2 Keys to Christian Living | Joyce Meyer

well i don't feel like it's been all that long since i was here but i thought i'd come back and bother you again if you don't mind and um i come down here quite a bit to write dave's not with me this trip because when i'm working on a book sometimes it's good for me just to get away by myself a little bit so i told todd i'm just going to start telling him when i'm down here and if he wants me to come i'll come and if he don't then i just won't come so all right well we're living in some unique times and everybody's always wanting to know well joyce what do you think you got a word for us and you know what i felt like god put on my heart is just take it one day at a time i don't know what's going to happen you don't know what's going to happen god knows what's going to happen and that's good enough and you know the world is in a terrible condition but this is such an opportunity for the church it's really a big opportunity for us to show off and show out and show these people that are so desperate what god is like and the other thing you want to do is be positive it's so important to be positive and i got a little funny story about being positive there was a woman who was starting to lose her hair and quite a bit of her hair was coming out every day when she'd wash it and brush it and she was of course a little concerned but she was a real positive woman wanted to stay positive about the whole thing and so her hair kept coming out and coming out one morning she got up and she only had three hairs on her head and she looked in there and she said well i know what i'll do i'm gonna braid my hair today so she braided her hair and just went on and had a good day the next morning she got up she only had two hairs on her head she said oh my how shall i fix my hair today well i know what i'll do i'll i'll put it in pigtails so she put it in pigtails and went on and had a happy day the next morning she got up and had one hair left on her head well what am i going to do with this how should i fix my hair today well she said i'll i'll have a ponytail today so she had a ponytail well guess what the next day she got up didn't have any hair at all on her head she said well thank god today i don't have to do my hair [Music] all right i want to pray something over you father i pray that tonight every person will pay attention and if they won't get distracted that they won't get distracted and i pray that they won't just hear this but they'll go out and do this because if we're hearers only and not doers then we're deceiving ourselves and i pray that what i say here tonight will make a difference that there will be a strong anointing on it that will push it down into their spirits not just put it in their heads and i thank you that even while i'm teaching i can learn in jesus name amen now where's my clock that i'm supposed to be seeing okay i can't see that so dave you got my clock or you don't have it do you i got all night i i can't can you make that thing brighter or something or i've been up here three minutes and 48 seconds okay i want to share with you a message tonight that is it's been one that's been very important to me and something that has really helped me in my life and i hope that it will help you it has a funny little title it's called don't disturb me you might be thinking what in the world is that about well you know i think a large majority of people in the world today that's just their attitude i'm busy i'm going somewhere i've got my plan i've got my thing i've got my day figured out and so if you got a problem don't bother me with it well you know jesus wasn't like that now we stay in a lot of hotels and in hotels they always leave us one of these to put on our door but today people are wearing them on their bodies now i'll just wear this around for a little bit just so you get the picture we have such a huge opportunity in front of us today but we're going to have to get more like jesus and a lot less like a carnal selfish self-centered christian who just goes to church and thinks that's all there is to it you know just because you go to church that doesn't make you a christian i could go home and sit in my garage all night and it wouldn't make me a car jesus said i want you to go and bear fruit so maybe i'd just like to ask you tonight to think a little bit this next week about what kind of fruit are you bearing in your life are you coming here and just being fed and you love that you love for somebody else to do all the work and dig out all the messages and just feed you all the good stuff but what are you doing with it i hope a lot i'm not accusing anybody i hope that every message you hear you hear it with the intent that you're going to do something with it now we're going to use the parable of the good samaritan tonight and i want you to listen to it like maybe you've never heard it before there was a pharisee and he said to jesus what must i do to inherit eternal life and he said you shall love the lord your god with all your heart with all your soul with all your mind and all your strength and you shall love your neighbor even as you love yourself i say those two scriptures out loud every morning because that's what god has called us to do is to love him and to love people amen and we throw that word around so much we love ice cream we love god and sometimes we don't know what the difference is but we have to learn how to love the way god wants us to love and i'll just throw this out because i like to say this at some point in every message i preach if you're going to love people you have to be ready to be very generous with forgiveness and i just wonder how many people are here tonight that are mad at somebody nobody okay that's good are offended christians give the devil more ground in their life through unforgiveness than through any other thing i will say it again christians give the devil more ground in their lives through unforgiveness than through any other thing let's remember the lord's prayer father forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us well do we really want him to forgive us the way we forgive other people we've got to be quick to forgive hard to offend not touchy so he said well lord i've been doing that since my youth but in order to justify himself he said so who is my neighbor well that's a good question to ask who is my neighbor anyway is it the person that lives next door in reply jesus said a man was going down from jerusalem to jericho when he was attacked by robbers now i want you to use your imagination and i want you to kind of see this story and not just listen to it this man's walking down the street all of a sudden he gets attacked by robbers they stripped him of his clothes beat him and left leaving him half dead so they took his clothes they beat him up he was bloody he must have taken a very hard beating because they said he was half dead a priest happened to be going down the same road and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side uh-oh have you ever been going down an island church and you saw somebody that you knew if they stopped you you were going to be in for a long story that you didn't want to hear and so you pass by on the other side come on now sometimes we avoid those people that are needy because we don't want them pulling on us we don't want to be disturbed we're here to go to church we're here to be spiritual you'll get this or we'll be here all night a priest you know i think he might have been on his way to church and that's why he was in such a hurry and so he didn't have time to mess with this guy who was bloody and beaten up and half dead so he just somebody else can do that and he crossed the street and passed by then a levite came by and when he saw the man he also passed by on the other side of the street and levites were part of the jewish priesthood they did all different kinds of jobs and so this also was a religious man i'm sure he went to synagogue and he followed all the rules and regulations but you know jesus really got unto the pharisees because he said you follow all the rules and regulations but you won't lift a finger to help anybody i'm going to give you some homework when we leave tonight and then there was a samaritan now you know the samaritans the jews hated the samaritans you know it's kind of interesting to me because a lot of times real religious people actually hate the people that are out doing something to make a difference in the world i've had more judgment and criticism from people that are doing nothing right religious people are not always very nice and we're supposed to be nice matter of fact they hated the samaritans so bad that they wouldn't even go through samaria they didn't want anything to do with it well the samaritans believe that judaism and the jewish torah had been corrupted over time and they no longer followed the ten commandments or all the rules and regulations but i just wonder if we only had two choices if god had two choices take somebody that follows all the rules and regulations but never lifts a finger to help anybody are somebody who maybe doesn't follow all the rules and regulations but they really help a lot of people i just wonder which one he'd pick now i'm not saying he'd take an unbeliever over a believer but jesus said if you love me you will obey me how many of you would say jesus is your lord okay well then let me tell you two words that you can never say because they never they do not go together and that's no lord you can say yes lord but you can't say no lord because if you say no then he's not your lord because if he's our lord then the only thing we can say is yes lord let's practice say yes lord you know all the miracles that jesus did he was interrupted to do them he was on his way somewhere he was doing something he was busy and i've got all the references here i don't have time to read them all but i am going to just go back here and give you just a few of the little scenarios of what was going on and you just think about them real quick jesus came down from the mountainside and large crowds followed him a man with leprosy came and knelt down before him lord if you're willing you can make me clean so he stopped what he was doing and cleansed the leper then when he entered capernaum a centurion came up to him asking for help and so he stopped and helped him when jesus came to peter's house peter's mother-in-law was sick with a fever so he stopped and healed her when evening came there were many who were demon-possessed and he stopped and cast the devils out there was a storm that came up when he was in the boat with the disciples and he got up from his nap and stopped the storm he healed crippled people paralyzed people demon-possessed people raised a man's daughter who had just died and every every one of these you can't find one that says jesus was sitting around looking for something to do he was going somewhere he was doing something but he didn't pass by on the other side of the road he stopped everybody say he stopped say it again he stopped and he helped him and then he went back to what he was doing you know we talk about the steps of jesus there was a big movement for a long time like following the steps of jesus and but maybe we should study the stops of jesus maybe we should look more at the things that he stopped to do because they're the kind of things that he wants us to do jesus was interruptable and we need to be that way too and just in order to be real practical with you i'm going to tell you four stories and three of them are from my life one's from my daughter's life and i'm not telling you these stories to get a pat on the back that's not i'm just using an example and these are fresh in my mind but i'm going to tell you the bad story first because back when i did things like this i didn't know a lot of the word yet i was just just learning the word and i was a pretty religious law keeper but i hadn't gotten around yet to doing much of what i said that i believed and we all kind of start out that way and that's not so bad but we can't stay that way you know jesus doesn't care that you haven't arrived but he wants you moving amen if this time next year you're still in the same place you are this year or if i am there's a problem i'm not growing i need to always be growing and moving and coming up higher so i remember going to a doctor's office with my son who'd broken his arm and he was going to get the cast off and i was waiting in the outer room and there was an elderly man there who had fallen on the ice and had broken his leg and he wanted to tell me all about it i mean like all about it matter of fact he was willing to tell me two or three or four times all about it well i had my bible and i actually prayed that god would make the man shut up so i could read my bible come on because i just didn't want to mess with him i had a plan i had my do not disturb sign on and all of a sudden the lord spoke to my heart and he said if that was billy graham would you listen to him i thought yeah and then he said why well because i would probably think maybe he could do something for me or at least i'd have a good story to tell ooh i went to the doctor's office today and billy graham was there and we talked for 15 minutes see we we have to get beyond doing things for people only if it's going to get us something do you have any idea i mean i try to imagine this but i can't do you have any idea what would happen if every person on the planet who calls themselves a christian would go out into the world and help just one person we'll just say even one a week what would happen it would be phenomenal we are ambassadors for christ and the amplified bible says his personal representatives and then listen to this and that he is making his appeal to the world through you well that's amazing but i i've got to i i've come a little ways in 45 years that's a good thing got a long way to go but i've come a ways in 45 years and so this might have been four four or five years ago i was in utah and i stopped at a starbucks and i asked if i could if the girl could make me a a pour over i'm like a coffee snob it's got to be a certain way or i don't want it and uh i don't like it too strong don't like it too weak yeah she says oh we we've got this new coffee press let me make you a cup of coffee with that and i thought no coffee presses are always too strong for me i just want a pour over well just to tell you this girl was i mean everywhere where you could have a tattoo or some kind of metal hanging on you she had it and her hair was about four different colors so she just wouldn't have been her and i wouldn't have you know just well you know trying not to say anything bad about her but she just it wouldn't have been my person to hang out with you know she might have been one of the ones that i would have crossed over on the other side of the street you know we're not too good at messing with people that aren't like us boy they pumped that clock up i can see that dude now i've got old eyes my husband and i are so funny at home everything that he says to me i say huh and everything he says to me or everything i say to him he says huh and then he says hunt twice and so it it's really like getting to be a comedy so the girl says to me if you don't like this i will make you anything else in the store that you want and then she's just talking and she said i love this thing she said i'm i'm trying to save enough money that i can buy myself one well this coffee press was 150 and i got my coffee and sure enough it was really good and so i decided to buy one of the presses and i walked out of the store and just took a few steps and then i heard the lord speak in my heart buy her one of those well you know in today's world sometimes you just want to be a little careful about just walking up to somebody and saying i'd like to buy you a gift and i don't know this lady who wants to feel like a fool and so but you can't say no lord because that don't go together amen [Music] that doesn't work i kind of feel for you guys because after you leave here tonight you're gonna have to live a different way so you know we always say we're willing to be a fool for christ but are we really you can't care what people think especially not if you're going to love strangers and i don't know if you know it or not but there's some really strong stuff in the bible about how to treat strangers and so i went back and she was waiting on somebody so i waited far and i said can i talk to you a minute so she came over and i said um i want to buy you one of those presses oh no no you know that's always what you get first no no no i said yeah i really feel like god put it in my heart to buy you one of those presses well she started crying she's making a scene and you know everybody always makes a scene and i don't want anybody to make a scene i just want to buy the coffee press and get back to my shopping so that is so amazing i bought her the coffee press and then maybe an hour later i was on a different floor in a different store in the bathroom i'm going out of the bathroom and she's coming in and she looked at me and she said can you tell me why are you the kindest person in the world now obviously i'm not the kindest person in the world but apparently i was the one who showed her kindness and i don't think we realize how hungry people in the world are for just a little bit of kindness just a little bit and and it doesn't cost you that much you just you just got to be like the samaritan you got to be willing to stop and i said well i'm a christian and god's blessed my life so much and i just wanted to bless you and she said well that really says a lot to me because she said i've been kind of mad at the man upstairs i said why and she said well my mother died with cancer several years ago and i just have not been in a good place with god since then now you know i don't know what went on with her life after that but maybe i'll see her in heaven and it might not be because of the coffee press i might have just been one little one little piece of what god was trying to do in her life but the bible tells us to do things for people who can't do anything back for us we got to be so careful about our motives and make sure that we're not just doing things for people with an expectation of them doing something back for us that's why the word says to do what you do in secret now that doesn't mean that you can always do that but we do have to examine our hearts and make sure that when we do things for people we're not just trying to kind of covertly buy something from them and then i had another experience about two weeks ago i was in a restaurant eating and you know everybody's short of workers today which i don't get any of that but they can't nobody's got any money but nobody wants to work so i can't quite figure that out and so they didn't have enough waiters and waitresses to take care of the crowd in there so we sat there 20 minutes before anybody ever even came to bring us any water of course i'm trying to act like a christian and not be impatient but i'm i'm not the best waiter in the world and so um this girl finally comes over and she's real friendly she said i'm so sorry you've been sitting here such a long time she said we are so short on health and she said i'm working 65 hours a week and you could tell she was just so tired that she could hardly stand it well when we got ready to leave we gave her a 100 tip and uh you know just to be nice and my husband just said you know you're doing you're doing a good job here you're really going the extra mile working hard so we just wanted to bless you so she starts crying and she cries for 15 minutes she's crying she's the bartender she's crying behind the bar she's crying at the tables and so in the course of talking with her she said yeah it's just been so tough she said i was totally out of work for a while when colgate first hit because the restaurant closed and she said i got behind on my electric and she said every month i'm afraid they're going to turn it off and she you know she was just saying how much it meant to her to get that tip well we started home and god wanted to interrupt me again and i felt like he said pay her electric bill well i didn't know what it was but i figure if they're ready to turn her electric off it wasn't going to be cheap and to be real honest i asked my daughter if she would go back over there the next day and take care of this for me because i didn't really want to go over there and look silly again and she said no i wouldn't be comfortable doing that so how many of you are with me you know so [Applause] now i'm busy i got lots to do but i get myself back over to the restaurant the next day and she wasn't there she wasn't working that day but the hostess recognized me and said oh i love you so much you've helped me so much and i said well good you can help me with something and so i had this email address that my daughter keeps where we can have things sent if we want to without giving all kinds of information and so i had a note if you send your electric bill to this email address we'd like to pay it for you and so the next day she contacts my daughter by email the electric bill by the way was fifteen hundred dollars and uh oh well i wish i had that kind of money well maybe if you'd buy some coffee presses and yeah you cannot out-give god you cannot out-give god and so she types this note back and she said you know i had just about lost my faith in god but you have no idea what this means to me i've never had anybody be this kind to me in my whole life i'm going to challenge you to pray every morning god would you put somebody in my path today that i can help how many of you would be willing to do that okay now you stuck your hand up there and god saw it amen and you can't be picky and choosy and remember there's none of this no lord that doesn't work you can't be selective about what god asks you to do and then one other story my daughter you know it doesn't always have to involve money sometimes people just need you to listen or sometimes even just a smile or just to tell somebody you're doing a good job my daughter was coming out of the store one day and this elderly gentleman was waiting at the curb by her and there was all kinds of traffic going by and she was in a hurry wanted to get home and do all these things but she had to wait for all this traffic so this man starts talking to her and she didn't really want to listen but you know if we're going to be real christians we don't always get to do what we want to do amen and so she said i felt like god just put on my heart to just stand there and listen to him so she said i stood there for 15 minutes and just listened to him and you know what that was just a kind thing to do but you know what we've always got something else we have in addition to our do not disturb sign is we've all got an excuse bag and so really to be honest most christians just look like this all the cameras come out when i act silly now of course we wouldn't wear them like this but they're really there we always have an excuse when it's not going to be convenient love always finds a way but indifference finds an excuse a reporter interviewing people on the street approached a well-dressed successful looking man and asked one of the two most pressing problems in america and the man said i don't know and i don't care and the reporter said sir you are absolutely correct those are the two biggest problems people don't know and they don't care hallelujah well i went to church last sunday isn't that enough no see we're just fooling ourselves if we're not going to get out in the world and live it yeah you're being a little too quiet we're just fooling ourselves if we're going to get out and i know that's a little bit scary because you think joyce i don't know if i can do that kind of stuff like you're talking about well it's not that you know god has me do something like that every day but i get interrupted a lot by god because it's about more than just coming and sitting in a pew amen indifference is the attitude that pervades our culture today i don't know and i don't care don't disturb me i've always got an excuse i'm too busy i'm too this i'm too that i don't know how to do that i'd feel silly whatever it might be in luke 14 12-14 it said jesus said to his host when you give a luncheon or a dinner don't invite your friends your brothers or your sisters your relatives or your rich neighbors if you do they might invite you back and then you'll be repaid now you know jesus used a lot of over-exaggerations to make points and that was very common in those days i do it sometimes in my preaching i'll overstate something to make a point and so he didn't he's not really saying you can't have your friends for dinner he's just saying make sure that that's not all that you have how about let's having some of the people that you don't know that can't pay you back but when you give a banquet invite the poor the crippled the lame and the blind you will be blessed although they cannot repay you you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous luke 14 16-20 jesus replied a certain man was preparing great banquet he invited many guests and at the time of the banquet he sent his servant to tell those who had been invited come because everything is now ready but they all alike began to make excuses and i think maybe jesus might be saying today okay everything is all ready come now and get out in the world and start doing what you say you believe hmm but they all alike began to make excuses the verse one said well i just bought a field and i have to go see to it please excuse me another said i've just bought five yoke of oxen and i'm on my way to try them out would you please excuse me and still another said well i just got married so i can't come please excuse me in matthew 8 19 through 22 it says then a teacher of the law came to him teacher i will follow you wherever you go and jesus replied foxes have dens and birds have nests but the son of man has no place to even lay his head in other words if you're going to follow me it's not always going to be comfortable another disciple said to him lord i'd like to go but first let me go and bury my father listen to what jesus said but jesus said follow me and let the dead bury the dead so what's jesus saying leave the dead stuff alone and follow me how many hours a day do you spend on social media listening to all the gossip and the stupidity that people spurt out about stuff they don't even know anything about i you would not believe the stuff that i can find out about me if i get on there i mean three years ago i was dead we had people calling the office crying oh my god i had to get on facebook and say i'm not dead right here we have people calling the office still to this day insisting that they can buy our diet pills that i'm selling i don't sell diet pills i'm preaching the gospel i mean i people just really need to get something to do but you know that's just wasted time just to go through all that stuff and everybody telling you every move they're making all day long i mean who cares i guess somebody does they keep reading it and if you're somebody who does that i'm sorry if i'm offending you but there are so many more things to do than to spend hours a day reading all this stuff a lot of it is just gossip and i thank god for the internet because we can put the gospel anywhere and the devil can't stop us if they got a signal they can pull it down but then of course satan always tries to take advantage of every good thing that's out there too and so be careful about spending too much of your time on dead things jesus said no follow me well let's go back for a minute we have to go back for a minute to the good samaritan who should we help who should we be concerned about jesus said your neighbor well who is our neighbor in reply jesus said a man was going down from jerusalem to jericho when he was attacked by robbers they stripped him of his clothes beat him and went away leaving him half dead a priest happened to be going down the same road and when he saw the man he passed by on the other side so to a levite when he came to the place and saw him pass by on the other side but a samaritan as he traveled where the man was when he saw him he took pity on him now the samaritan did some things that i want you to notice first of all he noticed was interesting when we were in the back room before we came out i used the last kleenex in my little package and todd noticed that and he brought me a new package little thing but i love people that notice so he noticed he stopped he sacrificed because he he took this man put him on his own horse took him to an end he apparently was going somewhere that he had to get to and he said to the owner of the end you take care of him get him healthy again and whatever it costs i will pay you when i come back he didn't even put any limits on what he would do for this guy that he didn't even know oh this is better than your acting i love that a man named ct stud said some wish to live within the sound of a chapel bell i want to run a rescue mission within a yard of hell do you want to sit in church and just be religious or do you want to get involved how many of you agree with me the large majority of people today they just want to get involved mean you know it's true it's true [Applause] you want to get involved a lot of people love to come sit in the back row of church come in halfway through worship leave the second it's over don't want to don't know you don't want to know you just want to check off my went to church box this week you'll recover by the next time i come he noticed he stopped and he sacrificed without limits i love that be mindful to be a blessing especially to those of the household of faith galatians 6 says that scripture has been life-changing for me because what it says be mindful he's saying on purpose have your mind full of ways that you can be a blessing so see if you'll pray every morning like you said you would god show me somebody i can help today show me something i have that i can give away put somebody in front of me that has a need he'll do it and it may not be every single day of your life and some days it may just be a little thing it may just be that you'll notice something and pray for the person a man called me the other day that actually has a prophetic ministry and he was ministering some things to me but he said well tell me joyce what are you what what's on your heart these days what are you what are you teaching and i said for quite a while now i've been trying to get all of us to realize that love is not just a word it's not a sermon it's not something we theorize about it's action and it's expensive love always cost us something some money some time some effort verse 10 in galatians 6 says so then as occasion and opportunity open up to us let us do good to all people can everybody say i'm not going to miss another opportunity i wish some of you guys would smile more say it like you mean i'm not going to miss another opportunity i think this part of florida is going to have a better day tomorrow let me shut this down with one last scripture amos 6 verse 1 and verses 4 through 7. these scriptures tell us this those who are idle and don't stay active helping others are the first to go into captivity themselves woe to you who are complacent in zion and to you who feel secure on mount samaria you notable men of the foremost nation to whom the people of israel come you lie on beds adorned with ivory and lounge on your couches you die on choice lamb and fatted calves you strum away on your harps like david and improvise on your musical instruments you drink wine by the bowl of fools and use your finest lotions but you do not grieve over the ruin of joseph therefore you will be among the first to go into captivity or into exile your feasting and your lounging will come to an end hmm i got too much other stuff and i don't have time for it but okay let me tell you this if you want to be dangerous to the devil this is the way to do it if you want to change the world or be part of helping to change the world this is the way to do it one scripture in the bible makes the point what are we going to do about everything that's going on in the world today romans 12 21 we overcome evil with good [Music] walking in love i mean love that's got some action to it is the highest form of spiritual warfare that you can do the devil will not know what to do with you if you really start caring about people maybe you've heard me tell this story or seen it on tv but i just want to close with this little story it was a very cold day in december and there was a little boy about 10 years old standing in front of a shoe store on the road and he was barefoot peering through the window and shivering with cold and the lady approached the boy and said my little fellow why are you looking so earnestly in the window he said well ma'am i was asking god to give me a pair of shoes the lady took the boy by the hand see here's the thing when we see needs like that we don't have to have a prayer meeting you don't even need to ask god should i help this person or not you just do because that's who you are you can't help yourself you can't just walk away [Music] so she took him inside and asked the clerk to get her a half a dozen pair of socks new socks and asked if she could have a basement of water in a washcloth a towel she washed the little guy's feet and dried him with the towel put a new pair of the socks on him and then she asked for a pair of shoes that would fit him and got him a brand new pair of shoes and she said well little fella i'm sure that you feel a lot better now don't you and he looked up at her and he said ma'am are you god's wife [Music] i'm going to pray for you if you meant what you said earlier now remember you stuck your hand up and you said i will ask god every morning to put somebody in my path that i can help father i pray for everybody here tonight that there was a change of heart that some eyes were opened and i think maybe a lack of people doing this is even what's opening the door for some of the problems they have help us lord to realize that we can no longer just walk away from hurting people and do nothing we can pray we can help we can hug we can smile we can encourage maybe we pay a bill maybe we buy them something that they want and could never afford it's just an avenue to introduce people to you and i pray lord that you'll show them what you want them to do and they'll have fun doing it that they will enjoy it and it will bring such breakthrough in their lives that they just won't hardly be able to believe it i ask you this in jesus name [Music] amen come on give god some praise

Channel: Christ Fellowship Church

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Length: 53min 36sec (3216 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 01 2021