Transcription
After this meeting, pray that God will begin to show you ways that you exhibit pride. And also pray that he will show you ways. Now, listen what I'm going to say. That you can humble yourself on purpose because you have to do it on purpose or you'll never do it.
My determined purpose is to know him. And the power of his resurrection that lifts me out from among the dead even while I'm in the body. You know what that means? There's a place that we can live that no matter what's going on in our lives, we're still up here and happy.
Sometimes we don't think enough about how important it is to be humble and to not let ourselves get into pride. And I think there's a lot of ways that we can be proud and not even realize that we're being proud. But I want to start off by telling you and I'll read you a few scriptures. The Bible says that God hates pride. He doesn't like just dislike it. He hates it.
It's impossible to have an argument without pride. You can't. There has to be pride. If you're going to have an argument, all judgment is pride. All gossip is pride. All jealousy is pride. Pride was the sin that caused Lucifer to become Satan. And he works overtime trying to get us into pride.
And the thing that's interesting is God wants us to be so blessed. But a lot of times he can't bless people because they don't know how to handle it. You know, it's interesting how humble you can be when you don't have anything, but how important you can begin to think you are the more you have. And so, let's really take this serious this weekend and let's all be willing to examine our lives and let God really look at us.
I read this definition recently and I just absolutely love it that spiritual integrity is the ability to really take an honest look at yourself. We don't have any trouble looking at other people. You you need this, you need that, you need something else. But we need to be willing to look at ourselves.
So, you know, God's math is not like ours. Wherever we got our math from, we didn't get it from God. Because with God, down is up and up is down. First is last, last is first. And if you want more, you got to give away some of what you got. So, it is kind of a strange kind of math if you if you think about it.
This necklace and me are not going to get along. I told the girls with me, I said, "When this thing goes this way, go like this." So they're down there going. All right. So, humble yourself and God will exalt you. But I will tell you, if you won't humble yourself, he will do it for you. And it's much better to do it yourself between you and God if he's dealing with you about something because then it can be private and you won't have to get embarrassed. But if he has to do it for you, it will normally be in front of somebody and you won't care for that.
Our oldest son heads up our missions and he's just done an absolutely phenomenal job. We're getting ready in about a week to open, this is so cool, a food factory in Africa where we're actually going to be making the food that the people eat. So, we won't have to buy it from somebody else and we'll be able to sell it at a very reasonable price to other people that are in these countries trying to to feed people. But I tell you, the devil fights everything that you try to do to help somebody.
But anyway, he came to work for us when he was very young, and he has a very strong personality, a lot like his mama. And um he uh he had a problem with pride. And so many times we would have to call him in and correct him, threaten to fire him, you know, on and on. And uh he told me something one time that I thought was interesting. He said, "You know," he said, "Every time you and dad have to correct me, if I'm honest, God has already tried to deal with me, and I wouldn't listen." It's kind of interesting, don't you think? So, we should listen to God and then he won't have to have somebody else come and tell us what he's been trying to tell us.
You know, I don't think this is a subject that people even think too much about. And you know, um Andrew Murray wrote a phenomenal little tiny book on humility. And that book just tore my life up about 40 years ago. I had no idea what a mess I was. And he says that humility is the hardest virtue to come by, the hardest one to maintain. And it can only be maintained and had by special regular prayer. And I I'll share a lot of different things with you tonight that I think will help you in this area.
Well, first of all, Matthew 23:12, for those who exalt themselves will be humbled. For those who exalt themselves will be humbled. It's not a maybe. They will be. And those who humble themselves will be exalted. So, we don't have to try to climb our way to the top. You know, if you want to get to the top, the best thing you can do is help somebody else get to the top and then let God lift you up. But usually, we're jealous of other people that are getting ahead of us. And so, we try to keep them from getting ahead and we only keep ourselves from being promoted.
Luke 14:7-11. When he noticed how the guests picked the places of honor at the table, he told them this parable. Jesus loved to tell stories. When somebody invites you to a wedding feast, don't take the place of honor. For a person more distinguished than you may have been invited, if so, the host who invited both of you will come and say to you, "Give this person your seat." Then humiliated, you will have to take the least important place. But when you are invited, take the lowest place so that when your host comes, he will say to you, "Friend, move up to a better place." Then you will be honored in the presence of all the other guests. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled. It's amazing how many times the Bible says that all those who exalt themselves will be humbled.
Do you know every time that we gossip about somebody else, we're exalting ourselves? Every time we judge somebody else, we're exalting ourselves. We're trying to make them look bad so we look better. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
And I love this story. Luke 18:9-14 to some of the people who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everyone else. Jesus told this parable. And you know, one of the ways that you can, if you wish to have any kind of an idea of how humble or proud you are, one of the ways you can judge it is by how you treat people, especially people who can't do anything for you.
And I I'll give you an example. I was in a doctor's office one time. My son had broken his arm and I'd taken him to get the cast off and he was in the doctor's office and I was sitting out in the waiting room and there was an elderly gentleman there who had broken his leg and he wanted to tell me all about it and tell me about it and tell me about it and tell me about it and tell me about it. Well, I look back down, I realized he was just lonely. He probably didn't have that many people to talk to. And but I had brought my Bible and I didn't want him bothering me because I wanted to quietly speak in tongues and read my Bible and be spiritual. You know, what we think is spiritual and what God thinks is spiritual are two entirely different things. Amen. And um so I actually sat there and prayed that God would have that man leave me alone. God, will you make him leave me alone so I can pray? I am glad to say that it was a few years ago. And later on, the Lord spoke in my heart and he said, "If if that would have been Billy Graham, would you have talked to him?" Oh, I would had all the time in the world for him. And the Lord said, "You know why? because he would have been somebody that could have done something for you. But that elderly gentleman couldn't do anything for you. Therefore, you had no interest in him."
My daughter came out of a grocery store not too long ago and she was in a bit of a hurry like we always are and there was traffic going this way and that way so she had to stand and wait. And here again there was an elderly gentleman standing by her and he started talking to her and she thought but then she thought no this is the way I can serve God and see we're we're always we want God to use us but if the only place we want to be used is on a platform then we really don't want God to use us where God wants to use you is standing by the curb in the doctor's office, taking time with people that to be honest you'd really rather not mess with. Finding the people in the world that are downtrodden or that would be looked on as being unimportant and just pay attention to them. Just say, "Hi, how are you? I appreciate the job you're doing."
So here we have two men. One is confident in his own righteousness, which our own righteousness is like filthy rags. So you really can't have your own righteousness. You're either going to humble yourself and receive the righteousness of God by faith through faith in Christ or you're never going to have any righteousness. Two men went up to the temple to pray. one a Pharisee, a very religious man, and the other a tax collector, very sinful man. The Pharisees were honored everywhere they went, and they were important and they were religious, but the tax collectors were hated because they were dishonest. The Pharisee stood by himself, didn't want to stand next to the tax collector, and prayed thus. And I'm I'm going to going to read you the amplified. They've probably got the NIV on the screen. He prayed thus before and with himself. And I love that he wasn't even talking to God. He was trying to impress himself with his own prayer. And don't don't act like you've never done that. Especially if you've ever been asked to pray in front of a group of people. Sometimes we're all we're concerned about is how we sound to these people. I love the people who when they pray their whole voice tone changes. Oh God, I know a woman that used to do that. It was all I could do to keep from laughing. It was like So he stood there and he said, "God, thank you that I'm not like other people." Who in the world would do that? I mean, I'm not even that bad. I'm so glad I'm not a robber or an evildoer or an adulterer. And that certainly that I'm not like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all that I get. When you start making a list of all your own good points and all the all all the things that you've done, you better get out an eraser.
But the tax collector stood at a distance and he would not even look up to heaven. But he beat his breast and said, "God, have mercy on me, a sinner." I tell you, this man rather than the other went home justified before God. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled. It's all over the Bible. For all those who exalt themselves will be humbled, and those who humble themselves will be exalted.
Now, what does it mean? What does pride look like? See, I could stand up here all night and talk about pride, and some of you might not even recognize it. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen this or not, but if not, tonight when you go home or tomorrow sometime, you need to look it up on the web. is called the 50 fruits of pride. Anybody here ever seen that? See nobody. It's called the 50 fruits of pride and it was done by a man named let's give credit where it's due, Brent Deweiler. All right. So, he lists 50 different ways that we behave. And I'm not going to read all 50, but I've marked off a few.
I desire to receive credit and recognition and usually get angry if I don't get it. I want people to be impressed with me. I like to make my accomplishments known. I tend to be deceptive about myself. I find myself lying to preserve my reputation. I find myself hiding the truth about myself, especially my sins and weaknesses. I am selfishly ambitious. I really want to get ahead. I love to have a position or a title. And I prefer leading rather than following. when I which this thank god I don't have to do this anymore but when I used to do the hiring in our office I remember a man applying for a job and he kept asking me what his title was going to be I didn't hire him because I knew that he was going to be trouble if all you're concerned about is what your title's going to be when somebody comes to you for a job. You can tell right away that's going to be trouble. I am selfishly ambitious. I am overly competitive. You know, my husband is competitive, but there was a time in his life when he was overly competitive. I remember when we played volleyball on the church volleyball team and he wanted to win so bad that he would knock other women down to get the ball. He was It was bad. I love you, honey. But But if you want, you can pretend it's a parable. I like to talk especially about myself. I'm not too excited when I see other people being successful. I feel special or superior because of what I have or what I do. I think highly of myself in relation to others and I typically see myself as more mature and more gifted. Now, I already know this is none of you. I know that I have a whole auditorium full of humble people, but here is one of the ways that you can tell if you're humble or proud. When I listen to a teaching, I listen with all the people in mind I wish were there. And I just wonder right now, how many people in this room have already thought, "Oh, I wish so and so would have come with me tonight." Come on. Anybody be humble enough to admit that you've thought that since you got hit? Look at that. All over the place. Oh, I wish so and so was here tonight. And see, when we do that, we're kind of sort of saying, I don't really need this, but I know somebody who does, and I really wish they were here, and I hope tomorrow they ask me what Joy's preached on. [Applause] I'm rude. I have a know-it-all attitude. I love to tell people what I know. I interrupt people when they're talking. I still have a problem with that. I feel compelled to stop people when they start to share something with me that I already know. Now, you you think about that. If somebody wants to tell you something, they're enjoying telling you what they know. So, you don't even really need to tell them you already know it. Just be quiet and listen and go on about your business. And on and on and on. There's 50 of them. I won't read any more of them.
But there the the thing is is at least just after this meeting, pray that God will begin to show you ways that you exhibit pride. And also pray that he will show you ways. Now listen what I'm going to say that you can humble yourself on purpose because you have to do it on purpose or you'll never do it. And I'll I'll share with you some of the things that I do to try to keep myself in practice.
1 Peter 5:6 and 7 very interesting two scriptures. Therefore, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, that in due time he may exalt you, casting all of your care, all your anxieties, all your worries, all your concerns once and for all on him. For he cares for you affectionately and cares about you watchfully. Now, what does not worrying and not and casting my care have to do with humbling myself? Because really what those scriptures are saying is as long as I am worrying about how I can fix my problem, I still think I can fix it and I haven't come to the realization yet that I can't do anything without God. H I would have liked a better result result than you gave me, but that's all right. All right.
If we refuse to humble ourselves, God can arrange circumstances that will humble us, but it's much more painful. Now, people that are the most in danger of being in pride are people that are successful, people that have a position of power, people that have other people, I don't like to even use this term, but under them. So if you're a supervisor, if you're a department manager, if you in charge of the dog, I don't care what it is. You know, uh the higher up the ladder of success you go, the more you are in danger of being in pride. You have to remember that God promoted you when you were small in your own sight. But if you start to get big bridges, then you're going to get in trouble. And we see that with Saul. We see it with other other people in the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar. And it it's just a fact.
God would love to do so much more through his people than what he's able to do. What did he tell Paul? Paul had the thorn in his flesh, and everybody likes to argue about what it was. Well, I don't really care. The thing was was it bothered him. He didn't want it. He didn't like it. And God said that he would not remove it. That he had it because to keep him from being excessively exalted because of the greatness of the revelations that he had been given. Now, did you understand that? Right now, I'm telling you why sometimes you have trouble and you don't understand. You're not going to like what I'm getting ready to say. Sometimes it is a gift from God. Where are you at? I'm going to talk just to you. See, we're taught that if we live by faith that we should be able to resist all that and rebuke all that and it's just the devil and we should be able to rebuke him. And yes, all trouble does come from the devil, but sometimes God allows it.
What do you What do you think I would be like? Okay, I've written 147 books. whoever tried to count them. 147 books and u one of one of them has sold 8 million copies. Battlefield of the mind. So if you haven't read it, you should get it. I'm on television all over the world and you know Joyce Mar this Jo recognized everywhere I go. Now let me ask you a question. What do you think I would be like if I never had any trouble in my life? If everything turned up roses for me, you know what I would think? I would think it was because I was so great and then it would cause me to judge anybody else who had a problem. I would be certain it was because they had sin in their life. And so God always works things out for our good. What did Joseph tell his brothers? What you meant for my harm, God intended for my good. And whatever you think or whoever you think is your greatest enemy right now, someday you may mature enough to figure out that it was really your best friend. [Applause] You might as well get in agreement with me now because I'll keep you here a long time if you don't. Amen. Where's the clock I'm supposed Oh, I see it. Well, I only have 16 minutes left and I sure can't say everything I want to say in 16 minutes.
How many of you realize how important this is? God loves you so much and he wants to promote you. He wants to exalt you. Why would he want all the sinners in the world to have all the positions and the titles and the people that are admired? He wants his kids to have those positions, but we cannot have them and maintain them if we're going to get full of ourselves and start thinking we're better than everybody else. And there is nothing I'm just going to be honest with you. I've been around a lot of preachers in my life and you have never done anything until you've gone to lunch with about 12 preachers and you you tell me if I'm right. Everybody fights to have the conversation. Not not actually fighting, but you just can't wait for somebody to stop telling you what they're doing so you could tell them what you're doing. Well, I did this and I did that and our church did this. And that's not why God God wants us being interested in other people.
If you want to be popular, don't talk about yourself, always ask other people to tell you all about them because people love to talk about themselves. And they will love you if you ask them, "Well, tell me about your life." Instead of wanting to tell them all about you. And I I'm just going to tell you this. This just the way I feel about it. There is nothing that is more nauseating to me and I think to God than somebody in ministry who mistreats other people behind the scenes. I absolutely hate it and I don't want any friends like that. I don't want to go to churches where I see people doing that because we represent God and God loves people. Amen. And he says in his word, if you have done it unto the least of these, my brethren, you have done it unto me. Get this. The way we treat people is the way we treat Jesus. Come on. The way we treat people is the way we treat Jesus. Man, that's a mouthful. When you're good to people, God will be good to you. And every time God promotes you, you should humble yourself a little bit more.
Now, I we I have to work at this. I don't know. You know, maybe you're good at it. I don't know, but I have to work at it. And I think anybody does that is any realm of popular or if you're exceedingly beautiful or exceedingly handsome or you know maybe you're a woman with a beautiful figure or a man with big muscles or you know whatever. It's it's so easy. Let let's just say that you're one of these people with a high metabolism and you can eat the whole refrigerator and never gain weight. It's very likely that when you see somebody overweight, you have an attitude. Just that little attitude. Well, you know, oh, I hate it when I catch myself with that attitude. And I do. Matter of fact, I preached a message a couple weeks ago. God told me that I was self-righteous. And I didn't know I was self-righteous. But, you know, it was in a very specific area. Well, now he's shown me three, but I'm glad we started with one. I hope there's not many left. I I'm just I'm I'm tell I'm opening up my life to you because I want you to get something for your own life.
I have always had a real hard time with preachers, people who stand up here, because to me, this is a sacred place. Yeah. And I'll never forget when God told me, I want you to always remember that however many people you can help, that's exactly how many you can hurt. So if I allow my life to fall apart and I don't keep my marriage right, if I go have an affair with somebody, I'm not just hurting myself. I'm hurting in my case millions of Christians around the world and it hurts the whole body of Christ. It hurts everybody. And so I've always just been like, I just don't understand how anybody can do that and keep getting in the pulpit week after week after week. Well, I had an attitude. And you know why I don't get it? Cuz I've never been tempted that way. See, when you're not tempted in an area, it's very easy to not understand why somebody else is. That's great. You understand that? And I'm I mean, man, I got one man. That's all I can handle. I don't you know, Lord help me. I don't want two. And I mean that that would be the the last thing that I would be interested in. But there are people that that is a real huge problem for them. And a lot of these ministers that do fall into sin, it's because they have killed themselves with work trying to help you. And they're so tired they can't even make good decisions anymore. And so their defenses are all down. And Satan attacks them at their weakest point.
And we have we have an inner city church that we started 20 years ago. We had a pastor who actually was having an affair with his sister-in-law in the church during the day when he was supposed to be working. And I asked him, "Can you just explain to me how you can do that and still get back in the pulpit the next week?" He said, "Because every time I do it, I tell myself, I promise myself that I'll never do it again. I tell God I'll never do it again." So, he hated it, too. He was in a trap. It wasn't something that he wanted to do. He was in a trap, too. And so, we have to be Now, listen to me. We have to judge sin, but we cannot judge people. That's good. Come on. We are not doing the right thing if we don't judge sin. We're responsible to do that. I'm not stupid. The more I read the Bible, the more I recognize what sin is. But boy, we have to be so careful that we don't get like the Pharisee. Yeah. You know, because you get up and pray the first two hours of every day and you read your Bible through every year and you know somebody else who can't stay awake in the morning to even pray five minutes. Well, I don't know. Maybe they have sleep apnnea. You know, you just got to God. You know why God is so merciful? Because he knows the why behind the what. And we know the what, but we don't know the why. I mean, an example would be like I was sexually abused by my dad for many years, repeatedly over and over and over and over and over again. and my mom knew about it and she was just had too weak of a personality to do anything about it. She just told me 30 years after it happened I couldn't face the scandal. I thought, well, that's nice. You couldn't face the scandal and I was in a living nightmare. And so I had a lot of things in my personality that weren't very nice. I was harsh and hard and hard to get along with and easily angered and manipulative and controlling and and uh and people judged me for that because they saw the way I acted and the way I acted was wrong but they didn't know why I acted that way and I didn't even know why I acted that way. I I so I didn't even know a lot of times there's anything wrong with it because that's the kind of atmosphere I grew up in. And so I just thought, you know, if you don't get your way, you stay mad till you get your way. That's that's what I saw. That's what I did. And so we if we're going to be merciful, we have to stick with God. I see what they're doing that's wrong. And we we pray for people. We don't judge them. We don't gossip about them. We pray for them. And we want to see them restored. Come on. Is anybody home out there?
So, you got to be aware of proud thoughts. The Bible says in Romans 12:3, "For by the grace of God given unto me, I warn everyone among you not to estimate and think of himself more highly than he ought to. Do not have an exaggerated opinion of your own importance, but rate your ability with sober judgment, each according to the degree of faith aortioned to him by God." You know why I can do what I do? Because of the grace of God. No, no other reason at all. I was your least likely candidate to be called to do what I'm doing. This is exactly why 1 Corinthians 1 says that God chooses the weak and the foolish things of the world to confound the wise so that no mortal man can have pretense for glorying in his sight. He you he chooses people that are nothing, the scum of the earth, the trash of the earth. And he amazes all the people that would judge them.
I remember when God first called me into ministry and I was so excited. I said, "Oh, God told me I'm going to have this big ministry, blah, blah, blah." And I remember first first of all I lost almost all my friends and and I remember one girl saying to me you know we've talked about it and I thought I bet you have we've talked about this and we you just don't have you don't have the right personality for that. Well you know what they were right but somehow or another God gave me favor and everybody puts up with me. Amen.
So, so here's something I caught myself doing the other day. Gosh, I wish I didn't have to tell all this stuff on myself. You know, in a month I'm going to be 81. And so, and I and I'm I'm loving it. And uh no, I didn't get a facelift last week. I had one 30 years ago. The rest of this is me. Thank you. And uh so I find myself once in a while thinking about my funeral. You know what are you know I mean when you're 81 you know you don't have too terribly many years left. You know if I got maybe you know 10 maybe 15. And I found I found myself the other day thinking about my funeral and thinking about all the great things they were going to say about me. [Applause] And I actually went out. Get out of my head. Now, you can laugh at me, but don't tell me you don't go through some of the same kinds of stuff. You know, I'm just the one that God has called upon to tell the world about it. Lord have mercy.
All right. There's actually some things I do to try to practice humility, and this is something that I think may help you if you'll do it. Some of the ways I humble myself on purpose to stay in practice. I always apologize to people if I'm rude or grouchy or cranky, even if maybe sometimes they didn't even notice it. But it's good for me to own up to it. I admit it. If I thought I was right about something and later found out I was wrong and there had been, you know, little, you know, I'm right. I'm right. You're right. You're right. You're wrong. I'll always go back and say, "Hey, I'm sorry. I thought I was right, but I wasn't. I was wrong." That's one of the best things in the world you can do is say, "I was wrong." Can we practice? sounded like music to God's ears.
I do tasks for people like little things that I really don't want to do just to keep myself realizing I'm not too important to do them. Like I might be making myself a cup of coffee and this little thought will come to my heart. Well, why don't you ask Dave if he wants one? No, I don't really want to make Dave one. I want to I want to make my coffee and go back to praying. And you may think, well, what's the big deal about making a cup of coffee? Well, when you make Dave a cup of coffee, it is a big deal because here's the way it goes. You make the decaf coffee, then you pour all of it out, but about that much. Then you get liquid whipping cream, and you fill a glass about that full of that. And then you Yes. Yes. Don't you Don't you Come on. God will get you later. And then you pour Then you pour a little milk in with that. Then you got to put it in the microwave and heat it. And it loves to boil over and get the microwave dirty. And then you mix it together. And then he has to have three stevas in it. And now he's added to it one little squirt of chocolate. So, just so you know, it's not like easy, you know, to make him a coffee. It's like a a job. And Dave usually does the dishes at night because I arranged for the food. You notice I didn't say I cook it. I said I arranged. So, you know what that means, don't you? And so sometimes I'll do the dishes. Make sure I tell him I did the dishes.
I always try to make sure that I'm friendly with people that maybe you wouldn't normally pay attention to. You know, people that are just helping or serving or like people behind the scenes. You need to watch for people that nobody ever pays attention to. Like if when when you go in a restroom at in a department store or something, have you ever gone in there and there's been a person in there cleaning the bathroom? You should always be friendly with them and thank them for the job that they do because you know what? That person probably gets ignored 99 and n10% of the time. There's ways that we need to practice being humble.
God hates pride. I'm going to read you this scripture and we're going to have to close for tonight. Isaiah 2:12. For there shall be a day of the Lord of hosts against all who are proud and against all who are lifted up and they shall be brought low. If you exalt yourself, you will be humbled. If you humble yourself, you will be exalted.
I'll tell you a story that I think is interesting. My daughter went to the grocery store and she had left her purse in her car. And so when she got in the checkout, she didn't have her credit card. And so she told the girl, she said, "If you'll just hold these just a second, I'll run out and get my credit card and come back." And she said, "Oh, no, never mind." She whipped out her own credit card, paid for my daughter's groceries. Now, you know what I like about the story? She was prepared. She took that credit card to work with her and she intended to bless somebody that day and she was ready. She didn't have to go get ready. She was ready. And we've taught our kids to do things like that and they all do. I love it. My son was in shopping one day and the young man in front of him was putting a pair of jeans in layway. My son said, "Now here, I'll just pay for them." And let me tell you something. When the church starts acting like that and unbelievers see it, there's a lot of things you can argue with, but you can't argue with real love. Not real love. When we really start loving people the way God wants us to love people, the world will change.
What if every one of us who calls ourselves a Christian just did one thing for one person every day? Yes. Do you know I heard that if one family, just one family out of every evangelical church in America would adopt one child out of the foster system that they could clean the whole thing out. One family, just one. But no, we don't want to. We don't want to make the effort. We don't want to maybe get some kid that's got a bunch of problems and we got to deal with them. Sure is a good thing that God don't look that way about us, isn't it? No, I just I don't want to I don't want to mess with anybody's got problems. Woo. I would have sure got left out cuz I was a mess.
In Philippians 3:8 through13, there's some of the most heart-wrenching scriptures. I'd really like to challenge you to get these in the amplified. And I'm going to kind of add lib and run through here. But man, Paul was praying a prayer that is so powerful. He said, "I count everything as a loss compared to the priceless privilege of knowing Christ." See, we don't just need to know about Jesus. We need to know Jesus. There's a difference. You know, you can say, "Oh, I know Joyce Meyer. She came to my church once. You don't know me. Now you talk to Dave. Dave knows me. You understand? And we need to know Jesus. He said, "For his sake, I have lost everything." And you know, when you're willing to lose everything for Jesus, he'll end up giving you everything. That's the thing. You're not ever going to lose out on giving your all to God. We're so afraid we'll end up with nothing. Well, is what you have making you happy? It wasn't making me happy. All I did was think about me. What about me? What about me? What about me? And I wasn't happy. I was miserable. Oh, I'm so thankful to God that he's given me this little secret that's hidden in the word of God.
Romans 12:21. Listen to this. It'll change your life. You overcome evil with good. [Applause] You want to run the devil out of your house, just be as good to everybody as you can possibly be. Especially your enemies. Yes. Especially your enemies. Well, why should I do that? They didn't do anything for me. Well, because you're like Jesus. Amen. And he loved you in the wholeness when you weren't worth loving. Yes. Amen.
In verse nine, he says, "And I'm and that I might actually be found and known to be in him, not having any self-achieved righteousness." Because our righteousness is like filthy rags. That's why even if you do do something good for somebody every day, you still you just got to thank God. Yes. Thank God that you gave me something to give away. Thank God that you caused me to forget about myself long enough to want to care about somebody else. Thank you, God. I give you all the glory. No self-righteousness. God hates self-righteousness. And we can't just assume Paul prayed about these things. He said, "I don't want to have any righteousness of my own, but only that righteousness that's found in Christ. And then in verse 10, I love this. He said, "For my determined purpose is that I might know him." That was what Paul was going after, not prosperity. It's not a big position in the church, but my determined purpose is to know him and the power of his resurrection that lifts me out from among the dead even while I'm in the body. You know what that means? There's a place that we can live that no matter what's going on in our lives, we're still up here and happy. Amen. We're too up and down and up and down and up and down and up and down. And my air conditioner went out and I can't can't get anybody out here to fix it for two days. Well, honey, you'll survive. Okay, now we're going to get we're going to get to something here. I hope they add to the time today. for my determined purpose is that I might know him, that I might progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with him, perceiving and recognizing and understand how wonderful he is more strongly and more clearly. And then I may in that same way come to know the power that flows out of his resurrection. And here comes the part you're not going to like. And that I may so share his sufferings. Uhoh. As to be continually transformed into his likeness. Okay, now I'm just going to give it to you straight. If you want to be like Jesus, you're going to have some suffering. And I'm not talking about car wrecks and disasters and cancer. I'm talking about suffering in the flesh. You're going to have to do some things you don't want to do.
Now, I'm going to tell you something. Don't forget this. You don't have to feel like doing what's right to do it. Now, that's that's when you're starting to grow up. When you know what's right and you feel like doing what's wrong, but you'll do what's right anyway because you love God, man. Wow. I don't feel like forgiving you, but I will cuz Jesus told me to. Amen. I don't feel like loving you, but I will because God told me to love my enemies. I don't feel like helping you. You never did anything for me, but I will because God told me to. Come on.
You know, in each one of the gospels, there's a a rendition of the story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. But in Matthew, three separate times it says Jesus went off and prayed, "Father, if you can take this cup from me three times, you know what just struck me a few weeks ago? Jesus did not want to go to the cross. He he didn't want to do that, but he always quickly followed it up with, "Nevertheless, your will be done and not mine." Now, that's what we're after. I don't want to do this, God. I don't want to do this. I don't want to help them. They've never done anything for me. I don't want to forgive them. They don't deserve it. Well, even if that person doesn't deserve your forgiveness, you deserve peace. And they they probably don't care if you forgive them or not. When you forgive somebody, you're doing it for yourself. You're doing yourself a favor. You set yourself free.
Let me tell you a quick story. And God gave me the grace to do this, but it's probably the single most powerful thing God has ever allowed me to do. And probably has opened more doors for us to be able to help other people than any other thing. My father sexually abused me for about 15 years on a regular basis. My mother knew what he was doing, but she was a afraid of him and she wouldn't do anything about it. And um so that's the way I grew up. I grew up in fear. That's all I ever remember is fear. And I had a lot of problems in my soul. And God caused me to do this. Well, obviously, you know, somewhere along the line before I get to this point, I got to change. And it was hard. It was hard to learn to be submissive to a man. It was hard to learn how to love my parents. And love is not a feeling. It's how you treat people. So, I'm going to do a fast forward on this, but my parents lived about a couple hundred miles from us, and that just suited me fine. I didn't see them very often. And we'd go and stay as long as we had to on Christmas and send a little money every once in a while. And I thought I was doing my good deed doing that. And I I prayed the forgiveness prayer, but I I want nothing to do with them, you know, and that's understandable, you know, and um so now they're getting older. They're both sick. The area where they live is doesn't have good doctors, not good health care. I'm praying one morning. Oh, God, what do you mean? Use me, God, use me. Oh, yeah. Are you sure you really want God to use you? Well, you just go right ahead and you pray and ask God to use you and then see if you're ready to really let him use you when he tells you what he wants you to do. Boy, you're going to have such a much better church. I'm telling you what, if we can get anybody to listen this morning, this place is going to be set on fire. You quit coming to church to get something. Come here to give something. And I'm not talking about the offering thing wherever it's at. That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about I mean that's a given. You should give to support the church because you can't run things like this without money. They don't let me on TV free. They don't even give me a preachers discount. Amen. And everybody claps when I say I'm on TV all over the world. Well, try to pay those bills. But God takes care of it. Amen. I'm proud to tell you that we don't owe anybody anything. Amen. We're not behind. We're not
In debt. And it's all to the glory of God. Amen.
But when I talk about coming here to give, don't come and just get with your little groupies. Look for somebody that's by themselves. Look for somebody that's hurting. Come sit with us. Find a single mom that has never has the money to take her kids out to lunch and give her 50 bucks and tell her to take her kids out to lunch. Come on.
I don't know what's going to happen if we don't start loving one another. Oh, the world is in such a mess. It's in such a horrible mess. And I don't know what the whole answer is, but I do know that if we start loving each other, it's going to make the world sit up and take notice.
Well, anyway, I'm praying one morning, God, what's your will? And it came to my heart that we were to bring my parents to St. Louis, buy them a nice little house, put them in it, and take care of them until they died. I rebuked that. I did. I said, 'I rebuke that. That's the devil. God would not ask me to do that. I didn't believe it was God. I thought it was the devil trying to deceive me. I said, God would not ask me to do that. They never did anything for me. God said, "You're breathing, aren't you?" God's not always easy on you. That's right. They gave you life. You're here, aren't you?
Well, I just went on about my business and forgot all about that. And couple of months later, I was praying again. Oh, God, use me. He told me the same thing again. I thought, I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to go ask Dave. Dave's not going to want to buy them house. And I went and told Dave, he said, "Well, that's what God said. We better do it." my daughter. Come on. So I thought, "Okay, we're going to buy them a cheap house." God said, "No, you're going to buy them a nice house." They had to have a car. They have a decent car.
Well, I just Man, we moved them to St. Louis. We put them in this cute little house and made sure the grass was cut every week. Made sure they got groceries. Made sure they went to I We didn't do it all, but we would had to pay somebody to do it a lot of times because we traveled so much and we're gone a lot. So, we made sure they were well taken care of. Okay.
Then they get sicker and so they go into assisted living care. On top of my mom and dad, I've got my widowed aunt who my uncle. I promised my uncle I'd take care of. So, so now we got three people and I got a brother who was in the Vietnam War and got hooked on drugs over there and he couldn't take care of himself. So, we were just taking care of all these people and I did not want to. Do you understand that? I did not want to do it. You have to understand today that you don't have to want to do it to do it. And it's okay if you tell God you don't want to do it. I don't want to. Jesus said, "Take this cup from me. I don't want to drink this cup, but your will be done and not mine." Come on. Is anybody getting this today? your will be done and not mine.
Well, then they got sicker and sicker and so they went to the nursing home. Now, all this is costing money, lots of money every month. Every month. And I just want to tell you that we have longevity in our bloodline. We live a long time. Well, I thought I I could handle this for a couple years. 13 years. 13 years. And I'm going to tell you something. And this is the truth. And I maybe I should be embarrassed to say it, but I'm just going to tell you the truth. Once every two weeks, I went to the nursing home and visited my mom. And there is not there was not one time that I went that I wanted to. I don't. And she would say things to me like, "Well, you should take care of me. You're my daughter. Well, you owe me that. You should take care of me." Any I just think what did you ever do for me? Are are is anybody getting this? Yeah, we're getting somewhere now.
See, that's what love is. Love is helping people. It's not how you feel. You pray for people. It's very simple. You want to love somebody that you pray for them. You bless them and you help them. If your enem is hungry, you give him something to eat. If he's thirsty, you give him something to drink. If we can just understand that love is not a feeling. Wow. How it's going to change things.
And Jesus, I mean, Jesus said himself, he said, "What what good is it? What what credit do you get if you love those who love you?" Anybody can do that. But if you love your enemies, that's what God does. I tell pastors all the time, if somebody in your church takes half your congregation and moves down the street and starts a church, don't don't hate them and be mad at them. Go buy them a sound system. That's when you break the power of the devil.
There's only one thing that'll set you free, and that is if you're good to people that aren't good to you. Paul said, "Not that I have attained this ideal or have already been made perfect, but I press on." I love that. I press on to lay hold of and make my own that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold of me and made me his own. See, I like that. He's saying, "I want to be what Jesus died to make me." Amen. Not a professional Christian. Are you a Christian? I go to church. Well, big deal. I can sit in the garage all day and I'll never be a car. People can only know us one way. It's not by our bumper sticker. It's how we behave. Amen.