Living With God

People all over the world are getting divorces because they say they’re not compatible. Well, who is? (laughing/applause) you get along because you decide to get along.  And you get along because you stop living in pride and you humble yourself, and you make a few adjustments, and you don’t live for somebody else to make you happy; you get up every day and try to see what you can do for somebody else. (cheering/applause) all you hear anymore is people not making it and people getting divorces.  I’m happy to say that Dave and I have been married for 40 and one-half years. (applause) and I can tell you, we are not alike.  We don’t think alike.

We don’t always like the same stuff but we have learned how to disagree agreeably and how to respect each other and give each other space and liberty. I’m not going to live in a war zone all the time; I’ve got enough trouble with the devil. I don’t need to pick fights with people. (applause) and then when I finally decided I was going to enjoy my life because the joy of the lord is your strength — if you’re ever going to win the battle over the devil, you better have a full load of joy every day because he can’t stand a happy Christian. But I never had any joy in my life, and the devil probably had a thousand different ways that he stole my joy. He made me feel guilty if I wasn’t working all the time. Guilt and condemnation — a constant running record of everything I’d ever done wrong and ever would do wrong. I didn’t know how to enjoy myself when I had trials and tribulations. Didn’t know how to enjoy myself if I wasn’t getting my way.

It probably took maybe six or seven years for me to completely fight through that battle and get to the point where now I just have so much fun, so much fun. As a matter of fact, I’ve been kind of a stinker today. I’ve just been — I don’t know — do you ever get one of those ornery days, you know? I was walking in the back, back there.  They have security around, so this guy was following me back there, and I just got this little urge, so I stopped and I turned around and I went:  yahhh! (Joyce laughing)

But what do you do if you’ve had a bad day and you definitely don’t feel like acting Christ-like? Here’s what my daughter Sandra did when she felt like she had not been a good witness.