I saw a woman in a restaurant yesterday and she told me this story;  she said:  God had asked me to make a meal for somebody who was battling cancer and take it to them, and she said, first of all, I don’t like to cook and secondly, I was really busy and I didn’t really want to do that so I murmured and grumbled but I knew God wanted me to do it and then I repented because I murmured and grumbled and I took the meal.  She said: while I was there, I met a woman who works for your media-buying agency in Tulsa and she said: oh, well, if you’re going to go to the Joyce Meyer meeting, I can get you front row seats. (whoo!) (applause) you never know what that foot washing may get you. (laughing) you have to understand that God can bless you anywhere. (yes!) Some of you are so intent on finding somebody to marry. Well, you know what?

If you’re serving god, you could take out your trash and meet somebody. Come on! (applause) come on, I want the church to get happy, I want you to enjoy your life and I want you to enjoy yourself! (cheering) can you even imagine what would happen in the world if every person who calls themselves a Christian would really start walking in love and serving other people? (applause) wow!  I mean, there would be a light shining from the church that would dispel the darkness. People would be drawn in. We can’t be like the world. We are in the world but we are not of the world. We cannot act like the world.

We have to go the extra mile and do things our flesh doesn’t want to do because we know God is asking us to do them. Little things.  Simple things. Don’t let the devil tell you: that doesn’t matter. That’s not important. He had died and been resurrected from the dead so now he’s going to appear to his disciples as the resurrected king of kings. It’s one thing to wash feet before you’ve experienced a resurrection but now he comes as the resurrected lord of glory. There’s a whole thing here in John 21.  I’m not going to read you the whole thing but it says he appeared to them and they had been fishing and morning was breaking. Verse 4:  morning was already breaking when Jesus came to the beach and stood there. However, the disciples didn’t know it was him. (v. 5) so Jesus said to them, boys, did you catch any meat? Have you caught any fish? They said, no! (v. 6) and he said, cast your net on the right side of the boat and you’ll find some. There’s a whole message in that. Sometimes we’re doing life our way and we don’t catch anything.

I’m a woman and I understand all that.  But we’ve got to be very careful that we don’t just talk about the problems and talk about the problems and talk about the problems and talk about the problems because then what happens is we do forget the good things that God has done in our life, and our faith gets weaker and weaker and weaker when, really, if we talked more about all the great things that God has already done, then the problem we have now would seem pretty minor. (amen!)

Come on! (applause) I’m getting myself excited. Even if I don’t get you excited, I’m excited! For the weapons of our warfare… Everybody say: I’m in a war (I’m in a war) but I have weapons, (but I have weapons,) and now it’s time for me to use them. (and now it’s time for me to use them.) And then in verse 5 it tells us that this battle that we fight is the battle of the mind. [inasmuch as we] refute arguments… The devil likes to argue with us. …theories — he gives us theories and reasons why our faith won’t work — …and every proud and lofty thing that sets itself up against the [true] knowledge of God; and we lead every thought and purpose away captive into the obedience of Christ. Who leads those thoughts away captive?  We do.

We take the thoughts that come into our mind captive if they don’t agree with the word of God, and we say:  “out! I’m not sitting around all day, devil, being a garbage dump for your stupidity. I believe the word of God.” the moment that we voice our doubt, we give it creative power. Did you hear me? Doubt may come against your mind, but if you start talking it… The bible says in Matthew 6: do not worry, saying what are we going to eat? What are we going to drink? What are we going to wear? That’s the way it happens: into your head, out of your mouth. Don’t start doubting, saying.

You can’t help what comes to your mind, but you can make a decision right there what you’re going to do with it. You can say:  is this God or isn’t it God? And if it’s not God, then you just say the opposite of what the devil wants you to say. We need to start doubting our own doubts, and when the devil brings doubt to you say, “I doubt that doubt.” (laughing)

Joyce Meyer: And it’s a lot of us working together.

David:  Exactly.  Our team’s huge.  We have hundreds and hundreds of people all over the world.  One of the thoughts I had in preparing for this that I thought was really, really cool… As a matter of fact, I wanted to actually even just show you this: right now as we’re doing this, all those people, probably hundreds of people, are lined up in Lima, Peru waiting to get into a free medical clinic that our team is down there doing.

Joyce Meyer: They’re there right now.

David: Right now — right now as we do this. We do four or five of these a year.  About six months ago we hired a lady to just do that full-time; it’s something that we have the ability to…

Joyce Meyer: She was a nurse, right?

David: She was a nurse, loved missions, and so she has a team of about 25 people that are there.  They’ll see probably 300 to 400 patients a day. That same place, we did something so simple that for like less than a dollar, you can give a child a pill that will get rid of worms. So we said, “hey, we’ll do a million kids.” I forget the exact cost — it wasn’t a million dollars — but that’s a million kids…

Joyce Meyer: So they had worms in their stomach?

David: Oh yeah.  As they say, when you have worms, the worms get to eat first.

Joyce Meyer: Ooh.

David: But one pill will solve that.  What a simple itch that we’re able to scratch.

Joyce Meyer: Now when she goes, there are doctors and dentists and all kinds of medical professionals who volunteer their time.  A lot of them take their vacation or they take time off from work without pay. They pay their own way and go there to do this kind of work. But what has been the response? Tell us about the response of a lot of these doctors and medical professionals. How has it affected their life?

Joyce Meyer: Right now I’m sitting in the doorway of one of the brothel houses.  Right on the other side of this curtain are commercial sex workers that feel that the only way they can survive is to sell their bodies. That’s really a terrible lifestyle but the good news is through bringing people hope in Jesus Christ and another option, that can change. Your gift to missions will help us make a difference not only in these lives but in more lives here in India and all over the world. I just want to encourage you to take action right away. If you feel that god is putting it in your heart to be part of this, don’t put it off. So many times when we procrastinate, the enemy actually talks us out of doing what god put in our heart to do. You can go to your phone now or you can get on the web site and you can be part of amazing outreach worldwide that’s changing lives.

Joyce Meyer Online:  We’re asking you to help us help others with a special donation to our “hand of hope” outreaches. As a token of thanks, we’ll send you this boxed book set “joy redefined” with three hardbound minibooks helping you expand your relationship with Jesus, others and you. And if you’re able to give a donation of $500 or more, we’ll send you this leather bound “the 365 daily promise bible.” so contact us right now.

Joyce Meyer: I’m not so sure for me that it doesn’t go beyond anything that I even know how to feel, that people are actually living like this.

Ginger Stache: we realize that this isn’t anything new. You’ve seen the pictures and you’ve heard the desperate pleas for help before. But the question is: what does it mean to you? Do you feel overwhelmed or frustrated that you can’t possibly do enough? Would it be easier simply to look away or think about something else? But what if you could make a difference?

Mark Stephen: I don’t think there is anything I’ve done in my life that compares to what I’m doing here through this ministry.

Cheza Lemley: There is so much need it just breaks your heart. I know that everyone really can make a difference.

Narrator: imagine living in a garbage dump, picking through trash day and night looking for whatever you can recycle; that’s what you live on. In Phnom Penh, Cambodia and trash dumps like this around the world, people struggle to make just fifty cents a day.

Ginger Stache: this is my new friend, Ghi.  We just met here today.  When I asked her what she would like to be when she grows up, she really had no concept of her potential because this has been her day-in and day-out existence. We have the ability to reach into dark places like this and to pull out the children and to give them a hope and a future.

Joyce Meyer: we believe in missions and helping the poor and the needy and we’ve been doing it for a long time, and we’ve called the outreach and missions arm of our ministry “hand of hope.”  i like that because i like to think about just reaching out to people with a hand of hope.

Then I believe one of the next things you need to do is forgive everybody else for anything they’ve done wrong to you. I believe that forgiveness is the beginning of all healing. I want to say that again. I believe that forgiveness is the beginning of all healing. When you receive God’s forgiveness that begins the healing in your life. When you receive the love of God as a free gift, it’s almost like a salve that comes into your soul that heals all those wounds that are in there, and then if believe because you’ve been forgiven, you can now give forgiveness.

You can’t give away something you don’t have.  If you receive the love of God, then you can love God back, you can love yourself in a balanced way, and you can begin to love other people.  You can have great relationships. If you receive the forgiveness of God, then you can forgive other people.  If you receive the mercy of God, then you can give other people mercy. I’m telling you that everything you need to live a fruitful, successful, joyful, peaceful life is found in Christ Jesus so I’m asking you to make that decision today.  I’m asking you to pray with me right now and invite Jesus Christ into your life:  father God, we come to you today in Jesus’ name. I ask you to come into my heart.

Forgive my sins and come into my heart. I want Christ as my savior. I give myself to you. Do what you want to with me. I receive you now to be my lord and my savior. In Jesus’ name, amen. You know, it’s a simple prayer but it sure works in your life. If you prayed that prayer today and you meant it, then we want to give you a present; it’s a little book I’ve written called “a new way of living.” you can get that by calling the number, writing to the address, or getting on the website, and then I want to encourage you to join me next week for a look inside our missions programs and see what those of you who are partners are helping us to do and what you could help make happen for somebody else now that you know Christ as your savior.

Joyce Meyer Online – Be sure you don’t miss it. Watch the program as often as you can because it will help you grow in your relationship with God.  We love you. God bless you.

I encourage you not to minimize the value of what you may perceive to be little things in your life. I think a lot of people don’t like their life because by all accounts it’s fairly normal: you get up.  You go to bed. You go to work. You drive in traffic. You clean the house. The family gets it dirty. You clean it again. You go to the grocery store. You get up.  You go to bed. You drive in traffic. You go to church. How many of you are with me? (amen!) You can’t blame life and say: why aren’t you exciting?! I hate you because you’re not exciting! No, you’re the one who needs to be excited.  You’re the one who needs to be filled with passion and zeal.

Whatever kind of life you have if you add your passionate zeal and holy fervor to it, then that life becomes exciting just because you’re living it for God’s glory. (amen!) (applause) I came here purposely to teach you how to love your life and how to love yourself and it’s very important to me when I leave that I believe we’ve made some headway in that area and that you’re not going to go around thinking: I wish I had your life. I wish I looked like you. I wish I had your body. I wish I had your nice thick curly hair.

I wish I had a car like that. All it does is breed discontentment. (amen!) The bible says you have not because you ask not. It doesn’t do you one bit of good to be jealous of what somebody else has. If there’s something you want, you need to ask God for it. (applause) if there’s something you want, you need to ask God for it and if it’s right for you, it will come at the right time in your life. (yes!) I think I’d better say that again:  if there’s something you want, ask God for it and if it’s right for you, it will come at the right time in your life and it won’t come through your struggle or your effort, it will come by the mercy and the grace of God.

Joyce: Mark we’re talking about our right standing with god through the shed blood of Jesus Christ and through our faith in him. That’s a very difficult thing to really grasp and take into yourself because we’re so accustomed to basing our worth and value on what we do rather than who we are, but the fact is biblically we’ve been given a right standing with god through our faith in Jesus Christ but the bible says we have to put it on which I think is very interesting.  I have clothes in my closet but I didn’t just go stand in my closet this morning and this jumped on my body. I had to choose it, I had to take it, and I had to put it on because it was my clothes. I put them on. In Ephesians 6, which you well know, the bible’s teaching us about spiritual warfare, how we can have authority over the devil and one of the things it says is a part of our armor is righteousness called a breastplate of righteousness here; in Isaiah, it’s called a robe of righteousness. But it says you have to put it on, so how do you do that?

Mark: Actually there in Ephesians 4:22, 23, 24, he literally says now you put off the old man with his deeds and your former conversation and be renewed in the spirit of your mind and that you put on the new man, who he says is created in righteousness and true holiness. So, we didn’t make the clothes, we didn’t buy the clothes. Actually Jesus provided this armor, he provided the clothes. All you and I have to do is take the word of god and put it on, so the moment we take the word in the renewing of our mind, I like what “dad hagin” used to say; he says your mind doesn’t stay renewed anymore than your hair stays combed. That means sometimes you can challenge your own attitudes and your own thinking and get it right today and yet, tomorrow you have to go right back to renewing your mind with the word of God, and while you’re renewing your mind, you’re literally getting dressed up in who you are in Christ.  You dress up yourself with an attitude of faith and a spirit of faith and great confidence, and you go out and face the world, not as the challenger but as the champion. In other words, we don’t fight for victory; we always fight from victory. Jesus already gave us the victory and there still is a fight to faith but we’re fighting from a championship that he gave to us. So sometimes we just need to go “ha-ha-ha-ha! I’m not trying to get this. Jesus got it for me. It’s mine.  I have it now.” and just develop an attitude, number one, of victory, an attitude of confidence and put on the Lord Jesus Christ, who we are in him.

Joyce: what you were saying about the mind is so extremely important.  First of all, in Romans 12:2, it says that god has a good plan for our life, a wonderful plan, but that we have to have our mind completely renewed if we want to prove out or actually experience that plan. I think a lot of people talk about the promises of god and the sweet by-and-by and how good things are gonna be when we get to heaven but the fact is when you receive eternal life through Christ, that starts that moment. It’s not just when you go to heaven; it starts right then. The bible says that you receive life and life eternal, so a life while I’m here right now but none of it’s gonna become mine if i don’t believe it. Once again a very simple example, you could be a multi-millionaire but if you didn’t know you had any money, you’d live like a beggar.

Mark: or you’d starve to death with a pocket full of money outside of a grocery store.

Joyce Meyer Online: How do you handle this? How were you able to live this lifestyle and avoid all that stuff?” because when they come to you, now they’re looking for answers. When you go to them, a lot of times they’re just waiting to get out of there and they’re counting the seconds until this guy leaves my locker. So that’s always been one of my prayers, just to live consistently enough that people are drawn to me.

There may be no evidence of that but the word of god has the power to perform exactly what god says you are. God produced it in Christ. He didn’t say try to be in Christ, he didn’t say you ought to be in Christ, he didn’t say you’re someday gonna be in Christ.  He said: right now you are in him and whatever’s in him is in you, the same standing with god. You’re free from a sense of sin and guilt and inferiority. Because of the blood of Jesus, you are in Christ.

Joyce: You know I have four grown children and they don’t have one bit of problem acting like everything I have is theirs and I’m sure you experience the same thing in your life with your children. That’s because we have good relationship, we have good fellowship, we love each other. They don’t have a problem at all.  Somebody bought me a sign for mother’s day on a little tray — my son bought it  and it said “I childproofed my house but they get in anyway.” so, just because they’re grown, if you have good relationships that doesn’t mean they stop coming around or that they get any less expensive.  I think a lot of people think when they grow up, you finally won’t have to pay for everything but sometimes you find yourself helping them more. I don’t know why we can get that on this natural level but we have such a hard time believing that as joint heirs with Christ, whatever he earned and deserved, we can partake of through our relationship with him.

Mark Hankins: Yeah and when we’re born again, god is the father of a family. Jesus throughout the gospel of John, I think he mentions that God is his father over and over again.  One of my favorite statements is when they came to Jesus and they’re threatening him, Jesus would just say something simple like, “my father is greater than all. My father!”  in other words, Jesus had such a confidence that his father was greater than all, and you and I can share that same confidence because we’re in Christ. We shouldn’t even be bashful about saying everything the father has, he’s the father of mercies, he’s the father of glory, he’s the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, he’s my father and I cry Abba father, daddy god!  So everything he has belongs to me. He’s a faithful god. He’s predictable. I know what he will do. He loves me.  Matter of fact, he loves me as much as he loves Jesus.

Joyce Meyer: When I first became a real serious Christian, I was in a church that really pushed street witnessing and passing out tracts everywhere you went.

Mark: God produced that. He did that through the death and resurrection of Christ. He produced that righteousness for us.  I laugh because I heard a funny story years ago about a guy who went to a psychiatrist and the psychiatrist asked “what’s your problem?” he’s suffering with a low self-esteem and low self-image. The psychiatrist asked “what’s your problem?” he said, “I think I’m a dog.” the psychiatrist asked “how long have you had that problem?” he said “since I was a puppy.” he said “get up on the couch and let’s talk about it.” he said “I’m not allowed.” so, a lot of times we have such a low self-esteem that began when we were a puppy. In other words, Jesus said you must be born again and when you make Jesus the lord of your life, one translation says you’re born of God and one translation says you’ve been re-fathered by god. So, god has re-fathered you and you’ve been born again with a new heart, a new spirit, you’re a partaker of the divine nature and the same life that raised Christ from the dead is literally in every believer. We were identified with him.

Joyce: When we’re born again, he comes to live in us, so you might say the divine seed of god is in us and I like to get practical with it and say we are pregnant with everything that God is. Just like when a man plants his seed in the womb of his wife and she becomes pregnant, that seed has to be nurtured and cared for, but at the right time we will give birth to everything that god is if we just keep watering that seed with the word, letting the Holy Spirit work in our lives, changing the way we talk about ourselves, changing the way we think about ourselves because really, the fact is no matter what you have in the bank, if you don’t know you have it you’re not gonna spend it. So, no matter what we have in Christ, if we don’t know it, we’re not gonna benefit from it and the devil loves ignorance.

Mark: You have Colossians 2:9-10 where it says what’s in Christ, “for in him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.”  but he doesn’t stop there and he says “and you are complete in him who is the head of all principality and power.”  so what god did in Christ, I like to say it this way, whatever god did in Christ is what he wanted to do in everybody, so god was literally not working on Christ, he was working in Christ and he was working on us.  In God’s mind, he deposits everything he has, his life, his divine nature, his ability into Christ and then he put us in union with Christ.  We walked right into the treasury.  Everything God has, we’re heirs of God, joint heirs with Jesus Christ but sometimes as Christians, we almost like to talk about how we’re nothing and we can’t do anything, but god has a funny way of dealing with people. Even in the old testament the angel came to Gideon and said, “hey, Gideon! The lord is with you and you’re a mighty man of valor!” it literally means you’re a champion!  And Gideon says, “how could that be true? I come from the worst tribe, I come from the worst family, I’m the worst child in the family and I’m living in a hole in the ground.”  yet, god comes and says: you are a champion! Notice the angel didn’t bring the message and say, “Gideon, someday you might be alright if we keep working with you.” no, God speaks in the present tense; he says: you are.

Joyce Meyer Ministries: I got to the point where I actually did not even want to go outside anymore because if I did not give every human being that I came near a tract, I felt guilty.