Joyce Meyer Online: First of all, I hope you really enjoyed the teaching today and secondly, I hope you appreciate me dressing up like this for you. This wouldn’t be my normal attire but I decided if I’m gonna wear it, I’m gonna get a little bit of glitz on it, so I want you to see right there that I’ve got my stuff there that I like and a little bit here on my shirt. Actually I did this just to have a little bit of fun with you but also just to really make an impact on you that you are a soldier in the army of the Lord — the bible says that — you do have authority, and you don’t have to let the devil just walk all over you. He’s a deceiver and deception means to believe a lie, but even if it is a lie, if you believe it, it’s real for you.

We’re offering some resources today that Joyce Meyer think you really need and I’d almost like to say you just have to have them because I think so many people let the enemy walk all over them because they don’t really know the authority that they have, so we’re offering four cds called “armed and dangerous” and my book, “the word, the name, the blood,” and a bonus gift to you, a book by Dutch sheets that I think is powerful; I read this book called “authority in prayer.” we really want you to understand who you are, that you have authority and power, and you don’t have to let the enemy win. You can win every battle. If you stay with me, I have something I want to talk to you about at the end of the program.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – The devil tempted me and I just wasn’t able to say no. He said: You should have said, “get thee behind me, Satan!” she said: I did and he told me it looked better from the back than it did from the front.

Joyce Meyer Ministries states you stand steadfast and you keep going forward and you do everything I’ve told you to do because I am with you. Fear not, for I am with you and you can do whatever I tell you to do. You can do whatever you need to do. Wow! It’s not too hard to figure out why we don’t do very much when we start realizing how we cave in to all these fears. We cave in to the feelings of fear: “I can’t do that; I’m so nervous. I can’t do that; I’m shaking. I can’t do that.” Do you think that I don’t do things sometimes while I’m shaking? Do you think that I don’t have butterflies in my stomach ever? Do you think my mouth doesn’t get dry? Do you think my heart doesn’t pound? Anytime we step out into something new that we’ve never done before, something that seems bigger than we are, we’re going to feel that. Satan uses fear to keep us from making progress. Amen? Amen!: So my word to you tonight is do it afraid and start behaving confidently even if you don’t feel confident. If you don’t, people are not going to be able to trust you.

Joyce Meyer said the more you present yourself in a fearful manner, the more people are going to back off. Confidence is defined as a quality of assurance that leads a person to undertake a thing. Confidence is the belief that you are able and you are acceptable. Right there, we could stop and preach all night because a lot of people don’t have any confidence because they really don’t believe that they’re acceptable. They look at everything that’s wrong with them instead of the righteousness that’s been given them through the blood of Christ. My bible says in Ephesians that we are made acceptable in the beloved, therefore, you can say: I’m able. Go ahead. I’m able.: Say: I’m acceptable. I’m acceptable.: I have confidence. I have confidence.: I will not be afraid. I will not be afraid.: I can do whatever God gives me to do I can do whatever God gives me to do: and I’m going to do it boldly, and I’m going to do it boldly,:

Joyce Meyer Online – If I want the freedom that Jesus promised me in his word… How many of you want to be free? Whoo!: You know what?

Joyce Meyer Ministries: That’s an interesting question, isn’t it? I think I know the answer but I want to hear what you have to say.

R.T. Kendall: Well, it comes right back to what Jesus did for us on the cross. We always go back to the cross. The best way you can dignify the blood, honor the blood, is to forgive yourself and say, “look, I can’t go back, I can’t relive this.” The devil would want you to condemn yourself forever. God says, “stop it! This is why I sent my son to die on the cross.” So you’re back to the same thing:  “It’s because Jesus died and I really believe it. I pronounce myself free because he does.”

Joyce Meyer Online: Obviously, if you’ve hurt someone, it would be nice if you could go back to that person and say, “I’m sorry I hurt you. Will you forgive me?” But the truth is even if that person were still alive and they say, “no, I will not forgive you,” that doesn’t keep you from receiving forgiveness because it’s really God’s forgiveness that we have to have in order to be able to properly let it go and get beyond it within ourselves. I would imagine there’s a good number of people who maybe have hurt people and those people won’t forgive them, but that doesn’t mean they can’t have forgiveness because once again it’s God’s forgiveness that we really truly need. Well, we’ve got some questions here that I think are kind of interesting. The first one is: How do you know if the difference between conviction and condemnation… How do you know what the difference is, especially when you want — when you want — to continue to feel the pain of guilt and condemnation?

R.T. Kendall: The reason one wants to do that is because he thinks or she thinks they’ve got to punish themselves. There’s an interesting verse in 1 John 4:18: “Perfect love casts out fear.” Fear has to do with punishment. You see, when we don’t feel forgiven, we want to punish ourselves, and in a perverse sort of way, for some it feels good.

Joyce Meyer – Do you know how to be a witness? Now, I did not say, “do witnessing.” Do you know how to be a witness? Today super bowl champion Kurt Warner, along with world series champion and baseball hall of famer, Lou Brock, join me to show you how.

Joyce Meyer Online: “You didn’t give up on me.”

Lisa: Absolutely, and we gave that relationship a chance. Then, of course, there are unhealthy ones that you have to say, “okay, there’s a boundary.” But I think we give up way too easily on most relationships.

Joyce Meyer: When I look back at my children, because I know many times when you’re raising children you think, “well, this kid is not going to make it in life. If they survive at all, I’m going to have to keep them home the rest of their life, and I’m going to have to take care of them.” When I look back at my four children, I had different issues with each one of them, and they were things that were pretty overwhelming to me at the time. I just think it’s so funny because my youngest son, who’s now 28, I just thought, “what in the world is going to happen to him?” We couldn’t… School was a nightmare. We tried this school, we tried that school, we had a private tutor. It was like he hated school and he just barely got by. He didn’t like to read. He didn’t want any of it. All he wanted to do was have fun — just have fun. If I would tell him to go outside and sweep the porch, he’d be out there dancing with the broom. Everything was fun. All of a sudden when he was about 18, he started getting this real stronger side to him. Long story short, he’s now the ceo of our stateside ministries and he oversees the television and the radio and all the printed media and all the employees here in the states. And I just go, “all the years that I worried and fretted, and now here he is, half the time I’m going to him to ask him what I ought to do in a situation.” I could go through that same scenario with all four of my children, just thinking, “what in the world is going to happen to them?” So, I just really want to encourage people that if you do your best to be a good parent, God’s going to take care of the rest.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – Welcome to today’s program. We asked Kurt Warner and Lou Brock to join us because if you can be a witness among the pressures and temptations that come with the lifestyle of professional athletes, you can probably be a witness just about anywhere.

Joyce Meyer Ministries: I just want to encourage you again about the dangers of complaining. If you find yourself complaining, I want you to stop and take a moment to thank God for everything that he has already brought you through. So often, we just look at what we’re going through and we seem to get stuck in what we’re going through and we let fears come in that we’re never going to get out of that place we’re in right now, but if you just look at things in the past that God has already brought you through, it’s going to encourage you that God is faithful and he has your deliverance already set in motion. Today, we’re offering my four-part teaching series “me and my big mouth!” Now, I don’t know one person in the universe who wouldn’t need that teaching, including me. Right now in my own private prayer and fellowship time with God, I’m reading a book on the power of words. I believe that our thoughts and our words are two of the most important things in our life.

Joyce Meyer said if you want to have God’s good plan for you, then you have to learn how to bring your mouth into agreement with what his word says and it may be easy to talk right when your circumstances are good, but the real test comes when you’re going through difficulties. We want you to have this so much that we’re going to offer it for a gift of any amount. When you send donations to the ministry or you purchase resources, it really helps us to continue preaching the gospel all over the world. There are many different ways that God supports us — through partnership, through different outreaches — but this is one of the ways that you can be a real blessing to us and I believe if we’ve been sowing into your life the word of God, then you need to reach back and help us continue doing what God has called us to do and in the process, you can get a blessing for yourself that’s going to help you live even a better more fruitful life. My announcer is going to give you all the information you need to take advantage of this offer and if you stay with me, I’m going to have a little closing word about the importance of trusting God.

Joyce Meyer Online – I think it’s so important that we learn how to be a witness in our everyday life.

Joyce Meyer Ministries states that Dave found out after marrying me that I don’t wake up in the morning looking like this. He didn’t know that when we got married. Some guys marry somebody that they think is beautiful and get up the next morning and find her face on the pillow.

I better behave this morning or I’m not going to get my message done. Philippians 2:14: Do all things without grumbling and faultfinding and complaining… –And this is interesting; the amplified says: against God. So, see really when we grumble and complain, God takes it personally because we say we’re his children and we’re trusting him and we believe he’s our provider and he’s our source, and then we complain and we murmur about so many things in our life.

Then it goes on and it tells us why we should not complain in verse 15: That you may show yourselves to be blameless and guileless, innocent and uncontaminated children of God in the midst of a wicked and perverse generation. He’s saying for one thing, if I could just find a group of people who will get out in the world and not complain like all the worldly people… How many people in your job complain about the job? Okay, well, you know what?

Joyce Meyer Online – You should not do that. You should say: Well, there are things here that I’d like to see changed, but you know what? I’m thankful I’ve got a job because there are a lot of people who don’t have one at all. We’re in the world, but we’re not supposed to be of it. Go to Deuteronomy chapter 1. Why do some people have so many problems, and they seem to never get over their problems? No matter what they do, there’s another problem, another problem, another problem. Could it be connected to their mouth? I wonder. Sometimes your answer is right under your nose and you just don’t know it.

Joyce Meyer – It’s one thing to do witnessing — to have a project where once a week you go out with a group of people and try to tell people about Jesus — but I think it’s far better to be a witness everywhere you go, to be prayerful, and to take every opportunity that god gives you to speak a word for him.

Ginger: A lot of times people talk about cutting as a sense of release for that pain; to feel a different pain releases that pain. Or even thoughts of suicide, to be able to finally escape that pain. So, when that thought comes in, what does that replacement thought need to be to change the direction they are going?

Joyce Meyer Online: One of the things I would encourage people to do when they’re tempted to do that is not only to think, “God loves me. I have purpose and value, and what happened is not my fault,” or even if it was your fault, even if somebody did something that was really, really wrong and it hurt a lot of people and it was your fault, the whole point is God not only forgives us, but he forgets our sins and he removes them as far as the east is from the west. Sometimes you just have to remind the enemy, “I’ve been forgiven.” I would not only think that but I would open my mouth and say it.

Joyce Meyer said in other words, if I’m feeling pressured and I’m feeling lousy about myself and I’ve got all this internal pain so now I want to go off somewhere and actually inflict a different kind of pain on me to get away from that pain and feel that I’m punishing myself, what I can do if I’m at the point in my life where I’ve said, “I’m not going to live like this anymore. I know this is wrong. I’m not going to do this anymore,” then I would start to do warfare with the words of my mouth and I would speak the word of God out of my mouth. I believe with all of my heart that the word of God has inherent power in it that when we speak it, it drives the enemy back into the hole he crawled out of and it gives us the courage and the strength to do what we need to do. I would suggest if somebody feels like that, they should say, “God loves me. I have purpose and value. I have a future. All of my sins are forgiven. It’s a new day for me. I’m going forward.” And I would keep it up and keep it up and keep it up and keep it up until those feelings went away and I could be back to being in control of my emotions again.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – One time the Lord spoke to my heart, “you know, Joyce, I’ve got my people absolutely everywhere. They’re in hospitals, they’re in the market place, they’re on sports teams, they are absolutely everywhere.

Joyce Meyer mean, do you really think that somebody can tell you what’s going to happen in your future because you have a few more crinkles in your hand than somebody else? See, that proves that people are desperate for the supernatural. Do you know why? Because there is a God-shaped hole on the inside of everyone of us and until God fills it, we are going to be looking for it to be filled in some other way! You better believe if we’re looking in the wrong places, the devil has got people ready to deceive us. I believe those people originally had gifts from God that they just didn’t use in the kingdom; they turned them to the enemy and that’s your choice.

Every person watching by television, it’s your choice. What are you going to do with the gifts and the talents that you have? Are you going to keep serving the enemy with them, are you going to just keep blessing the world with them, or are you going to do something to bring them into the kingdom of God and just be a blessing wherever you’re at? When our gifts are used for God, God gets the glory. When God called Moses, Moses kept saying: I can’t do it, you have the wrong man, I’m slow in speech, I’m not eloquent, you have the wrong guy, they aren’t going to believe me. God said to him: what do you have in your hand? He said: a rod.

Joyce Meyer Ministries states here’s a way we can take that scripture to the next level: he told Moses to throw it down, then he picked it up and it was full of the power of God. In Moses’ case, it looks like he threw it down and picked it right back up again but in many instances, you may have a gift that God has given you but you’ve been using it all the wrong ways and God will deal with you to throw that gift down or to lay that aside and he intends to let you pick it back up again, only this time full of his power, but he has to do something in you before he can do something through you.

So just because you’ve got a great voice, that doesn’t mean you need to go to a new church and insist that you become part of the worship team or the worship leader because maybe God didn’t send you there to exercise your gift week one. Maybe he wants you to sit somewhere and just get a whole lot of pride out of you and get a better attitude, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God and not be full of yourself all the time. Maybe there is a little bit of performance in you and God wants to knock that out so everything that you do is done for his glory.

Joyce Meyer Online – And if they’ll be bold enough to live the life that they’re supposed to live and walk through the open doors I give them, many more people could come to know Jesus Christ.

Pastor Mike Shepard: God jumps up and down and sings and shouts with a loud voice, clapping his hands over us! What an amazing thought that God actually enjoys me and likes me, even on my worst day.

Joyce Meyer Online: Thank you for joining us today. I believe the program today is gonna help many of you fill a void in your lives. God loves us very much, so much that he sent Jesus to die for us but since then, he hasn’t stopped loving us. He didn’t just do it once and then stop. I believe the whole world is hungry for the love of God; they just don’t know what they really need. If you really want God’s love, you can receive it and trust me, his love will sustain you through anything that life throws at you. I believe you’re gonna enjoy the program.

Joyce Meyer Ministries have our wonderful bible study panel here that helps me sometimes when I want to talk about something and get more views than my own. It’s a little difficult if I’m sitting here trying to talk to myself so I’m glad I get to talk to you guys and I believe God is gonna pull out of each one of you something awesome that’s gonna minister to somebody who’s watching today. So, God loves you! That’s a statement we hear all the time. We hear it so much, I think, that we just take it for granted but we need to really understand God loves you; for every individual, God loves you. I was talking to a woman a couple of days ago and she said that a friend of hers said to her one time, “Adrian, God loves you so much that if you would’ve been the only person here, he would’ve still sent Jesus to die for you.” And she said getting it on that kind of a personal level was life-changing for her.

Joyce Meyer remember a woman who said to me, “one day you pointed at that tv screen and you said God loves you!” She said, “I never took it that personally and it literally changed my life.” So we really have to make sure when we hear the “God loves you” statement that we don’t just like, “oh, yeah, yeah, God loves everybody,” but that we take it personally because I believe the love of God is like the healing ointment or the medicine, if you will, it’s like a holy medicine that will heal our souls. The love of God heals the rejection we’ve had in the past and sets us free from so many bondages! What do you think about the love of God? Do you think the world needs it?

Joyce Meyer – So, Kurt and Lou, thank you so much for being with us. I think this is really rather comical because we have the constant joke all the time about Dave being a sports fanatic and me not knowing what’s going on, and all the arguments we had in the early days of our marriage because I always say Dave likes everything that bounces or rolls.

Joyce Meyer states you know, we really don’t like to be disturbed and since I don’t ever want you to forget this message, I’m going to wear this sign for you tonight the whole time I preach it, because whether you know it or not, a lot of you — just like I used to have — you have a little invisible sign on your life: don’t bother me. I’ve got my plan. I’m busy. Don’t disturb me. I just don’t have time to mess with what’s going on with you. I have enough going on in my own life.

Joyce Meyer Online: Christians should not be selfish, self-centered people who have no compassion, who won’t be interrupted, who won’t lay aside what they’re doing to help somebody in need. Jesus said: one new commandment I give unto you — one thing, there’s one thing I want you to do: love one another as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples. Church, if we want to have an impact on this lost and dying world, then we have to heat up our love walk. We need to study love. We need to pray about our love walk, we need to know what it is and we need to practice it on a daily basis. Love is not theory. It’s not just words. It’s not just a sermon but love is action. Love always requires an effort. Love requires us to sacrifice something, to give up something. It may be some time. It may be some money. It may be both. Jesus basically said: how can you say you love me whom you have not seen if you don’t love your brother whom you have seen?

He said we cross over from death into life when we know how to walk in love. Most of the miracles of Jesus took place when he was headed somewhere else and somebody interrupted him. He certainly was a man of vision and purpose. He was focused yet he recognized a divine interruption and he could tell the difference between a divine interruption and a demonic interruption. You see, there are times when we need to not let people interrupt us. You can’t let everybody dictate what you’re going to do and pull on you all the time. You can’t let people just drain you and suck all the life out of you and never add anything back to your life, but you know what? The truth of the matter is most of the time the people who end up doing that are the people we know very well and we’re in contact with on a regular basis. I think a lot of the people that we miss helping are the ones that we don’t even really know all that much but we just happen to be passing by.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – I think that’s what we need to understand, that we can’t just score a touchdown and then thank Jesus, and then when things are going bad, not do anything or not reflect him at all and expect to have a powerful influence.