But I felt like God showed me that if I would bring this out into the open tonight, that there are a lot of people who have a lot of this stuff stuck in them and you didn’t even know that was what was wrong with you and it’s stealing your joy and your peace and your freedom.

Not only that, but Jesus said that offense is a stumbling block and what happens when we get offended at God or man, then we stumble in our walk with him and that means we stop making progress. Do you understand that until that’s taken care of, there’s no more progress? Because I can tell you right now if we just believe God in every situation, we’re going to keep enjoying our life, no matter where we are and no matter what’s going on.

I want you to remember that the answer that God gives us to our problems is always a simple answer and really all throughout the word of God, no matter what kind of things people were facing, the bottom line answer was: Trust God. Trust God. Don’t get concerned about how long it’s taking or how God’s going to do it or the way he’s going to do it. Just trust God and believe that he loves you and that he will work everything out for your good and that his plan is better than your plan. You can enjoy so much freedom if you’ll stop worrying about everything.

Dr. Leman: only because I know you love the game of football am I going to use this example. The quarterback comes to the line of scrimmage where the ball is. He looks left and he looks right. Well, what’s he doing? Is he looking for chicks in the stands?  No, he’s reading the defense to see where people are. And once in a while he calls an audible. He changes the play at the line of scrimmage. Here’s the challenge for everyone: you’re the quarterback in your life. You’re in a social situation. What does the “old Joyce” do? What does the “old Kevin” do in this situation? Now, what’s the new Joyce going to do?  What’s the new Kevin going to do? That’s a check-off. It’s simple, but it works. It makes you think: “okay, this is what I usually say when my husband says this or my mother-in-law says that; this is how I’m going to choose — choose — to behave differently with god’s help.”

Joyce: the last thing I want to talk about is what is the best way to create positive memories? But you know, in the last probably 6-8 months, I’ve been purposely thinking about making good memories. Even yesterday my son and his wife took me shopping for a combined birthday/mother’s day thing that kind of got away from us. We just had a very simple, plain, ordinary day — got a coffee, roamed around the mall, laughed, talked. But you know what? I created a positive memory. And I think it’s very important for people to purposely remember the good things. It wasn’t like some huge, big, exciting day but it was a good day and one that I want to remember. So, just a couple of words before we close about how can people create positive memories?

Dr. Leman: you are. I always tell people that you have to run towards that fear in your life, and you extend that forgiveness.

I have jukeboxes in my home and there’s an old Peggy Lee song called “is that all there is?” is that all there is? Well, knowing the divorce statistics today, that song popped into my head: “is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that’s all there is, then let’s break us out some booze and have ourselves a ball if that’s all there is.” I said, “There’s got to be another stage in marriage.” and I invented the word “gracefullove.”  gracefullove — I put it all into one word. We sing that song at easter time “he lives.” “We can face tomorrow because he lives.” well, you know what? If you know the creator of the universe and you can tap into the power of god’s everlasting love, then maybe you could actually learn to live in concert with this imperfect person. Yes, you do your nails at the parlor every week; we do our nails at a red light in ten seconds or less with our front teeth — we see life differently but it’s the differences in us that make us a couple.  And when you extend god’s grace in your life and you begin to forgive people who have hurt you and harmed you, you’re on the right path.

Joyce: there’s a scripture in James that is coming to my mind right now that I think is very helpful. It says: “for we all — not some, but all — we all often — not occasionally, but often — stumble and fall and offend in many things.” so, we all often make mistakes. And if we don’t learn how to be gracious with one another and forgive people, then we end up with nothing in our own lives but torment, torment, torment. I spent enough years of my life being angry with unrealistic false expectations. For many years I expected everybody else to make up to me for what I didn’t get in my childhood. And I think in many ways, for a lot of years in my marriage, I gave my husband the responsibility of trying to make up to me for what I didn’t get. That wasn’t his responsibility, his problem, or his fault. And it’s only when we take responsibility, let god get involved in our life and say, “this is the way it was but I believe you can take all that and work it out to my good; i want to go forward,” that god can begin to work.

Woman: When she came here it was all infected and foul smelling. So she had a thorn prick four years back. This whole leg was swollen and infected. Then we removed the big toe.

Joyce: So she’s in the process now of healing?

Woman: Healing process.

Joyce: And she gets to keep her little baby here with her?

Woman: Yes.

Joyce: And the baby’s three months old?

Woman: Three months old.

Joyce: Well, you know what? There are some really long-standing problems that people have. I’ve had pain and I’m sure you’ve experienced pain but I don’t know that I’ve ever experienced continual pain for four years and honestly, I can’t even imagine that. But sometimes we don’t have a choice; you just do what you have to do. So they’re out in these remote villages in India and they don’t really have the medical care, so the bottom line is they do what they have to do. She had a couple of children in this situation and so thank god we’ve been here for her now to help her. Obviously, in order for us to help these people, you have to get onboard and help. So, we need you to give your very best offering to our missions work around the world. These are real people. These are real places. We’ve traveled hours and hours and hours to get here just to be able to share with you the difference that you can make. There are all kinds of things that we can do with our money, and i’m sure we all agree, including me, that we waste a lot of it. We buy more of what we already have that we’re not even using. We buy food and pick on it and throw it away, and do all kinds of silly things in countries where we have so much. I believe that god wants us to be blessed. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that — I believe that god blesses his people — but I do believe that it’s wrong if we don’t share what we have with those who are hurting around the world. I believe that every one of us needs to be involved in missions, and we need to be involved in helping the poor and the needy. So I’m asking you boldly if you would give your very best offering today to help with these missions works around the world, and I believe you will. God bless you!

Jentezen: But see, this was God telling you to make those changes with style, this look and all that, but it was God because his ultimate desire was to reach more people through your ministry.

Joyce: And to reach not only the people we were reaching but to also reach the younger people because they’re desperate today for answers.

Jentezen: They love your ministry.

Joyce: We can’t give them a bunch of old, moldy stuff that looks out of date to them.

Jentezen: I was amazed in Australia when you were there how the youth were just like a magnet drawn to your ministry.

Joyce: You know what it is? The young people today want spiritual moms and dads but they want people who will kind of meet them where they are. Like for example, I said there was no way I was wearing jeans in one of my conferences; “I’m not doing it” because I had this mentality that God only anointed polyester.

I don’t know what my problem was but I was sure he didn’t anoint denim on the platform! The first time I went to hillsong and saw all the jeans and saw the anointing, I was like: Joyce, get a grip! We’re not going to change the message, we’re not going to change our morals, but it doesn’t matter what package it’s in. That’s all window dressing and that has to change with changing times. I just decided if me putting on a pair of jeans once in a while will make a 17- or 18-year-old feel like they can listen to me and I can help save their life by being willing to do that, then I need to be willing to meet them where they are.

Joyce Meyer – Somebody might think, “what about your other audience? What about the older people who don’t like that kind of style?” Well, you know what? If they’re older people in the Lord, then they need to be over themselves by now and they need to be at a point where it doesn’t all have to be about them and they’re willing to sacrifice a little bit to see these younger people reached also.

Jentezen: I think what you’re saying is there are seasons. I had a season where I just loved to travel and preach in churches and I’m in a different season now. I say no to invitations a lot now because it’s just not the season I’m in. I think if we would learn to flow in those seasons — in and out of them because sometimes they’re over and God’s ready to do a brand-new thing but we have to be willing to follow that cloud.

Joyce: That’s so good to leave our viewers with today, that you don’t have to do what somebody else is doing, you don’t have to feel bad about yourself because somebody else seems to have the ability to do something and you don’t understand why you don’t have it but you don’t, because God graces us in different ways. I don’t think anybody can really hear from God until they learn that they’re an individual and they don’t have to be doing what somebody else does. So often, those are insecurity issues.

We’re insecure so we feel like, “I have to do what they’re doing, otherwise, I’m no good.” But you have to be an individual, you have to be willing to hear from God for yourself, and really in many ways not care what people think about it. We have to care a lot more about what God thinks about what we’re doing than people. And then I think you have to be willing to change. Dave and I have discovered with all these years we’ve been in ministry, in the last three or four years we’ve made some pretty radical changes even about different things — the look of the studio, the look of the platform in our meetings.

Joyce Meyer Online – We’ve even changed some of our clothing style to meet some of the younger people where they are because I began to look around and think: you know what? I could see us leveling and leveling is dangerous because you’ll start to go downhill. Dave and I have always said…

Jentezen Franklin: Right. I think it goes back to being stirred in your spirit. It’s almost like when God’s dealing with me, I could so relate to what you were saying, particularly in ministry things. You allow things to go forever and then all of a sudden there’s like an urgency that comes: I have to deal with that. I mention in the book a story about one of my children and I’ll never forget.

My wife and I had gone out to eat dinner and we’d left strict instructions with the children to not play with the candles. It was Christmastime and we had a lot of candles out. One of my daughters decided to disobey that, so we came home and on the hardwood floors there’s candle wax and we knew that one of them had disobeyed what we told them. We sat them all down and began to kind of go through: did you do it? Did you do it? They all denied it — every one of them, and we knew one of those kids was lying. They just: no, I didn’t do it. No, I didn’t do it.

We have four girls and a boy so finally we’re getting madder and madder and more upset because we know one of these kids is just bald-faced lying to us. So we separate them and one by one begin to interrogate like New York detectives — one by one, and both Cherise and I agreed that our oldest daughter, Courtney, we just were convinced that she was lying to us, and she just sat there and said: no, I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.

Joyce Meyer Online: Finally my youngest daughter comes in and says: Dad, I didn’t see her do it but she was in the room and I saw her looking at the candle.

Joyce Meyer says that it’s time for us to just stop going to church and singing our songs and jumping up and down and then going out and acting like everybody else. We not only have serious problems in the world, we have serious problems in the church worldwide and we are not impressing sinners, and the only way we are going to is if we make a decision that we believe what Jesus said when he said, “anyone who wants to follow me and be my disciple must take up his cross and follow me; he must forget himself, lose sight of himself and all of his own interests.” right away when I say that, people’s hearts begin to pound and we think, “what about me? Who’s going to take care of me?” well, god will and he’ll do a much better job than you’re doing. Come on, give him praise. How many of you feel even a teeny, tiny bit convicted? Alright.  How many of you would make a commitment to do your best to try to be a blessing to at least one person a day? It will change your life if you will do that.

I mean, it will absolutely change your life. Joyce Meyer Ministries says sometimes you may find yourself having to really think about it because when you start blessing the people in your life, you may have to go out and say “okay, god, show me who you want me to bless.” and it doesn’t always have to be somebody that you know. I could tell you some pretty wild stories about doing things for people I didn’t know and then found out that they knew me and how that affected their life to find out that I wasn’t just a TV preacher, but that I actually was living what I preached.  We need to all be doing the same thing. Amen? (applause) come on!  We love you, lord!

Joyce Meyer Online- You’re worthy to be praised!

Narrator: Pat’s quest to help the needy began in 2003 after she and several other ladies from her church took a missions trip to Costa Rica and saw the tremendous needs there.

Joyce Meyer Ministries: so when we came home from that trip, I decided that it would really be hard for me to come back and come into my home and have what god had blessed me with and call myself a Christian if I wasn’t going to do something to help.

Narrator:  she decided to hold several community-wide garage sales and donate the money to missions. Five sales and thousands of dollars later, pat and her friends realized they had so much donated merchandise; they would have to open a store which would enable them to give on a much larger scale.

Pat: I would say to the people who are partners, “whatever you have given is wonderful, just don’t stop because you are making a difference and it will make a difference and Joyce Meyer will make a difference with the money that you have sent to her. She will see to it that it goes to the right places and a difference will be made.”

Narrator: a few months after the Cambodian trip, Joyce paid a visit to “angels’ attic” to thank pat and some of the thirty to forty volunteers who work at the store every month.

Joyce: I just want to thank you all, first of all, for the time and the effort that you’ve put into this on behalf, not only our ministry, but all the different ministries that you’ve helped with their mission outreaches. And I just encourage you to keep on keeping on.

Joyce Meyer Online – There’s enough people in the world living for themselves, sitting around complaining about what they can’t do, and it’s really refreshing to find some people who are finding out what they can do and actually being faithful in doing it.

According to Joyce Meyer i remember opening up my bible in a meeting one day, sitting next to somebody and when I opened up to where the preacher said to open up, it was one of those pages that was really underlined, colored, stars, and I could feel my flesh puffing like… Oh, I was sitting there just hoping the person next to me would notice! I say this to you today because the Holy Spirit confronted me: Just because you turned your bible into a coloring book, that doesn’t mean you know it. You don’t know it till you’re doing it.

What did Paul say in first Corinthians 8? Head knowledge puffeth up, but love edifies. Amen!:  Joyce Meyer says that Knowledge makes us actually mistreat other people and look down on other people because we think we’re superior to them because of what we know, but love doesn’t act like that. Love meets a need. Love sacrifices. Love listens.  Love understands. Love is long-suffering. Not longsuffering, but long – long-suffering.

I don’t like that word! Be mindful to be a blessing. First Thessalonians 5:15 says: Do acts of kindness on purpose. Do you know what will happen? I can tell you what will happen because you were here today: You will treat people better, you will meet more needs in the upcoming days, you will be less selfish and self-centered, and you will be happier. Just about the time this dose starts to wear off, you’ll turn me on some morning on tv and you’ll see the recorded session of this meeting here in Jacksonville.

Joyce Meyer Ministries: I’ve learned that one of the greatest ways we can be an influence is by being a giver so today I want to talk to you about something. Would you sow a gift into the ministry to help me reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ? You can influence our ministry by doing that and then we would like to influence your life by sending you our resource offer which is my dvd teaching, “what kind of influence are you having?” We want to study that and make sure that our influence is right. Then also I’d like to send you three of my books “a new way of living.” It’s a great way to introduce people to Jesus Christ and to make sure they get a good beginning in their walk with God, so this is something you can use to sow into other people’s lives to begin your own witnessing ministry.

Joyce Meyer Online – Stay with us and get all this information down, and remember, you are an influential person!