looks at you crossways, or because friends or family forget your birthday, you need to spend more time with God. He will fill you with so much love and such a sense of self-worth that you won’t feel ill-tempered or touchy toward anyone. Seek God with your whole heart today. Talk to Him about your problems, and then enjoy yourself, knowing that He cares for you.

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – The Benefits of Forgiveness

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But if you do not forgive, neither will your Father in heaven forgive your failings and shortcomings. —Mark 11:26

Mark 11:22–26 clearly teaches us that unforgiveness hinders our faith from working, so we can conclude in contrast that forgiveness enables our faith to work. The Father can’t forgive our sins if we don’t forgive other people (see Matt. 6:14–15).

There are still more benefits of forgiveness. For one, I’m happier and I feel better physically when I’m not filled with unforgiveness. We can be healthier when we quickly forgive. Serious diseases can develop as a result of the stress and pressure that result from bitterness, resentment, and unforgiveness.

Our fellowship with God flows freely when we’re willing to forgive, but unforgiveness serves as a major block to communion with God. I also believe it is difficult to love people while harboring anger. When we have bitterness in our hearts it seeps out in all of our attitudes and relationships.

It is good to remember that even people we want to love may suffer when we hold bitterness, resentment, and unforgiveness. For example, I was very angry and bitter toward my father for abusing me, and I ended up mistreating my husband who had nothing at all to do with the pain I had encountered. I felt that someone needed to repay me for the injustice in my life, but I was trying to collect from someone who could not pay and had no responsibility to do so.

God promises to pay us back for our former trouble if we turn the situation over to Him. And if we don’t, then we allow Satan to perpetuate our pain and take it from relationship to relationship. Ephesians 4:26–27 tells us not to let the sun go down on our anger or give the devil any such foothold or opportunity. Remember that the devil must have a foothold before he can get a stronghold. Do not help Satan torture you. Be quick to forgive when you are offended.

Trust in Him: There is no end to the benefits in your life if you will trust God’s Word that tells you to forgive, not seven times, but seventy times seven times (Matt. 18:22).

 

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – God Sees Your Possibilities

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Not that I have attained, or am already perfected, but I press on, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.—Philippians 3:12 (NKJV)

None of us is perfect. We are sometimes painfully aware of our shortcomings and imperfections, but God always looks at us through the eyes of possibility. He sees who we can become and He is always hopeful concerning our future. It takes time to grasp for ourselves the hope that God has for us, but I hope you’ll begin that journey today.

To realize how much hope God can have for a person, all I have to do is think about what I was like when He called me into full-time ministry.

When God began using me to minister to others, I still had a lot of bad habits. I needed a lot of refining. I sincerely loved God, and I wanted to do what was right, but I had very little revelation of His precepts. I went to church and tried to “be good” and to do good works, but I also had a shame-based, guilt-ridden personality as a result of many years of sexual abuse I suffered, beginning in my childhood. I didn’t like myself, had a poor self-image, and was terribly insecure and extremely fearful. To people who didn’t know me, I must have appeared very bold and aggressive. That outer presentation, though, didn’t match my inner life. Inside, I was a mess, but God filled me with His Holy Spirit and let me know He wanted to use me to minister to others.

The Lord did not wait until I was “fixed” before He got involved with me because He looked beyond my current reality and saw possibilities. He started working with me right where I was at the time and is responsible for getting me to the point where I am today. I am convinced He will do the same for you!

Love Yourself Today: Lord, help me to remember that You have hope for me and that when you see me, you see possibilities.

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – God’s Timing

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Except the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build it; except the Lord keeps the city, the watchman wakes but in vain.—Psalm 127:1

During the three years of Jesus’ earthly ministry, people thought He was crazy. His own brothers were embarrassed by Him, and in an effort to save their reputation they told Him He needed to go somewhere else and do His works. If He was unwilling to do that, they told Him to take action and stop doing His works in secret. They tried to convince Him it was time to show Himself and His works to the world. They wanted Jesus to impress the people with what He could do.

He responded to them by saying, “My time (opportunity) has not come yet” (John 7:6).

How many of us could show that type of self-control? If you could do the miracles that He could do and were being made fun of and challenged to show your stuff, what would you do? Would you wait until you absolutely knew that it was the right time sanctioned by God?

It is good to have plans, and I believe we should plan boldly and aggressively, but we must be wise enough to know that our plans will ultimately fail without God. We must learn to wait for God’s plans to develop. True boldness moves in God’s timing.

Lord, I want to have a plan for my life

 

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – A Good Kind of Burden

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Graciously consider the prayer and supplication of Your servant, O Lord my God, to hearken to the [loud] cry and prayer which he prays before You today.—1 Kings 8:28

Sometimes, as you are praying for others, you will get what some call a prayer burden, or an intercessory burden. A burden is something that comes to your heart and feels weighty and important; it is something God is asking you to carry in prayer; it is something you cannot shake. Sometimes God may speak to you and explain the burden to you. At other times you do not even know what the burden is or you do not fully understand it; you only know that you have to pray.

Some people are called to pray a lot for certain things. My husband prays a lot for America. I know people who pray for Israel all the time. One woman told me she prayed for veterans returning from war. I believe God has every need in the world covered. We don’t all need to pray for the same thing because, if we did, all the needs would not be taken care of. Pay attention to what God is placing on your heart and pray for that.

One of the ways God speaks to us is through giving us burdens for others. He does this often without words, but by a sense of weightiness and concern for people in our hearts. When this happens, He is asking us to pray for them. Pay attention to the burdens He gives you and be faithful to pray when He is asking you to do so.

God’s word for you today: As you pray for others, remember that God also has someone praying for you.

 

 

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Pray at All Times

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Pray at all times (on every occasion, in every season) in the Spirit, with all [manner of] prayer and entreaty. To that end keep alert and watch with strong purpose and perseverance, interceding in behalf of all the saints (God’s consecrated people). —Ephesians 6:18

In Ephesians 6:10-17, the apostle Paul talks about the armor of God and how we are to use it and the weapon of the Word to engage in spiritual warfare. After each piece has been listed, in verse eighteen Paul sums up his message by saying, Pray at all times. How often are we to pray? At all times.

What does that mean? Does it mean that when we are out doing the grocery shopping and God puts it on our heart to pray we are to drop to our knees right there in the middle of the supermarket aisle? I often kneel by my bed and pray. There are other times when I feel led by God to lie down, face to the floor, before Him and pray. We have to be careful not to confuse physical posture with prayer. We can also pray silently in the supermarket as we are walking down the aisles.

In the different seasons of life we are able to pray in different ways. A young mother with three or four little children, for example, is going to have to structure her prayer life differently from that of a grandmother whose family is all grown up and out of the house.

If we become too “religious” about prayer, thinking we must do it one way or the other because that is how someone else does it, we will bring condemnation on ourselves. The important thing about prayer is not the posture or the time or place but learning to pray in faith—at all times, unceasingly. Anytime the desire or need arises—pray!

 

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – The Blessings of Meditation

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And the Lord your God will make you abundantly prosperous in every work of your hand…. If you obey the voice of the Lord your God, to keep His commandments and His statutes which are written in this Book of the Law, and if you turn to the Lord your God with all your [mind and] heart and with all your being. For this commandment which I command you this day is not too difficult for you, nor is it far off…. But the word is very near you, in your mouth and in your mind and in your heart, so that you can do it.—Deuteronomy 30:9–11, 14

Please make everything easy and simple for me, dear God. I don’t like to struggle, and I want constant victory without exerting any effort. Let me go on my way as I let You do everything to keep me secure.

I’ve never heard anyone pray those words, but I have heard people pray in such a way that they were asking for an easy time in life. Too many people want victory without battle, triumph without effort, and ease without labor. God’s world simply doesn’t function that way.

“It’s just too hard.” I wonder how many times I’ve heard people talk that way. I wonder how many times Joyce Meyer has talked that way. And I did. There was a time when I’d make a firm stand for following the Lord, but in my heart (and often in my mouth) were the words that “it was just so hard.”

God convicted me of negative thinking. He taught me that if I would stop looking at the hardships and obey Him, He would make a way for me. The previous verses tell us that God wants to bless us and prosper the work of our hands, but we must obey His commandments. And in verse 11, He assures us that we can do it: “For this commandment which I command you this day is not too difficult for you, nor is it far off.”

Because we spend so much time listening to the negatives and figuring out what can go wrong, too often we forget the promise that His will is not too difficult for us. Instead, it may help if you think of the obvious difficulties as blessings from God.

For instance, take encouragement from Joseph. After he spent years in Egypt and saved the lives of his family in Canaan, his brothers were afraid of him. They had hated him, plotted to kill him, and sold him into slavery. After their father, Jacob, died, they expected Joseph to punish them. He could have done that and groaned about his hard life—and his life had not been easy. Not only was he sold as a slave by his brothers, but he had been wrongly imprisoned and could have been put to death if God hadn’t been with him.

Instead of saying, “Life is so hard,” Joseph said, “As for you, you thought evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring about that many people should be kept alive, as they are this day” (Genesis 50:20). He understood how God works in human lives. Joseph didn’t look at the hardships; he looked at the opportunities. Joseph didn’t listen to the whispering campaign of his enemy; he turned his ears to the encouraging words of his God. In no place do we read of him complaining. He saw everything that happened to him as God’s loving hand upon him.

I wrote the words loving hand even though it may not always seem that way. And that’s where the devil sometimes creeps in to say, “If God loves you so much, why are you in this mess?”

The best answer I can give is to repeat the words of Paul the great apostle: “Let us exult and triumph in our troubles and rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that pressure and affliction and hardship produce patient and unswerving endurance. And endurance (fortitude) develops maturity of character (approved faith and tried integrity). And character [of this sort] produces [the habit of] joyful and confident hope of eternal salvation. Such hope never disappoints or deludes or shames us, for God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit Who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3–5).

God never promises an easy life, but He does promise a blessed life.

God of love and compassion, please forgive me for complaining about life being too hard. Forgive me for wanting things to be easy. Lead me wherever You want me to go and, in the name of Jesus, I plead that You will help me rejoice all the way—even in the midst of the problems, because You will be there to help me solve them. Amen.

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Face the Truth and Find Freedom

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But when He, the Spirit of Truth (the Truth-giving Spirit) comes, He will guide you into all the Truth.—John 16:13

Facing the truth about yourself is a vital key to experiencing a breakthrough to victory. If you want to continually live in new levels of victory, you must remain open and receptive to the truth about yourself. This is not just a superficial acknowledgment of wrong thinking and behavior—it is an open and honest recognition of your sin before God that brings an attitude of repentance, which is a willingness to go in the right direction.

It can be painful, but facing the truth about your mindsets, motives, and methods of doing things enables you to move beyond your despair and experience a wonderful fellowship with God.

The truth about yourself often brings great hurt, but the truth of God’s Word brings great healing. As you continue in His Word, the truth will set you free (see John 8:32).

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Ask for Help

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Confess to one another therefore your faults (your slips, your false steps, your offenses, your sins) and pray [also] for one another, that you may be healed and restored [to a spiritual tone of mind and heart]. The earnest (heartfelt, continued) prayer of a righteous man makes tremendous power available [dynamic in its working].  —James 5:16

Addictions, habits, or negative attitudes can wear you out. If you need deliverance from some wrong behavior, the Bible teaches that the Holy Spirit is your Helper (See John 14:6). Confess your need to God, and ask Him to deliver you.

He may lead you to confess your faults to other believers whom you can trust to pray for you. The Word says that we are to confess our faults to one other so that we may be healed and restored. If you are out of control in some area, be honest about it. Today can be your day of deliverance.

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – God Wants You to Laugh

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A happy heart is good medicine and a cheerful mind works healing, but a broken spirit dries up the bones. —Proverbs 17:22

One of the amazing things I have noticed from teaching and ministering is that God loves to make people laugh. I don’t plan to be funny when I speak, but the Holy Spirit speaks through me—and I’m amazed at how He adds funny little thoughts or illustrations. He clearly knows the value of humor and the healing effect it brings.

God wants us to laugh, and He wants us to make other people laugh. That does not mean we should all become jesters or laugh at inappropriate times, but we can certainly aid one another in taking a more lighthearted approach to life. We would all be much better off if we would learn to laugh at ourselves sometimes instead of taking ourselves so seriously.

The last three times I have worn white pants, I have spilled coffee on myself. I can either think I am a klutz who cannot hold on to anything and begin to devalue myself, or I can make a joke out of it and try harder to stay clean the next time. For years, I have listened to people downgrade themselves verbally for every mistake they make, and I believe that grieves God. If we know our value in Christ we should never say things about ourselves that devalue what God has created.

Why not make a habit of helping people see that we all make silly mistakes and we can choose to laugh rather than get upset? Give people permission to not be perfect! I love to be with people who do not pressure me to be perfect. God loves us unconditionally, and that means He accepts us the way we are and then helps us to be all we can be. Helping people laugh at themselves is a way of saying, “I accept you, faults and all.”

Remember to take every opportunity to laugh—especially at yourself—because it will improve your health and you will enjoy your life much more.

Trust in Him: Do you accept yourself, faults and all? God does! If you trust Him to love you just the way you are (He is the One Who created you!), then you can lighten up, accept that you aren’t perfect, and be an example to others who need more laughter in their lives.

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Some Things Never Happen

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But man is freer than all the animals, on account of his free-will, with which he is endowed above all other animals. —St. Thomas Aquinas

One of the gifts God gives us because He loves is free will. If we did not have free will then we would have no responsibility either. We could wander through the days like robots waiting for the next thing to happen to us. But God did give us free will, and this puts tremendous responsibility on us. It also opens up to us possibilities of total joy and fulfillment.

God will give you all the tools you need on earth to fulfill the great plans He has for your life. But it’s up to you to take up those tools and use them effectively. We are partners with God. We never have to do anything without His help, but He also expects us to make a willful choice to do our part. There is work involved in the completion of any project or progress and we must have a heart to work.

Many are called to do great things, but not everyone is willing to take the responsibility for what they are called to do. Our own spiritual growth requires work and responsibility. God helps us, but He does not do everything for us. My brother died at age 58 in an abandoned building in Los Angeles because he wasn’t willing to take responsibility for his past mistakes and do the work involved in seeing his life restored. As long as someone else did everything for him he was fine, but as soon as he had to make right choices on his own, he always drifted back to living for the moment instead making hard choices that would produce good results in the future.

I wanted to help my brother, but he would not help himself. God wants to help us, but we must do the part He gives us to do. We have free will and we can make right and good choices just as easy as we can make bad ones. The choice is ours either way. God sets before us life and death, good and evil and advises us to choose life (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Our thoughts and emotions can lead us in a wrong path, but if we will use our will to choose God’s will our lives will be amazingly wonderful.

Love Yourself Today: Thank You, Lord, for the gift of free will. Help me to exercise wisdom as I make my choices.

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Light Up the Darkness

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Fear not [there is nothing to fear], for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God.—Isaiah 41:10

God’s Word is clear on this point: We are not to fear. Notice that He doesn’t say that we are never to feel fear, but He does say we shouldn’t allow fear to control us and steal our destiny.

It’s important to remember that what we hide in the darkness has to be brought into the light if we’re going to get rid of it. Go into a completely dark room and switch on the light. What happens? The darkness is swallowed up. That is the way God and His Word work in our lives. When we do what God’s Word tells us to do, those fears that try to torment us are swallowed up. They’re gone, and they have no power over you.

How I wish I had a magic wand I could wave or a prayer I could say that would end fear in your life once and for all. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen. Prayer does give us the strength to stand against fear, but for us to overcome and be conquerors as God intends us to be, we must realize that we can “feel the fear and do it anyway,” and then we’ll be free.

Lord, may the power of Your Word be effective in dealing with the fears I bring to You now. Show me the truths that set my soul free. Amen.

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – We Can Make a Difference

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The Lord turned from the evil which He had thought to do to His people. —Exodus 32:14

Do you know that prayer can change God’s mind? As a result of someone who will simply take time to talk to Him and listen to Him, God can actually reconsider something He had planned to do.

When Moses went up Mount Sinai to get the Ten Commandments, he was gone longer than the people wanted him to be. In the absence of their leader, they forgot the Lord, gave in to their fleshly desires and decided to melt all their jewelry, make a golden calf, and worship it. God spoke to Moses on the mountain and said, essentially, “You better get back down there, because the people have really gotten themselves in a mess. And I’m angry about it.” (Thank God, Psalm 30:5 says that His anger lasts only a moment, but His mercy is forever!)

Moses began to intercede for the people because he cared so much about them. God had already said to him, “Leave Me alone, for these people are stiff-necked and stubborn” (see Exodus 32:9–10). But Moses refused to give up because the issue was not settled in his heart. He loved the people, he knew the nature of God, and he knew the character of God. On top of that, he knew that God really loved the people and did not really want to leave them stranded.

Moses asked God to change His mind (see Exodus 32:12) and according to today’s verse, God did. We can make a difference when we pray!

God’s word for you today: When you pray, God hears and answers!

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Listen to the Promptings of the Spirit

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But now we are discharged from the Law and have terminated all intercourse with it, having died to what once restrained and held us captive. So now we serve not under [obedience to] the old code of written regulations, but [under obedience to the promptings] of the Spirit in newness [of life]. —Romans 7:6

According to this passage, we are no longer under the restraints of the law but now serve the Lord under obedience to the promptings of the Holy Spirit. A prompting is a “knowing” down on the inside of you telling you what to do. First Kings 19:11,12 describes the “still, small voice” the Lord used with Elijah. And behold, the Lord passed by, and a great and strong wind rent the mountains and broke in pieces the rocks before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire [a sound of gentle stillness and] a still, small voice.

A prompting from the Lord is not like hitting someone over the head with a hammer to prompt them to do something! The Lord did not use the great and strong wind, the earthquake, or the fire as a prompting but instead came as “a sound of gentle stillness” and “a still, small voice.”

The prompting of “a still, small voice” is not necessarily a voice; it can be God’s wisdom giving you direction in that moment. First Corinthians 1:30 tells us, But it is from Him that you have your life in Christ Jesus, Whom God made our Wisdom from God. If we are born again, Jesus is living inside us. If He is inside us, we have God’s wisdom in us to draw on at any moment! But unless we listen to wisdom, it won’t do us any good.

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – The Blessings of Meditation

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My son, attend to my words; consent and submit to my sayings. Let them not depart from your sight; keep them in the center of your heart. For they are life to those who find them, healing and health to all their flesh. —Proverbs 4:20-22

In these verses, the writer used the words, attend to my words, which is another way of exhorting us to meditate. I love the fact that God not only frequently tells us to meditate—to ponder seriously—His Word, but He frequently promises results. It’s as if God says, “Okay, Joyce, if you meditate, here’s what I’m going to do for you.” In this passage, the promise is life and health. Isn’t that amazing? It’s even a promise that when you contemplate and brood over the Bible, it will affect your physical body.

We’ve known for a long time that when we fill our minds with healthy, positive thoughts, it affects our body and improves our health. This is just another way of repeating this truth. Or take the opposite viewpoint: Suppose we fill our minds with negative thoughts and remind ourselves how frail we are or how sick we were the day before. We soon become so filled with self-pity and self-defeating thoughts that we get even sicker.

In the previous pages, I’ve already mentioned the idea of prosperity (see Psalm 1 and Joshua 1:8). I believe that by “prosperity,” God means that we’ll be enriched and prosper in every part of our lives. It’s not a promise of more material wealth, but an assurance of being able to enjoy all the wonderful blessings we have.

Recently when I meditated on several passages in the Bible, I realized God was showing me that the Word has hidden treasures in it—powerful, life-giving secrets—which God wants to reveal to us. They are there for those who muse, ponder, and contemplate the Word of God.

What we often forget is that God wants our fellowship, our company, and our time with Him. If we want a deep relationship with our heavenly Father, we have to make quality time for God. I recently heard someone say, “Quality time comes out of quantity times.” In other words, it’s only as we spend time with God on a regular, daily basis that we have those special, life-changing moments. We can’t program them to happen, but if we’re there on a daily basis, God will cause some of those times to be quality times of special blessing.

D. L. Moody once said that the Bible would keep us from sin, or sin would keep us from the Bible. That’s the principle here. As we concentrate on God’s Word and allow it to fill our thoughts, we will push away all desire to sin or to displease God in any way. We become more deeply rooted in Him. Again, think of it in the negative. When our mind remains focused on our problems all the time, we become consumed with them. If we meditate on what’s wrong with others, we see even more flaws and faults. But when we concentrate on God’s Word, light comes into our souls.

I want to go back one more time to that powerful statement in Philippians 4:8. No matter which translation or paraphrase we read it in, the message is powerful and exactly what we need to do to condition our minds for victory.

Here’s Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase in The Message: “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse.”

Dear Father in heaven, teach me the blessings of pondering Your Word, of filling my heart and mind with Your spiritual manna. May I grow into maturity and become more and more like Your Son, Jesus. It’s in His name that I pray. Amen.

 

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Be a Doer

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But be doers of the Word [obey the message], and not merely listeners to it, betraying yourselves [into deception by reasoning contrary to the Truth].—James 1:22

Any time you see what the Word says and refuse to do it, reasoning has somehow gotten involved and deceived you into believing something other than the truth. There may be times when you don’t understand everything the Word says, but you should move ahead and do it. God wants you to obey him whether or not you feel like it, want to do it, or think it is a good idea. When God speaks, we are not to question His methods. His ways are not our own.

Proverbs 3:5 says, “Lean on, trust in, and be confident in the Lord with all your heart and mind and do not rely on your own insight or understanding.” In other words, don’t rely on reason or logic. When God speaks, we are to mobilize, not rationalize.

 

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Don’t Waste Time

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Look carefully then how you walk! Live purposefully and worthily and accurately, not as the unwise and witless, but as wise (sensible, intelligent people), making the very most of the time [buying up each opportunity]. —Ephesians 5:15–16

We need to be so self-controlled that we don’t waste time. That doesn’t mean that we can never do anything fun. It doesn’t mean we can’t do things that we enjoy.

We don’t need to be rigid, stiff, or boring. But we do need to use our time wisely, choosing to give the best part of our day to spend time with God.

The Word encourages us to be prepared, saying, “Hear counsel, receive instruction, and accept correction, that you may be wise in the time to come” (Proverbs 19:20). Starting your day with God’s instruction will keep you walking in wisdom, making the most of your time.

 

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Don’t Fear—Keep Going

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If God is for us, who [can be] against us? [Who can be our foe, if God is on our side?]—Romans 8:31

We must learn how to deal with fear before it goes too far because it will never completely go away. Feeling fear is part of being alive. We may feel fear when we are doing something we have never done before, or when the obstacles seem insurmountable, or when we don’t have the natural help we feel we need. None of this means we are cowards; it means we are human. We can only be cowardly when we allow our fears to dictate our actions or decisions, instead of following our hearts and doing what we know is right for us.

We must accept the fact that fear will never go away completely, but also know we can live boldly and courageously because God has told us that He is always with us. Because of that knowledge we can choose to ignore the fear we feel. It’s okay to feel fear; it’s not okay to act on those feelings. You see, the word fear means “to take flight” or “to run away from,” and it causes us to want to flee from what God wants us to confront.

The only acceptable attitude for a Christian to have toward fear is “I will not fear.” Do not shrink back from anything in fear. You may be going forward with something you feel God has spoken to you to do. Then something happens to make it appear that it’s not working out or that people are not in favor of it. You realize that if you do what God wants you to do, you may risk losing some friends, some resources, or your reputation.

When you feel that fear, the first impulse is to shrink back, isn’t it? God knows that, and that is why He says, “Do not fear.” When He tells us not to fear, what He means is, no matter how you feel, keep putting one foot in front of the other and doing what you believe He has told you to do because that’s the only way to defeat fear and make progress.

Trust in Him: Trust the Word of God more than you trust the lies of the devil, and keep making progress!

 

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Do You Love Him?

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“Simon, son of Jonah, do you love Me?” He said to Him, “Yes, Lord; You know that I love You.” He said to Him, “Tend My sheep.” —John 21:16

In the story that contains today’s scripture, Jesus asked Simon Peter three times if he loved Him and all three times, when Simon Peter said, “Yes,” Jesus answered with, “Then feed my sheep,” “Tend My sheep” or “Feed my lambs” (see John 21:15-17). On several occasions He referred to Himself as a Shepherd and to His people as sheep, so Peter knew He was telling Him to love and help His people.

I believe Jesus was saying in these verses that if we love Him we should be helping other people, not simply gathering in buildings on Sunday morning to follow rules and rituals. If a church is not involved in reaching the lost and helping oppressed people then they are not functioning as God fully intends.

The Apostle John said that we know we have passed over out of death into life by the fact that we love the brethren and He who does not love is held and kept continually in spiritual death (see I John 3:14). If a church is not overflowing with the genuine love of God, how can it be filled with life?

The early church, which we read about in the book of Acts, was very powerful. It literally shook the known world of its time and its influence is still being felt across the globe today. It was unified and all the people who were part of it were busy helping the people they knew to be in need. They helped those they knew personally and those they heard about in other towns and cities through the apostles who came to visit and teach them.

Love God Today: Do you love God? Then feed His sheep by helping others.

Joyce Meyer

Joyce Meyer – Faith Energizes

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Joyce meyer

Trust in, lean on, rely on, and have confidence in Him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts before Him. God is a refuge for us (a fortress and a high tower). Selah [pause, and calmly think of that]!  —Psalm 62:8

You might ask, “Doesn’t a really confident person get involved in a lot of things?”

Yes, she probably does, but it isn’t because of fear. Whatever she is involved in, she is confident about being involved in. When we do things out of desire and confidence, they affect us in a totally different way than when we do them out of wrong motives and fear. God will not energize our fears, but He does energize us if we have faith that we are doing the right thing and approach a project with confidence in Him.

Fear drains you of whatever energy you might have had and leaves you feeling stressed to the max, but confidence and faith actually energize you. A confident person can do more with less stress because they live with an ease that fearful people never experience.

I don’t believe that what we do creates stress nearly as much as how we do it. If we do something fearfully and under pressure with no real desire to do it, then stress and no joy is the result. We’re miserable. Fortunately, just the opposite can be true.

Lord, help me to do what I’m doing with desire and confidence. I pour out my heart to You and ask You to energize my faith. Amen.