Nine Attitudes That Keeps You Happy

the following program is paid for by the friends and partners of Joyce Meyer ministries we all want to be happy don't we I'd say really if you just get right down to it if you could just find the bottom line on what everybody wants we really just want to be happy we want to enjoy our life and be happy and and attitudes are very very very important and I'm going to say something to you that you may not believe right up here going into this but hopefully you'll get a little more convinced as the time goes by this weekend I believe that really it's not our circumstances that make us so unhappy now I'm not saying they're not unpleasant and that they're not difficult and they're not challenging and certainly they have the ability to steal our joy if we let them but I really don't believe it's our circumstances that make us unhappy I think it's our attitude in our circumstances can anybody kind of go that far with me tonight it's our attitude in our circumstances that really make us unhappy you may have heard this quote before but Viktor Frankl who was a Holocaust victim said that they may take everything away from me here human dignity food every every right that a human being should have but one thing they cannot take away from me and that's my decision to have a good attitude and it's so true that if you will just and I will just make a decision that we're going to have a good attitude and a good attitude means that you can even take a bad situation and say you know I don't like this situation but I believe I'm going to get something out of it I'm going to learn something I'm going to grow through it and this too will pass it's going to be over and how many of you know that after you come through difficult times you usually are a much deeper richer person inside and and haven't you found out that you really get to know God more deeply during those times and so just before I get into the Beatitudes which is what we're going to preach on this weekend about all the wonderful things that Jesus had to say when he shared what we call the Sermon on the Mount I want to share a little a little introduction with you to kind of get you to where I want you to be first of all I think we would all say without hesitation that Jesus had power when he was here on the earth that he displayed power he walked in power there were healings and miracles and actually he had so much power that there's times that we read about in the Gospels where he was just walking around and power was emanating from him and one woman just walked up to him and touched him with her faith and was healed and and the Bible says that Jesus felt virtue our power go out of him and he said who touched me so he didn't even have to purposely do anything there was just so much power that if anybody had the faith to draw on it that they can have it but now some translations say virtue went out from him others say power went out from him and the word virtue is a very interesting word because these Beatitudes that we're going to share about this weekend they're considered Christian virtues virtues of the soul moral excellences of the soul that then actually will release the power of God that's in us into our life not only does God have power not only did Jesus walk in power not only is the Holy Spirit powerful but he has shared that power with us you have the power of God resident in you as a believer in Jesus Christ you are not powerless you are powerful I said you are not powerless you are power full you know one of the things that Paul prayed for was that people would know the power that was available to them as believers in Christ and so I want to make sure that you know tonight that the power of God the power of God the power of God is is resident if you're a born-again believer the power of God the same power that raised Christ from the dead come on the same power that raised Christ from the dead if it dwells in you and it does if you're a believer the Bible says it will quicken or bring to life not only your mortal body but everything about your life so we need to be power minded not pathetic minded and pitiful minded it and you know we just we get into this self-pity thing so much and I've got a problem and follow me and we need to realize that we have the power of God on our side what is it boy you know we quote these scriptures greater is He that is in me than he that's in the world we are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us no weapon formed against me shall prosper but you know what you can get so accustomed to quoting is something that you don't even know if you still believe it or not and we need to stop long enough to ask ourselves do I really believe that the power of God is available for me now just because something is available now hear me just because something is available that doesn't mean that God releases it in our life for you this is where a lot of Christians get confused because we hear about what's ours in Christ and all the promises of God that are ours and all the power that's ours and all these things that are ours and yet they can't seem to access them in their life and I'm just gonna tell you as plain as I know how to it's all tied the spiritual maturity and rather not we're willing to grow up in God and become christ-like in our character in our nature the word virtue has found seven times in the New Testament and three times it's translated from the word Greek word Dunamis which is translated power the same word that you find in acts 1:8 when the Holy Ghost has come upon you you shall receive Dunamis our power to be my witnesses so there's three times when that word Dunamis is not translated power but it's translated virtue so we learned from that that virtue and power are in essence the same thing and then there's four times where the word virtue is translated excellence but it actually refers to excellence of soul you know how wonderful is to have an excellent soul to be excellent inside to have a great inner life to be excellent in your thoughts I wrote it like this if there's no virtue excellence of moral character in us then no virtue our power will flow from us so even though I have that power of God resident in my soul God's going to release that to me as I show myself to be responsible to be able to handle that power you know a lot of power given to a baby is going to be used for selfish self-centered reasons you take like the scripture God has not given us a spirit of fear but of power of love and a sound mind the amplified says discipline and self-control well how do people use them they usually use the power to get what they want we should be using that power against the enemy to stop him and the kingdom of darkness from robbing God's children they take the love and they love themselves instead of loving other people which is what we're supposed to be doing we're doing with it and they take the self-control which is to be used to control self and try to control other people and so we really need to understand what all of these things mean and start applying them to our own life our character is our usual manner of behavior it's what can be expected from us under every kind of a situation so how many people do you know that I mean they're great as long as everything is kind of going their way but then boy when they don't get their way or when something goes sour I mean they it's like a Jekyll and Hyde you know they become a totally different person well see a person who has really developed the kind of character that God wants them to they can be stable in every situation amen that's just one example of what I'm talking about they're not up and down and up and down when circumstances are up and down and they're not happy when they're getting what they want they're not happy when they don't they just character is something that's it's in you it's it's deeply embedded in you and it becomes who you are it's not just something you turn on and off like God cannot lie he cannot lie he cannot say he's gonna do something and then not do it Matthew 5 verse 1 seeing the crowd he went up on the mountain and when he was seated his disciples came to him and then he opened his mouth and he taught them saying now the amplified bible gets pretty long and each one of these blessed's so try not to get bored but try to hang on to how how amazing these words are blessed happy to be in veed and spiritually prosperous with life joy and satisfaction in God's favor and sell gift of salvation regardless of your outward conditions Wow so he's saying no matter what's going on in your life you can be happy and so blessed that people envy you and envy your life no matter what's going on in your life are now that blessing is attached to a moral excellence or a virtue of soul called the poor in spirit which really means the humble minded those who are totally dependent on God and those who don't think that they're better than other people the amplified says blessed are the poor in spirit the humble who rate themselves insignificant for theirs is the kingdom of heaven now I don't particularly like that translation as well you know there's a lot of different translations of the Bible and they're all really great and I love the Amplified Bible but I don't want anybody to think that word says who rate themselves insignificant to think that that means you need to have a bad attitude about yourself that's not what that means I've thought about this prayed about it a lot and I'm convinced from a study and that really what that means is they don't they don't look at themselves as being better than other people you know that's where we get into trouble when we start looking at other people and thinking well I'm smarter than you I know more than you I'm better than you you know I'm I'm more important than you and that's when we begin to look down on people and we begin to cause a lot of problems can you imagine if everybody in the world really honored every other person no matter who they were how wonderful this world would be and I'm gonna kind of fast-forward through these because I'm gonna gonna teach on them this weekend I'm not going to go through everything that bless it means in every verse but then it goes on to say blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted now you're probably going huh what well we'll get around to that blessed are the meek the mild the patient the long-suffering for they shall inherit the earth blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness for they shall be completely satisfied number 7 blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy well what a wonderful inward trait that is to be merciful to be ready to give somebody mercy and not ready to you know throw them out of your life every time to make a mistake blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God that's probably one of my favorite ones right there blessed are the makers and maintain errs of peace for they shall be called the sons of God number 10 blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake for theirs is the kingdom of heaven and in case once wasn't enough 11 blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and say all kinds of evil things against you on my account verse 12 be glad is supremely joyful for your reward in heaven is great and strong for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you and then the last one it's actually probably wouldn't be considered to be attitude but I'm putting it in with this with this group the rest of this where he talks about you're the light of the world and how we need to do good deeds and people will see their heavenly father I think that's basically talking about being unselfish and learning how to really love other people so this weekend God willing and by His grace and mercy we are going to talk about nine of these be happy attitudes and the first one that we want to talk about tonight is the humble minded are the powerful so in other words if we can manage to be totally dependent on God that's a power position and if we can be humble and that involves a lot of different things we're going to talk about some of the things that it actually involves because it sounds nice but when you really get right down to it it involves things like not having to be right all the time say now I get a lot of noise out there say I easy it was when I said be humble mine it was like yeah praise the Lord yes be humble minded re it means things like not having to have the last word uh-huh do you know the Bing ride is highly overrated you know that I mean it is amazing the fights that we get into just to be right big whoop but you know what so one other person has conceded that you're right probably just to shut you up if I don't think you're right anyway now I don't know if you know what a Webster's 1828 dictionary is or not but it was the original Webster's dictionary and I forget what percentage of it but like I don't know 70% of her something was filled with the Word of God it's far cry from what dictionaries are today but I have one of those and you can actually get one they're not even all that expensive twenty dollars or nothing and but the Webster's 1828 dictionary defines virtue like this strength bravery valor moral goodness the practice of moral duties and the abstaining from moral vices virtue must now listen to this virtue must be distinguished from religion because religion is often seen an outward acts only whereas a virtue is a matter of the heart so a person can go to church praise the Lord thank you Jesus glory to God hallelujah they can sing the songs on the overhead they can have their hands lifted up and be looking at the person across the aisle from them thinking you are the dumbest looking thing I have ever seen in my whole life looking at the people on the platform well you couldn't sing your way out of a paper bag come on so we got the religion we got the religion part we've ascribed to a set of doctrines and we show up in the building and we park our little Fanny in the pew and we clap at the right time and say Amen at the right time but what is going on inside what's happening inside it's the hidden man of the heart that God is concerned about and I really if I don't do anything else this weekend I hope to get you to really get in touch and to pay attention to what's going on in you we have power in us it's resident in us but in order for it to be released God needs to trust us with it everybody else may not know what's going on inside of us but God does and he says the most important thing to him is the hidden man of the heart and then just to go on with this definition out of that dictionary it says virtue is nothing but voluntary obedience to the truth for nothing other than the sincere love of God and I love that we don't obey the word just to get something but we obey the word because we love God jesus said if you love me you'll obey me I do a lot of things that I wouldn't ordinarily do I wouldn't want to do but I'll do it because I love God and I know that someday I'm going to stand before him and give an account of my life and although I know I'm covered by His grace I'll tell you one thing I'm going to do the best I can and my best is imperfect but I'm still going to do the best I can and I'm glad for the grace that covers the imperfect part but that doesn't mean that I get to live with a sloppy half-baked attitude that says oh well God loves me and you know he's gonna cover me amen I want to see some godly warriors rise up and take the rightful place and stand in the presence of God and and draw a line in their life for morality and stop compromising and just kind of floating along with everybody else in their religious boat and just you know compromising all the time we need to take a stand for what's right we need a hunger and thirst after righteousness it's a particular moral excellence of the soul that manifests in things like temperance chastity charity patience humility meekness mercy things like that so to be blessed is a wonderful thing I mean it's actually a wonderful thing you know we we throw that word around a little bit too loosely I think in the church how are you I'm blessed well are you really you know I mean legally you may be blessed but are you happy I mean are you really happy no matter what your circumstances are do you have such a happy life that people envy your happy life they're like man I wish I was as happy as that person is well no not really actually I'm blessed but I spent three weeks you know being depressed and discouraged and despondent and actually I was mad cuz I didn't get the promotion I wanted at work well but praise the Lord I'm blessed blessed when I go in to bless when I go out yes sir that's me the Blessed of the Lord come on I'm just trying to get us all to wake up a little bit you know blessed are the poor in spirit those who know they need God I want you to think for a minute about it it was too late for me to get one and bring it but let's just say that I had a branch off of a peach tree up here and it had three luscious peaches hanging down from it how many of you know the total weight of that peach is on the branch well he's the branch or the vine and we're the fruit he wants us to bear good fruit we have to hang and be totally dependent on God at all times totally dependent on God for all things at all times and you know we usually start out in our walk with God pretty independent how many of you would say that's pretty much right you know we pretty independent we even like to suggest to God sometimes how he'd get things done have you ever done that I have wonder you know God you could do this I mean have you ever thought of this God I mean you could just do that and we're so silly to think that God might need advice from us you know I mean all we have to do is think about the Apostle Peter when he rebuked Jesus to know how dumb we can be at times blessed are the poor in spirit blessed are those who are humble minded who don't see themselves as being better than other people who treat everybody with excellence you know like like here is a really excellent attitude that this is a great be happy attitude just just this attitude everybody is important tell me that's a great attitude everybody is important you know you might how would how would you treat like think about how you would treat me and I've actually had this happen like be trying to get through traffic after a meeting and having somebody determined to cut me off and get out in front of me till they see it's me you get my point right so we should not treat people that we want to impress one way and treat who I guess we think are the little people which is dumb because in God's eyes we're all equal there's no more male nor female more no more junior Greek no more slaves are free you see everything that I am and everything that you are everything that you can do that's good and everything that I can do that is good is a gift of God's grace in our life you know we cannot always control all of our circumstances but we do have the god-given ability to control our attitudes we can learn how to live by the Word of God and it will absolutely be life-changing for us today we're offering you a four CD series called nine attitudes that will keep you happy and a free booklet victory in your mind mouth moods and attitudes now you know honestly I don't know why everybody wouldn't want to take advantage of this offer nine attitudes that will keep you happy and how to have victory in your mind mouth moods and attitudes I think that's some really good stuff so you stay tuned because I have more to share with you right after this break our attitudes determine how we face everyday situations although we can't control all our circumstances learning how to choose the right attitude can help us overcome life's challenges choices teaching series nine attitudes that keep you happy will equip you with the knowledge of how to function with these attitudes and receive the benefits that come with these biblical perspectives on life receive nine attitudes that keep you happy for $25 or more and you'll also get the book victory in your mind mouth moods and attitudes for free call us today one eight hundred seventy two seventy nine six seventy three or visit us at joyce meyer org the joyce meyer conference is coming to Birmingham Alabama March 27 through 29 with worship by Hyland's worship for more information and a complete conference schedule visit us at joyce meyer org or call toll free if you want to be deeply planted in the word you have to study the word for your self and especially when you sit and you hear the word and something perks your interest it's like probably some of you have already heard me say things you think yeah I think I really need this well don't depend on me to give it all to you make a little note and then that's the thing you go home and study that's God just prompting you that that's something that you need to go home and dig into further well if you're participating in the 3030 challenge that we've been issuing I want to encourage you to just keep it up you know we're in our final week but I pray that you're going to continue to set time aside to study God's Word on a regular basis you know I certainly wouldn't ask anybody to only study the Word of God for 30 days out of their life we did this to really help you understand how valuable it's going to be to you to study the word if you haven't been participating it's never too late to start it's never too late to begin so challenge yourself to dig deeper into God's Word and experience the life-changing principles that fill the pages of your Bible god bless you if you're taking choices 30 30 challenge and looking for an easy-to-understand Bible to help check out the everyday life Bible it's the amplified version including Joyce's own notes and teachings the everyday life Bible is a great resource to help you get the most out of your time studying God's Word so give us a call or go online and pick up your copy today in a special price and decide to make time in God's Word a way of life the proceeding was paid for by the friends and partners of Joyce Meyer ministries

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Length: 28min 30sec (1710 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 19 2015