In Every Area Of Our Life

Joyce: He’s always calling us to a new level. About three years ago I was thinking: I have been doing this a long time. I’ve written 75 books. I’ve preached all over the globe. I’m on television all over the world. I think I’m just going to kick back now and keep doing what I’m doing, but God really dealt with me: you cannot do that. You can’t just park somewhere, pull off on the side of the road and park somewhere because in God’s economy if you are not going forward, if you are not aggressively going forward, you will begin to drift backwards. So I feel if I would have made… I felt like our ministry has always been going like this, and I believe if I would have made that decision to park, pretty soon it would have been going like this, and then pretty soon it would have been going like this. As it is, we came to that place, did some thinking, and then took it to the next level. And now we’re reaching another whole group of people that we really weren’t even reaching before, but it took a decision: I’m going to press on. I’m not going to park. I’m not going to sit in neutral. I’m going to put it in a higher gear now and go to the next level.

Pastor Joel: That’s right. I think we have to stir ourselves out of complacency. It may not be a bad place that we’re at. God has given us all certain influence, and what are we doing with it?  You can’t just… Look what you’ve been given, so you’ve got a tremendous responsibility. So I think that’s the way we have to look at it in every area of our life — that I have the people that I’m influencing around me and we’ve got to keep pressing forward, showing them, being good examples, but just making that decision to come up higher.