The poorest person on the earth can give a hug. The poorest person on the earth can put a smile on someone’s face. Everybody can put a smile on somebody’s face. Everyone of you can do that. Everyone of you can just put your arms around somebody and hug them. Some of you here have money. You can do major things to help people. Some of you can’t do that but you can do what you can do.

This may sound like a strange message to bring to India, but it is exactly the message that you need. You have to get stirred up to walk in love and that means doing things for other people. Don’t be like that silly little robot: what about me? What about me? What about me?  All you young people down here, you need to listen to this and start early in your life. Sometimes when you’re young it’s easy to just think about you and what you want and your future but if you want to please God, then make a commitment tonight to live to make other people happy. If you’ll do that, you will be overflowing with joy in your life. (cheering/applause)

If you do that, you will miss a lot of other problems the devil has planned for you. I’m going to tell you a secret. Love is the most effective way to do spiritual warfare. If you want to defeat the devil, if you want to get him back for everything he’s done to hurt you, then make a commitment tonight to every day put a smile on somebody else’s face. Every day put a smile on somebody else’s face. When we talk about giving it’s not just putting an offering in a plate in a church service. We should live a giving lifestyle. I can’t stand not to give now. I actually have giving fits. I do!  I have giving attacks where I will go around my house and get a box and put stuff in it and try to find somebody to give it to because every moment of my life that I don’t have my mind on myself, at that moment I am deliriously joyful.

Ginger Stache: this is something that we take for granted but here in India and in many parts of the world, water is a very precious commodity. In fact, because of contaminated water, thousands of people die every day. Many of the illnesses here are actually caused by contaminated water and people, especially children, are suffering from dysentery, dehydration, cholera and many, many other problems. They must seek clean water daily for survival and nearly 500,000 children under the age of five will die from diarrhea this year. Joyce Meyer ministry partners are revitalizing villages with the wells of life project, providing not just a fresh water well but also building a church

Man all of us are partners of Joyce Meyer ministries that are here have the privilege to be with you and we greet you in the name of the lord Jesus Christ

Ginger: Over 200 have been planted so far with more in the works like this one in Balapur, India. God, we thank you so much for the opportunity to be here today and we ask your blessing on this land and on this well and the water. We claim that this will be a place where people will come to be blessed and will come to know you, so father, we pray that flowing from this well will be water that is clean and pure and safe for this area and the people. Seventy percent of people in India’s villages have no access to basic sanitation facilities. They must seek clean water daily for survival, but because of you, the partners of Joyce Meyer ministries, the people that you see behind me — the women and the children and the families in this area have safe, clean drinking water. They can use it for cooking.

Wow! Even angels were created to help us do what God has called us to do. Adam and eve foolishly disobeyed God and they sinned or did what he told them not to do. They did not protect what God had given them. They gave their position of dominion to the devil through their disobedience. For example, if I gave one of my children keys to the house, they could go give them to somebody else if they wanted to because once i give them to them, they’re their keys. Now I would hope they wouldn’t do that, but they could do that. So, when God gave Adam and eve authority, he certainly didn’t want them to go give it to the devil. But in order to be created free, which you have to be if you’re created in God’s image, you have to have the right of free choice. They were able to choose what they would do. They took the authority that God gave them and turned it over to the devil. Now let’s go to Luke, chapter 4.  You know the devil is real; he’s not just a halloween character. You do know that, right? How many of you have figured out that you’ve got an enemy? Alright. See, I didn’t know that for a long time.  I went to church for a lot of years and I never even heard a message about the devil being real.  I never heard anything about me having any power.  I knew God had power but i never heard anything about me having any of it or that I could do anything about any of my circumstances or that I could come against the devil. I never heard stuff like that. And we need to hear that. Luke, chapter 4, verse 1. I talked about this a little bit last night but now this morning we want to actually go to it and look at it.

First I want us to look at verse 6: and he — being the devil — said to him — being Jesus — to you I will give all this power and authority and their glory (all their magnificence, excellence, preeminence, dignity, and grace), for it has been turned over to me, and I give it to whomever I will. So we see right there that the devil is admitting that he now had power, he now had authority because it had been turned over to him.  God didn’t give it to him; God gave it to man and man gave it to the devil.  And we can still give our authority to the devil today simply by opening doors for him through disobedience, or even by just not knowing who we are in Christ or knowing that we do need to come against the enemy, or that we even have the right to come against the enemy, and we can just live passive, wishful lives rather than being active and aggressive and keeping the devil where he belongs which is under our feet. Now in telling you that you have authority over the devil, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m telling you that you can live this life where you never have a trial or a tribulation. I think more than anything when the bible says resist the devil it means resist acting like the devil. The thing that I find to be such a problem and it was a big problem in my own life, I was busy trying to resist the devil but I really wasn’t resisting the devil — I was resisting circumstances. I didn’t want circumstances that were uncomfortable. When I would get a bad circumstance, I would resist the circumstance and act like the devil, and what I needed to do was resist the devil.

Molly, give yourself grace in that situation. Yes, you blew it but don’t look at that; move forward to what God has for you now.  God wants you to learn from something. I do think that talking the truth to myself – the word of God over myself is probably the most important thing.  Staying connected. I have a wonderful small bible study group.

My time with God is important in the morning or whenever. That is important so these are steps that i do to keep myself being healthy and healthy- minded and to love myself, valuing my own personal growth, that I’m worthy of it.  Yeah!

Joyce: Linda, as a psychologist I know that you see people like molly all the time who have a terrible self-image and it really is a growing problem, isn’t it?

Dr. Linda Mintle: It is and I think again because of the culture we live in and because of the way we tend to try to define ourselves. Once we try to do that in any way outside of God, nothing is really gonna bring satisfaction. We’re gonna look for it but we’re never gonna be satisfied no matter how thin we are, no matter if we’re at the right weight, no matter how much we work on something or accomplish something, it’s not gonna bring us that kind of satisfaction apart from God.

Joyce: I have a statistic here that says that we combat 8,000 daily media messages that confuse us about what we’re supposed to look like, what we’re supposed to act like, how we’re supposed to be. That is amazing.

Dr. Mintle: Take that and compare it to how much time maybe you spend in the word or how many times you say something positive about who you are or you hear a positive comment. It really is imbalanced.

Joyce: The whole thing about comparing yourself with other people is a huge problem. It was a major freedom for me when God taught me years ago not to compare myself with other people and for me, it all kind of started in almost a humorous way now although it wasn’t humorous at the time.  I had a neighbor I called miss arts and crafts. She could do all the things that I couldn’t do. She was your perfect woman, housekeeper, homemaker. She made her family’s clothes. She had a garden and canned.

She canned food and all this stuff and I could barely sew a button on and get it to stay. Matter of fact, my husband now if he wants a button on, he puts it on by himself. I didn’t realize how much I was comparing myself to her and how I felt that I was not a “regular woman.”

Dr. Mintle: I think if we don’t have a plumb line for who we are, if we don’t have any centering place where we can go and say

“this is who I am.” I used to look at that scripture, “you’re wonderfully and fearfully made” and think I only focused on the fearful part of that.  I was a little fearful because I’m like you and can’t sew a button on either.  I would see all these people doing all these things. Same thing: I would look at these other women and think: wow!

I can’t do an arts and craft to save my life. That’s just not where I’m talented but that’s okay. Thank you!  So we look at those women and I totally get what you’re saying about that. We have to look at who we are and how God uniquely made us. I think if we don’t have that centering place to go and to say, “God, what is it about me?” not every woman can sit here and do television. Not every woman can have that.

Joyce: right.  Right!

Dr. Mintle: That’s right! And feel good about it and look at the camera and feel okay. If you don’t know who you are, then you are gonna be looking to all these people and you are gonna try to compare yourself, so you’ve got to go into the source which is God and his word and it tells us who we are in Christ. Once you get that in your brain, then you don’t have to compare yourself with others.

Soldiers guard things. That means you have to pay attention to what’s going on in your mind.

It means you have to think about what you’re thinking about. You have to choose your thoughts carefully. Some thoughts that came in may be good and you can keep those and meditate on them, but others you have to kick out right away. (vs. 5) we refute arguments. The devil tries to argue with you — theories, reasonings, imaginations, and every proud and high thing that does what? Disagrees with the word of God. So make your mind up if you’re going to be a Christian, you’re either going to live by this or you’re going to be a pathetic Christian.

You may sneak in the back door of heaven but you will never have any victory here, and you will probably live such a pathetic, defeated life that nobody is going to get to heaven because of you, because people are not looking for something that’s worse than what they already have with just a Christian label on it. They want to see people who are living the life, who have the goods, that have the fruit, that have a smile, that have some peace, that have some joy, that have some hope. (applause)

And let me tell you something — if we think the only way we can have all that is to have no problems, then we are really deceived because God did not give us the awesome, wonderful power of the holy ghost in our life so we can live on easy street.  We have the power of God living on the inside of us. We are the home of God, Christ in me, the hope of glory.

Greater is he who is in me than he who is in the world. By my God I can run through a troop and leap over a wall. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. These are not just little things to quote in church when we’re with our Christian friends, but this is what we live by. This is what you quote in your midnight hour when you’re home alone and the devil’s attacking your mind. That’s when you bring your thoughts into captivity unto the obedience of Jesus Christ. If we ever get a real revelation of who we are and what we have…. I honestly believe when we put our feet on the floor in the morning, hell ought to shake. The demons ought to tremble: “oh, she’s up again.” or “he’s up again. They’re up again.” (applause)

Joyce: God wants us to celebrate our uniqueness. I was thinking this morning in my prayer time about all the variety of birds and trees and flowers and even rocks and their different shapes and their different colors, so why do we think that if God is so creative in all those things that he wouldn’t be also just as creative in the way that he makes us. It’s easy to look at each other and say we all look different but we all are different.

We have different gifts, different talents, different abilities, different weaknesses and different strengths. The thing is it’s okay. That’s the thing that people don’t get, is it’s okay.

You don’t have to be like somebody else.

Dr. Mintle: When you have to be like somebody else, I always think about that’s what we did in adolescence; we were always trying to find our uniqueness by being the same, and we need to grow out of that adolescent stage of development and get to a maturity where we actually celebrate the uniquenesses that we each have.

Joyce: That’s exactly right. I know that I was tormented for so long trying to compare myself to other people. I thought I should be like my neighbor so i planted a garden, got my husband to plant the garden and I tried to can tomatoes.  I hated the garden and the tomatoes. I tried to make my family’s clothes and honestly I made my husband a pair of shorts. I took sewing lessons. I really got into this thing.

I’m gonna be a regular woman or what I thought the world’s image of what a regular woman was, so I took some sewing lessons, got material and got a sewing machine and I made my husband a pair of shorts. When I got finished, the pockets were longer than the shorts.  That’s still our joke today, those shorts that I made for Dave, but the thing was I hated it! I hated it! I wasn’t fulfilled. I didn’t like it. I didn’t know why I wasn’t happy.  You can’t have joy when you’re trying to be something that you’re not, so we have to make our minds up that it’s okay to be who we are, stop comparing and competing, and come to terms of peace with ourselves.

Get over yourself! I probably preach this message in some way, shape, or form about once every two months and I don’t intend to shut up because it really is the greatest problem we have. How many of you agree with me today that you really wouldn’t be unhappy if you’d just get yourself off your mind? Am I telling the truth?

You would not be unhappy if you’d just get yourself off your mind. You cannot stay unhappy and be aggressively trying to figure out what you can do to make somebody else’s life better. Why does God anoint us? We talk so much about the anointing.  Well, first of all, the anointing is the power and the presence of God on your life. God doesn’t put his power on us or give us his presence just for a goose bump. There’s a reason why God shares his power and his presence with us. The answer is found in Acts 10:38: See how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and power, who took that anointing and went about doing good. Just got up every day… We see Jesus doing things like – do you know that after he died and was resurrected from the dead, that as the resurrected Lord of Glory, he came and found his disciples and cooked their breakfast? Did you know that? Jesus! Resurrected Jesus found his disciples and cooked their breakfast! Sometimes I’m still tempted if Dave says: Would you mind making my coffee this morning? Tsk! I just got cozy in my prayer chair laughing: With my bible laughing: And now you want me to make your coffee! I can’t do that.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – I have to finish my bible study on being a servant. We feel so spiritual if we know it. We open our bibles up and it’s all underlined in yellow and pink and blue, and we’re just so proud of ourselves. Just because you’ve turned your bible into a coloring book, that doesn’t mean you’re spiritual! My grandkids could do that to my bible! You know how I know all this? Because God crammed it down my throat first.

Pat Quirin: I never ever could dream that a year ago when we opened our little store that we would even have this amount of money, much less that we would be talking to the people at Joyce Meyer ministries or that we would actually have been invited to go to Cambodia with her group of people. It was such an unbelievably precious thing that god had blessed us with for all our hard work.

Narrator:  in its first year, angels’ attic made a profit of $65,000; $30,000 of which they donated to Joyce Meyer ministries for the “hope Cambodia” outreach. Their funds were used to build one of fifteen Cambodian hope centers which feeds and educates children, and for the ongoing monthly support of the orphanages which are a part of many of these centers.

Leanne Clift: when I first walked up, I couldn’t believe how big this community center was and it’s just beautiful. All the people were smiling and having a good time. It was awesome. I just loved it.

Narrator: the ladies were amazed at the difference their donations made in the lives of so many Cambodian children, many of whom spend their days and nights digging through trash dumps looking for items they can recycle for just fifty cents a day. (pat) when I saw those children it really just tore my heart out. It was just pitiful. It just makes you want to go back and do something to help them.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – I don’t think it’s difficult at all. I think everybody has something to give, and no matter how tiny the amount, added together it can make a lot of difference. Even it’s nothing except fifty cents a day that you give, it can make a big difference, a big big difference in those children’s lives.

So I’d like to read you a little story I enjoy reading. A little boy about ten years old was standing in front of a shoe store and he was barefoot, looking through the window and shivering with cold because it was very cold outside. A lady approached the little boy and said “my little fellow, why are you looking so earnestly into the window?” he said, “Well, ma’am, I was asking god to give me a pair of shoes.” The lady took him by the hand and went into the store and asked the clerk to get her half a dozen pairs of socks.

She then asked if he could please bring her a basin of water and a towel. He quickly got them, brought them to her, and she took the little fellow to the back of the store, removed her gloves, knelt down, and washed his feet. She took him to the back not because she was ashamed of him but because she wanted to give him privacy and not embarrass him.  By this time the clerk returned with the socks and she placed a pair of socks on his feet, then she bought him a brand-new pair of shoes. She tied up the remaining pairs of socks and gave them to him, patted him on the head and as she turned to leave, she said “no doubt, my little fellow, you must feel a lot more comfortable now.” the astonished lad reached out, grabbed her by the hand and looked up into her face with tears in his eyes and asked this question: “are you god’s wife?” so often we tell people we will pray about needs that we could easily meet but the truth is we just don’t want to give up our stuff. (applause) now I’m going to preach to whichever side of the room is the happiest and acts like they like this better. (cheering)

Joyce Meyer Ministries – Matter of fact, I heard somebody say one time you should never pray about any need that you’re not willing to meet if god would give you the resources to meet that need. If we want to change the world, then it’s time for the church to get on-fire. (amen!)