Joyce: you can be determined that even if it’s just God on your side, you can still overcome and have victory, and become a better you as your book talks about.

Pastor Joel: Yeah, I think so, too.  Sometimes it’s funny — I don’t know that they always mean to, but sometimes your own family or the people closest to you just keep bringing up something or telling you what you can’t do. You would think that would be — again, maybe they don’t mean to — they’d be the people who would encourage you.  You think about David’s own family. He wouldn’t have become who he was meant to be if he would have let his brother condemn him and keep him feeling like a loser and all that, but he just rose up. Any of us can press forward. I remind myself all the time that nobody can keep me from fulfilling my destiny except myself. The devil can’t, other people can’t, critics can’t. If I’ll stay focused and trust God, all the forces of darkness can’t keep me from becoming who God created me to be.

Joyce: That’s absolutely right, but we can prevent progress through laziness, passivity, complacency, looking at our past failures all the time. But interestingly enough, another thing that I also think can hinder people from becoming all that God wants them to be is leaning too much on their past successes.

Pastor Joel: I think that’s exactly right because it keeps us from pressing forward sometimes. You say, “I’m good enough.” I like the phrase: don’t let good enough be good enough. I mean, “i’m a good enough minister, a good enough parent.” or the other one that I hear is, “i’m as good as my neighbors,” or “I went as far as my parents did.”

Joyce: We need to always be willing to come up higher in every area of our life. That requires stepping out and trying new things. Victoria, I want to just ask you what about stepping out and trying new things? Is that ever scary? Is that hard to do sometimes? Is that something more people need to do?

Victoria Osteen: Oh, yeah, it’s scary. It’s scary. You have to step out in faith sometimes. We talk to people all the time who have a dream in their heart but they either don’t know how to execute it or what to do.  And we always just say: what’s God telling you to do right now?  Just take one step. You don’t have to look at the huge picture — what am I going to become? Start out with baby steps. Just do something that God’s speaking to you. It’s not always easy but that’s where you have to put that faith and trust in God. I like what you said a few minutes ago — we’re modeling. We’re always modeling. When you’re stepping out in faith, you’ve got to realize that you’re modeling for someone else. We think, “what if I step out and I fail?” well, what if you step out and you don’t fail? You’re going to give someone else some strength who’s watching you, and you’re going to give someone else some faith to do something. So I just think that we can’t look at it as a whole — that we have to arrive the first step that we take. But we just take small steps. And it’s those victories that give you the strength. You don’t want to stay in the victory, but you want to get that strength from the victory. Then you can push forward and take that next step, and God’s always with you. If he’s told you to do it, he always opens doors and gives you a way to do it.

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.

Joyce: Let me just ask you one final question, and we’re just about out of time. I know that probably a lot of people watching today think, “I’m stuck in this little place. I live in this little town where nothing’s happening. I don’t have any money. I don’t have any influential people in my life.” or “I’m just a this,” or “I’m just a that.” do people have to have some certain kind of privilege and circumstance to become a better person, or can they decide to bloom where they’re planted?

Pastor Joel: That’s exactly the key. I was going to say that you’ve just got to bloom right where you are. Be the best that you can be right where you are because every day that you go to work with a good attitude and you’re kind to people and you’re full of joy, you’re passing the test. I always remind myself that promotion comes from God. It doesn’t come from my boss or my parents or from my neighborhood. God will get you to where you need to be if you keep your trust in him. I believe God’s working behind the scenes in our life. You’ve just got to keep pressing forward because God can get you to where you need to be.

Joyce: One thing’s for sure: God is an excellent God and he has called us to excellence. I believe any person who will make that decision to step out of mediocrity and be the very best person that they can be, God will promote them in due time. Well, thanks for being on the show today. We hope that your book will be a great success; we know that it will be. Today we’re offering my 4-part teaching series “how to succeed at being yourself,” and as a gift to you, we’re going to send you Joel Osteen’s book “become a better you.” now that is a good deal that you cannot pass up. You can get my 4-part series “how to succeed at being yourself.” you can listen to that. And then when you’re not listening, you can read his book on how to become a better you. If you stay with us, my announcer will give you all the information you need to take advantage of this resource offer. We love you. We are so glad that you joined us on the program today. And we’re challenging you to come up higher in some area of your life!

Now, the only way we can walk through this life and not be a phony is to have things right inside and then what’s going on outside be a result of what’s happened on the inside. A phony is someone who pretends that everything is a certain way but really inside, they’re not that way at all. Jesus called them hypocrites and Pharisees. So we need to understand today that our inner life is very important to god. We can put on for everybody else but god knows what’s going on in us. So, Romans 14:17 says the kingdom of god — here we are talking about the kingdom of god — is not meat and drink. It’s not stuff. The kingdom of god is not things, but it is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. I think a lot of people spend their life and I did this: I was seeking all that other stuff but when it came to righteousness, peace, and joy, I didn’t have any of that, nor was I pursuing any of that. I thought if I got all this stuff, then I’d have that. But see, god wants us to get that first and then he gives us the stuff.

I want to make sure you understand this because I think a large majority of Christians spend their whole life trying to do this backwards. They’re trying to get everything out here fixed, thinking then they’ll be okay inside, but Jesus came to live in us, to heal us, to make us what we need to be inside, and then what we need to do on the outside will just kind of come as a fruit of the life that we’re living. Nobody would ever go and plop a tree on top of the ground and expect it to stay there without it having roots. So, what’s going on in us is the roots, so to speak, of our Christian life. I was seeking big ministry but lived under guilt and condemnation all the time. I didn’t know who I was in Christ, so every time somebody criticized me, I fell apart.

I didn’t really know who I was in Christ, I didn’t like myself, so anytime anybody judged me, didn’t show approval of me, or didn’t give me enough compliments or whatever, then I was a basket case for days. Maybe not an outward basket case where I looked like I was falling apart, but I worried and was overly concerned and was a people pleaser and all these things that so many of us go through. Many times we go through them privately and never tell anybody because we act like everything is okay.

So many people have secret fears, secret worries, and secret concerns. I honestly think that a large majority of people never get around to getting still long enough to even think about, “what is going on in me?” we can dress it up and take it to church, we can whoop and holler, jump up and down, we can bring our church face, smile at everybody, and learn all the Christian lingo — praise the lord, thank you, Jesus, hallelujah — get a bumper sticker, get a rhinestone Jesus pin, buy the t-shirt, buy the tapes, have the library, but what’s going on in you?

If you have peace in you, then what goes on around you won’t bother you nearly as much. If you know who you are in Christ – I mean if you’re rooted and grounded in Christ and you’re rooted and grounded in his love and you know who you are, it’s not going to matter so much what other people think because you know that you get up every day and that you do your best and you love god, so you don’t get so concerned about other people’s criticisms and judgments. But if we don’t know who we are, if we’re trying to find out who we are, then every little thing that happens out here affects us in an adverse way. So I just want to encourage you to ask yourself, “Do I know who I am in Christ? Am I walking in righteousness?” when I say walking in righteousness, yes, I’m talking about doing things right but I’m also talking about doing things right out of a revelation of the fact that you’ve been made right with god.

God has called us to a holy life. He never asks us to do anything that he doesn’t give us the ability to do, so he has planted a seed of holiness in us by giving us his holy spirit. God expects us to walk righteously, he expects us to do what is right, so he gives us righteousness as a free gift. The moment we receive Jesus Christ as our savior, the bible says, he takes our sin and he gives us his righteousness. God takes our mess. He takes everything we deserved, which was punishment and misery, and he gives us everything that he deserved because he did everything right. “He that knew no sin became sin, that we might be made the righteousness of god in Christ.” well, the bible says you have to put on righteousness.

“We would just say, ‘Lord, we’re going to come against fear here, we’re going to come against intimidation and hopelessness, even things that have been thrown out by perhaps some medical people who don’t really know God and don’t know what God can do and that God can get outside of what seems possible,” Mike prayed.

Ed decided if he was going to beat this disease, he would have to fire up his faith.

“I began to move my level of faith from a maintenance level to really a strong level, and it was only through absorbing myself in the healing scriptures of the word of God and those that really talked about faith,” Ed says. “And then once you get to the point where you really believe that God has truly done something miraculous in your life, you really move into an area of extraordinary faith — faith that says, ‘mountain move.’”

Soon after his chemotherapy ended, he had an experience that would forever change his life.

Ed’s wife Jan says, “one time we were in a meeting and I could just feel the power of God just touch him so mightily.”

Ed goes on to say, “I felt a complete lifting of a burden. I felt a weight lift enough to where I was actually able to personally confess and believe that it was done. I really felt like there was a total work that had come to completion.”

Ed also attacked the cancer by radically changing his diet to give his body the best chance of winning the fight. Today more than four years after his diagnosis, he’s healthy, with no signs of active disease. The doctors who initially predicted he would not survive won’t say he’s cured but they’re amazed that he’s experiencing one of the longest remissions they’ve ever seen for this disease.

Dr Vicik says, “I’m sure this is going to help a lot of people who are in a position where they may be feeling down or if things are against them because of illness, this could be an inspiration.”

Ed is now able to share with others battling cancer, giving them hope, building their faith, and offering comfort.

“God spoke to my heart,” Ed told us. “God has allowed it to be a blessing in my life, and I can use it as a platform of ministry in a way to really touch other people’s lives.”

Ed is very grateful that he had a relationship with God and that he had someone that he could rely on, someone who would strengthen him during his difficult times. Sometimes I can’t imagine why people would even bother to get out of bed in the morning if they didn’t know God. There is a lot of pressure in the world today, a lot of stress, a lot of things we can get concerned about. We all have different things come up at different times that we don’t like, that we don’t enjoy and we weren’t expecting, and it’s so wonderful to be able to put our trust in God, to say, “God, I know that you love me and that no matter what kind of a situation I have, all things are possible with God.” This scripture that I was reading you before said, “thank God in everything; no matter what the circumstances may be, be thankful and give thanks. This is the will of God for you who are in Christ Jesus.” It starts out though in verse 17 and says, “be unceasing in prayer, praying perseveringly. Thank God in everything, no matter what the circumstances may be.” Then it goes on to say, “do not quench or suppress the Holy Spirit.”

Is satan dominating your thoughts or are you guarding your heart and actively casting down wrong ones and choosing to think on right ones? Our weapons are not weapons of flesh and blood; they are spiritual.  Satan is a spirit. We’re in a spiritual war and we have to fight him in the spirit. Do you feel and act like a soldier? Do you realize that as a soldier, you cannot act like everybody else? My husband was in the army for three years and during those years that he was in the army he had to live a totally different kind of life. He had to wear a different kind of clothes.

He had different rules and regulations. He lived as a soldier. The bible tells us in 2 timothy that no soldier when he’s in service gets entangled in the affairs of civilian life. So could I just ask you tonight are you’re entangled in worldly stuff that you ought not to be entangled in? Are you too busy trying to make money? Seek God; things will seek you. Are you too busy trying to climb the ladder of success only to get to the top of the ladder and find out your ladder’s leaning against the wrong building?  (laughing)

Are you failing to pay attention to some of the most precious relationships in your life because you’re so busy trying to succeed in the business world? When you’re on your deathbed you’re not going to ask for your bank balance, I can promise you that. You’re going to want your friends.  Are you killing yourself with stress because you’re trying to have another and another and another and more and another and another? Are you too busy to pray?

Are you too busy to fellowship with God?  Are you too busy to do acts of kindness for one another? Are you entangled in the affairs of civilian life? If all we can do is worry about our stuff and how to get more, and how to take care of what we have, and worry about what people think of us, worry about this and worry about that, and be involved all tangled up in our own problems… You can even get entangled in somebody else’s problems and it will keep you from acting like a soldier in the army of God. This has nothing to do with my message but I’ll give it to you free: (laughing) you cannot help somebody who does not want to be helped. (applause)

Joyce Meyer – I remember those days when I would show up in the locker room and I would swear and my wife would hear it on tv.

Pastor Phil: Proverbs says: Guard your heart with all diligence because out of it are all the issues of life. If we’ve got a positive attitude, we’ll have a positive mindset. But you can’t have a positive attitude if your spirit has been wounded, if it’s been negative and unhealed. I’ve watched people go through their whole life with this unhealed, wounded soul and they’re infecting everybody else around them. Another way that a spirit gets wounded is by poison — a poisonous spirit. Like it says in Psalms: the poison of asps is under their tongue. I don’t know if you’ve ever been with a person — they start talking to you and they give you an attitude. I mean, you walk away and you’re like: what about that person who did that to them? Or else you get a letter and you open it up and some of them start:  “dear brother in the Lord…” Well, I know this is going to be a bad one! It’s got like all sorts of poison. You feel the poison in it trying to get at you to change your attitude, change your spirit. And again, it’s about just keeping our spirit clean from being poisoned with other people’s bad attitudes.

Joyce: And we need to be very careful that we’re not putting poison into other people’s spirits, too, by telling things we don’t need to tell, and innuendos and suggestions that we don’t need to make because that’s a big responsibility. I don’t want to have to stand before God and have him ask me, “why did you poison people’s spirits?”  I want to be putting good things into people. We’re going to take a break and we’re going to be right back. When we return, we’re going to introduce you to a couple who lost their children but held on to God and found the healing they so desperately needed. You’ll find out how that happened right after this.

Woman: When I was a little girl, my parents used to fight all the time. I’d go to this field and just be alone. I remember one day when I was so sad, I sat there and as clear as clear can be, I heard God say, “hold on, help is on the way.”

Joyce Meyer Online – I think that’s one of the real keys to this.  I think you’re right. I think witnessing so much becomes me being able to share what Jesus did for me to overcome what you’re going through, when you talk about language.