Jentezen Franklin: I think it all begins with understanding that God desperately wants to speak to us and it’s not a spooky or strange thing, the way that he speaks. The first introduction we have of God — the way he reveals himself to the human race is the bible begins with “and God said,” then the prophets always prefaced their words with “thus saith the Lord” over and over and over, then Jesus appears in the new testament and the bible calls him “the word.”

What a strange title for someone: “the word made flesh.” It’s almost like God is over-emphasizing the fact “I’m a speaking God and I want to talk to you.” Once you begin to understand that he really does want to speak to us, then we have to discern his voice from our own voice and the voices of other people and the voice of the enemy.

Joyce: I think it might be good to add here that God wants to speak to us about even the tiniest details of our life and I think that was a big transition for me back in the seventies because I’d been in church for a lot of years and been a Christian but I didn’t really have any kind of an intimate walk with God. It was more of a Sunday morning relationship. Some of my behavior was guided by the principles of God but I didn’t really understand that God wanted to be involved in every area of my life and that he would even speak to me about tiny little things that might just be personal only to me.

Joyce Meyer: I think so many people want an intimacy with God, they want a closeness with God but unless they can understand that he is a speaking God and he does want to speak to them and that they don’t have to be afraid of that, they’re never going to have that closeness.

Joyce Meyer: you’ve just seen the story of a woman who had such a poor self-image, felt that she was worthless to the point that she would sell herself for a mere ten dollars. Perhaps your feelings about yourself don’t manifest the same way hers did but if you do have bad feelings about yourself, if you devalue yourself, feel that you’re worthless or you feel that you don’t have any gifts or talents, or you don’t really see that you’re putting anything into life and you wonder why you’re here, it will manifest in some negative way in your life if you feel that way about yourself. So here with me today is a wonderful guest and a friend of mine, Mark Hankins, who is going to help me teach you who you are in Christ.  Mark, thank you for being with us.

Mark: Glad to be back.

Joyce: We had a good time yesterday and I believe that today we’re going to put the icing on the cake, so to speak. So let me ask, why do I have worth and value in Christ?

Pastor Mark Hankins: Because everything God did in Christ, he did it for us and set it to the credit of our account as though we did it.  Actually one writer said the key to the gospel is in the prepositions. When I read that, I thought I should’ve paid attention in English class because he said little words like “for, with, in, through, and by” actually are the key to the gospel. The preposition shows our relationship to God. So everything Christ did for us, then we did that with him. That’s why Paul said, “I was crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives in me.” then he says, “we died with him, were buried with him, and were raised with him.” so because he died for us, we died with him and now we are in him and through him, we can do all things. So literally understanding who we are in Christ determines our whole identity of who we are — not what happened to us because what happened to Jesus is greater than anything that’s ever happened to us.

Joyce: I believe there are a lot of people watching today who really don’t have that understanding of who they are in Christ and I think hearing us, I feel is sparking a little spark of hope. But I felt really in my heart that we need to share with people that this is not going to be an overnight fix — that becoming convinced or thoroughly believing that you have worth and value through what Christ did takes a renewing of the mind, and it’s really important that people don’t give up. I have probably said a million times in the last thirty years, “I am the righteousness of God in Christ.”

Joyce Meyer: It was great because I wanted him to be in a class where everything was all wonderful and perfect, but the lord taught him and the lord taught me, “no, you’re to be that light for that little boy so that he can feel the love of God.

Mark Hankins: Isaiah 54:14 says, “in righteousness you will be established and you will be far from oppression and from fear, it won’t even come near you.” that means that when we understand that we have been made right with God through the blood of Jesus and that in Christ, God would not make an unrighteous new creature; he already has an unrighteous old creature!  He wouldn’t make a defeated new creature. He wouldn’t make a failure new creature. If he made us a new creature in Christ, then he’s given us his very own righteousness. Once we get established in that, he said, we don’t have to be depressed, we’re far from oppression, not afraid, and we live free from a sense of sin and guilt and inferiority, and our confidence toward God and our confidence in life is based on who we are in Christ and what Christ has done for us; not based on what happened to us or what we used to be or what we did, but it’s based on who we are because of what Jesus did. – Joyce Meyer ministries.

Joyce Meyer: I want to rewind your statement a minute because I want to make sure that people get one part:  we are free from insecurity, we’re free from fear, we’re free from guilt and condemnation. We don’t have to go around feeling bad about ourselves all the time.  We don’t have to base our worth and value on what we do on our record of perfection but we can look to Jesus, “looking away from all that will distract,” the bible says, “unto Jesus, who is the author and the finisher of our faith.” I don’t need to take an inventory of everything that’s wrong with me; I need to focus on Jesus and what he’s done. So, how can the knowledge of my value in Christ help me in my practical, everyday life? What’s likely to change?

Mark: the first thing is you have confidence towards God. Once you believe that God is on your side, so many times when you’re feeling guilty or ashamed, you feel like even God’s mad at you, but once you understand that when the blood of Jesus is applied and God sees you in Christ, that God’s not against you; he’s actually for you. I love Romans chapter 8 where it says, “who is he that condemneth? It is Christ that died.” Joyce Meyer said that in other words, it says, “who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that has justified us.” nothing seen, nothing unseen, nobody, no creature, no devil, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ.  So he says we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.

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Joyce: More than conquerors. More than conquerors. I like to tell people, actually God spoke this to my heart one time when I was feeling badly about myself; he said, “you know, Joyce Meyer, you’re no surprise to me. It’s not like I didn’t know all this when I invited you into relationship with me. It’s not like I thought I was getting this perfect person and now I’m all bummed out when I found out that you have flaws.” God knows every word in our mouth that’s still unuttered. He knows thoughts that we have not even thought yet.  He knows every mistake we’re going to make, things that we would think there’s no way we would do that and yet, God already knows and he loves us anyway.

Mark Hankins: Amazing! Someone said God never said, “uh-oh.” in other words, God is never surprised. Actually, it says he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, which means God said, “I’m going to fix you before you were ever broken.” and the moment we believe that we’re righteous in Christ, redeemed in him, the righteous are as bold as a lion. I like what Paul said in my favorite scripture, 2 Corinthians 2:14, “now thanks be unto God who always causes us to triumph in Christ and makes manifest the savor of his knowledge by us in every place.”

Joyce Meyer mentioned in other words, Paul had plenty of adversity.  I like to say he could be shipwrecked, snake bit, beat in the head, left for dead all in the same day and stand up and say: now thanks be unto God who always causes me to triumph! Paul literally called himself in 2 Corinthians 12:2: “a man in Christ, ascended to the third heaven.” that means when you’re in Christ, not only do you have victory but you live in two worlds; you have access to the very realm of God. In him, we have access by faith and boldness to God. Then he says, “in Christ… I’m a man in Christ.” well, a man in Christ, Paul said in acts 26, “I think myself happy.” that’s one of my favorite scriptures and he’s standing right in the middle of all the roman leaders and they’re about to condemn him and Paul said, “I am a happy man.” I always thought, “why is he so happy?” because he’s standing right in the place that Jesus told him 30 years before: “you will stand before kings and declare the name of the lord.” and Paul said, “no storm stopped me, nobody could stop me, no devil could stop me. I am a happy man!”

Joyce: we’re going to take a break and we’ll have more about our identity in Christ right after this. – Joyce Meyer ministries.

My life is a waste. I am no fun to be around. I’m a control freak. It’s always gotta be my way. I’ll never amount to anything. I’ll never amount to anything. I’ll never amount to anything. I’ll never amount to anything.

Joyce Meyer: we’re going to take a quick break and we’re also going to hear a little something from my husband, Dave, that I think will be very interesting to you.

Joyce: Being in ministry for many years when I started out, I was a lot more insecure than I am now and I didn’t have that level of confidence that we all really need. And over the years God taught me, “if you don’t maintain a high level of confidence when you’re in the pulpit, you will give the meeting to the devil.” the minute that I would look at faces that didn’t seem happy, see people looking at their watch, or maybe if a couple of people over here would leave before the meeting was over, I would automatically assume that there was something wrong with me. That’s not always the case. Just because somebody is not making the right face at you or giving you the compliment you feel like you need or paying attention to you, the fact is sometimes people don’t even see you. They’re not paying attention to you because you’re not worth paying attention to; they honestly just have their mind off somewhere else and aren’t even seeing you but I would let all that affect me. We let how people act with us and the attention they pay to us, what they say, the faces they make, the compliments they don’t give — we let all that stuff affect our level of confidence until we learn better and really, when we do that, the devil is in control because it doesn’t take him very much effort to find somebody who will say something to you to put you down.

Mark: if you’re going to maintain that confidence, think of David in one of the favorite scriptures again, 1 Samuel 30:6, when David’s best friends were fixin’ to kill him. They were going to stone him! Before, he was their big hero and now they’re saying: you’re worthless. We’re gonna kill you. It says that David encouraged himself in the lord. Think about that! How did he do that? He must have told himself, “I’m gonna have to take you aside and talk to you right now. I’m gonna take you in the back.” and he’d look in the mirror and say, “I want to talk to you right now!” he encouraged himself because even when other people turn on you, if you turn on yourself you’re done but if you’ll just turn and encourage yourself… How do you do that? I believe David did it with the same psalm scriptures. He would take the psalms out and say, “the lord is my strength. The lord is my shepherd. O God, you are my God!” and then psalm 139 is phenomenal!  Can you imagine David saying, “I want to talk to you right now. The lord has beset you behind and before, laid his hand upon you. When you were in your mother’s womb, he framed you and he fit you and made your days. You are fearfully and wonderfully made!” that almost sounds crazy to religious people that you would dare talk to yourself that way but yet God says: this is the way you were made. I created you.  I didn’t make you to fail. Though the enemy may come against you, if you’ll dare to believe God, to believe who you are in Christ and have confidence that the same God that started this work in you, he will finish it, and if you go down and you fail, get right back up and say, “I still believe God.”

I like what Paul said in acts 27 in the middle of that storm: everybody cheer up. I believe God.  It shall be even as he told me. It doesn’t look like it right now but the story’s not over yet.  Everybody cheer up.

Joyce Meyer: you’re going to have to do some things you don’t want to do in life. One girl said: I finally got over being a people pleaser years ago but now I’ve become the kind of person who is like.

Joyce: Something I think is interesting — I don’t know how you feel about this but I think a lot of people don’t even really know how they feel about themselves; it’s not even any kind of dialogue they ever have with themselves. I know I didn’t realize I didn’t like myself.

Dr. Mintle: So because you didn’t know how you were feeling about yourself, you didn’t connect the way you were behaving to that at all? It wasn’t even related?

Joyce: not at all. Not at all. It was just like I never even thought about that and when I started realizing that I didn’t like myself, I didn’t just start realizing; God had to show me that through books I was reading and the word of God. There’s a scripture in first peter 3:10-11 that talks about how you need to have peace with God, peace with yourself and peace with your fellowman. The bible really is a book about relationships; it’s about our relationship with God, our relationship with ourselves, and our relationship with people, and i think sometimes we get the God part and the people part but we don’t realize that we have an intimate relationship with ourselves and that is affected by the relationship we have with God, but then how we get along with people is directly affected by how we feel about ourselves.

Dr. Mintle: When you didn’t realize that you were feeling bad about yourself, were you always looking at other people to make things better?

Joyce: Oh, yeah.  Everything was everybody else’s fault. “I would be happier if you did this and i wouldn’t get upset if you wouldn’t do that.” I never took any personal responsibility for anything and just to find out that my joy was not somebody else’s responsibility!

Dr. Mintle: And it wasn’t about all those other people and what they were and weren’t doing; it was really about the way you saw yourself and felt about yourself.

Joyce: exactly.  All of the bad fruit in my life was coming from the bad root that I had inside of me and until I took responsibility for that, there was no helping me.

Dr. Mintle: and that’s hard to do sometimes because sometimes when we’re looking at who we are and what we see inside there, we don’t always like it. It’s almost like I like to think of the holy spirit sort of shining a light like a flashlight on different rooms in our house; he’s looking in and going: I don’t know. Something in the attic there needs to be cleaned out. You don’t always like what you see, so looking at who you really are, it’s easier to think these other people are making my life miserable but it’s harder to say maybe I yell and scream at people and that’s one of the reasons why they’re not so nice, or maybe I’m not treating somebody well and maybe that’s why they’re reacting to me the way they are.

Joyce: So I’ll go back and do that right away and what that does is, people respect you when you do that.

Joyce: We all face battles every day and i dressed in these army fatigues just so I could make a point that you are a soldier in the army of the lord. You are armed and dangerous! (music)

When I finally decided I was going to live in peace, it took me several years just concentrating on peace to get to the point where I had peace because what I had to do first was find out what satan was using to steal my peace, and then I had to start making changes.  Just very quickly as an example, I found out that when I had to hurry, hurry, hurry, I lost my peace. So it wasn’t going to do me any good just to rebuke the devil; I needed to get a few things out of my life and I needed to change a few things so I didn’t have to hurry all the time. We always want an answer but we don’t always want to change what we can change. Some of you may have to quit hanging out with some of the people you hang out with. Some of you may have to choose better friends.

If you have a job that keeps you from ever being able to spend any time with God because there are so many demands on you, then maybe you ought to make a little less money and get a different job. Or maybe if you got a different job, it would end up that God would bless you and you’d make more money. But when we exalt money above everything else, then that’s what rules. Jude 21 — I love this — guard and keep yourselves in the love of God. It took me a 0year to get a revelation on the love of God. Are you hearing what I said? It took me a year of studying and confessing the word to get a revelation. We don’t need information; we need revelation. Now i know that God loves me. I know that I know that I know that I know.

I never doubt the love of God. No matter what happens,

No matter how I feel, I never doubt the love of God because I have a revelation, but it took a year — it took me several years to get to the point where I can say that I pretty much have peace all the time. And if something happens and I lose my peace, I’m so addicted to peace now that I just will do almost anything to get it back. One of our guys was sharing in some leadership training yesterday at the office. He said, “my wife and i have a one-hour rule.  In other words, if we have an argument, we won’t let it go more than an hour before we make peace.” Dave kind of poked me and he said:  we must have a one-minute rule because we’re just like been there, done that, not wasting my time anymore. I’m not going to waste my time even being mad at you for 30 minutes because I know by now what’s going to change and what’s not, so you just go on and have a happy life anyway. Amen? (applause)

One of my strengths is that I’m not a people pleaser. Therefore, I’m really great about just speaking my mind.

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.

And he was like:  aghhhhh! Whoo!  It felt good! (laughing) the devil stole my childhood because my dad was sexually abusing me.  I resented that for years, but then one day I decided I was going to be a kid in my old age (cheering) because I’m taking back everything the devil stole! And you can, too!  You don’t have to go around resenting the fact that you didn’t get a good start in life.  Just make your mind up that you’re going to have a knock-down, drag-out finish. (cheering) you say, “well, I just wish that I had an up personality like that.” (laughing) I decide how I’m going to behave; I don’t go by my feelings.  Amen? (amen.)

A guard is defined as a lookout, a scout, a bodyguard, a keeper or one who keeps. Do you think the president’s bodyguard has a casual attitude? “well, gee, I just hope nobody bothers the president today.” (laughing) or do you think… You see, a really good bodyguard doesn’t even just take action when there’s sudden trouble. A really good bodyguard watches for the trouble and they get so good that they can spot one person in a crowd of 5,000 people that they can already tell is there to cause trouble, and they’ll deal with them before the person they’re guarding ever even knows there’s a problem.  We need to be on guard against the devil. We need to be like eagle Christians. An eagle has tunnel vision. They can spot a storm coming miles away. We have discernment. We have wisdom.  We don’t always have to be taken unaware and shocked. “i can’t believe this happened to me.” well, why not?  The devil hates you. (laughing)

You cannot afford to have a casual attitude when you have an enemy who wants to destroy you. God is for you, but you’ve got to do your part. It doesn’t have to be difficult. Fighting the devil doesn’t have to be difficult. God’s given us what we need. Let’s talk about a few of the offensive weapons that we have. What about just some of these things we hear about all the time? The word, the name, the blood. If we’re not careful, even the name of Jesus just becomes so ho-hum.  The bible says that at the mention of that name, every knee has to bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth. The name of Jesus embodies all that he is.  And when you speak the name of Jesus in faith… And see, that’s the thing; you can’t just tack it onto the end of your prayers like a magic charm. You’ve got to know what that name means and when you speak it, you have to speak it in faith. When you do that, all power is made available to you.

You know, one way we can share our faith with someone is to treat them with love.

The name of Jesus. “whatever you ask in my name, I will do it.” but the amplified bible says this:  “whatever you ask in my name, that is presenting all that I am.” so you see, we have to understand that we don’t go to God based on our own righteousness that we earned by our good behavior. We don’t go and pray in our name. The reason why we pray in his name is because we’ve got some problems. But when we pray in his name, we’re presenting to the father all that he is and we’re saying that we’re depending totally on him and his blood and what he did for us, but because of who he is and who we are in him, we come boldly to the throne. We’re going to ask you for things we know we don’t deserve and could never have on our own, and instead of punishment we’re asking you to bless us.

And the devil’s like: “how stupid can you be? Surely you don’t think God’s going to do anything for you after the way you’ve acted.” when the devil keeps reminding you of everything you’ve done wrong, you ought to turn the tables on him and say, “oh, thank you for reminding me how good God is.” instead of getting condemned, just thank him. Acts, chapter 3. Let’s just see an example here. Are you all doing okay? Anybody feel something starting to boil a little bit in your belly?  See, you’ve got to be reminded every once in a while about this stuff or you just kind of forget and you just kind of lie down and kind of let the devil beat on you and wish things were better. Acts 3, verse 1:  now peter and john were going up to the temple at the hour of prayer, the ninth hour (three o’clock in the afternoon), [when] a certain man crippled from his birth was being carried along, who was laid each day at that gate of the temple [which is] called beautiful, so that he might beg for charitable gifts from those who entered the temple.

So when he saw Peter and John about to go into the temple, he asked them to give him a gift.  And peter directed his gaze intently at him, and so did john, and said a very interesting thing: “look at us!”  they didn’t even say, “look at God.” they said, “look at us!” sometimes we get this false humility where we just think we have to go around all the time acting like: “I’m nothing.  I’m nobody.” no, the bible says we are to reign as kings in life.  You have the DNA of a king in you.

You are going to have a great time and i can’t wait to see you there!