The Danger of Strife | Joyce Meyer | Gateway Church

how many of you uh would like more peace in your life how many of you really pretty seriously need more peace in your life well I always pray about what I'm going to teach and I felt like God wanted me to teach on the dangers of strife and so I put my message together got it all on the computer and put it together and then I have happened to turn some I was doing something on YouTube I wasn't even looking for a message by me or a message here but it pops up seems like about a year ago when I was here I taught on strife and I thought oh I guess I didn't hear from God maybe I guess I better get a different message then I felt like God said no they need to hear it again amen cuz we don't know always get it the first time we hear it do we amen you know peace is something that Jesus said that he left us he bequeathed it to us in John 14:27 it says my peace I leave with you not as the world gives do I give unto you but my own special peace I now give unto you and so the kind of Peace he's talking about is the peace that can operate in the midst of chaos and turmoil in our personal lives in our professional lives are in the world like we're experiencing today I think most of us would say that in our life time we have never seen a time when there has been this much widespread chaos in the world and among individuals but in the Amplified Bible as that scripture continues Jesus said so stop allowing yourselves to be upset and Disturbed and don't allow yourselves to be fearful and intimidated so he's telling us his part what he did I've left you my peace now you stop allowing yourselves to get upset so we have to let that sink in a minute oh well I've been praying for peace but what have you been doing when the opportunity comes to get upset or to stay calm you say well I can't help it that I get upset well you know we use that I can't help it excuse a lot and I did a lot in my life too too but I had an experience one time that taught me a good lesson I would get upset get mad at Dave yell at the kids whatever we do we get upset you know when we get upset we usually take it out on the people that we love the most because we know that they can't get away from us they have to put up with us and um so I was having one of my little tant and I was yelling at the kids and not being abusive but just angry and all of a sudden I kind of had like a a Epiphany from God and he said now if your pastor rang the doorbell right now let me ask you a question how fast would you calm down well I can tell you by the time I got to the front door I would said pastor praise God it's so good to see you come in oh the kids oh they're playing in their rooms they're just fine yeah the kids are just fine and honestly that really did teach me a lesson and I hope you can use that example in your own life because what it really showed me I knew for sure if him or anybody else that I wanted to impress you know the only way we get free from anything is to be truthful with ourselves about why we're behaving the way we're behaving in John 8 it says if you can continue my word you'll know the truth and the truth will make you free but it's not the truth about somebody else that will set me free it's the truth about me and you know the Holy Spirit has sent into our life to teach us all truth that's one of his main jobs is to teach us truth and so the Holy Spirit was giving me an opportunity to learn something big which was I could control myself when I really wanted to you're all kind of looking at me like well that's nice for you but I can't how many of you know that you can control yourself when you really want to are you sure maybe I don't know maybe you don't want to I don't know come on help me a little bit I woke up at 2:30 this morning went prayed and a couple hours then went back to SLE bed and slept for an hour and then I got up again and flew here from St Louis and had lunch with some friends and so I've had a pretty long busy day so I need you to be nice how many of you really now think about it think about what I've said because as long as we keep using the excuse I can't help it we will stay in bondage and I came to a point in my life maybe 20 30 years ago where I thought you know what I I am fed up with being upset all the time and I would see my husband he would be just as calm now Dave has a different personality than me he's a little more naturally laidback and calm and he didn't grow up the way I did I grew up and a house that was just full of turmoil and strife and he didn't have it real easy growing up his dad was an alcoholic not a violent alcoholic but he was an alcoholic and and but his mother was really great strong Christian woman took them to church all the time he was born again he was filled with the spirit and he just would cast his care and not worry about anything and I worried about everything and he was calm and trusted God and I said I was trusting God but still worried and upset all the time you know we're really not trusting God if we're worrying at the same time we may be trying to trust God and we all start out that way but when we really get around to trusting God then we don't worry and we don't get upset because even though we don't know what God's going to do we believe that he's going to do something and even though we don't know when we know he won't be late he may not be early but he won't be late so I made my mind up that if he could have peace I could have peace and he was a great example to me and I appreciate that about him and I believe that God wants to use us especially in the days that we're living in to be a great example not only to our family members especially to our children especially if they're still young and living under your roof and being trained by you and it's not what we say to them that trains them it's what they see us do that trains them I'm going to say that again it's not what we say to them that trains them oh it does to a certain degree it has some effect but it's what they see us do that trains them and so Dave's example to me was great and I really appreciate that about him and we are living in some very unique times you might say they're the worst of times and the best of times I think that we have opportunity today to be lights in a dark place and you can preach a sermon everywhere you go just by L actually acting like the Christian that you claim to be and so can I and one thing the world needs needs is peace and the other thing they need is love and if we can be peaceful in the midst of turmoil and we can love people who are not easy to love that's going to preach a louder sermon than any preacher could preach on a platform anywhere amen you agree with that what do you think would happen if everybody who claims to be a Christian acted like one I mean seriously let's I mean what what do you think would happen so I just want to put it out to you first Jesus has left us peace to be honest we don't even really have to pray for peace we don't have to pray for God to give us peace because he already has so I change the way I pray when I feel myself getting upset or if I've waited too long and already gotten upset and know I need to calm down I pray God please help me appropriate the peace that is in me because you've given it to me as your gift now I need to accept that and receive it and calm down and you know you can talk to yourself do you know that you can talk yourself into a good mood if you want to or you can talk yourself into a bad mood couple of weeks ago I got up one morning and I don't know why I I don't even remember why but for some reason I just kind of started to think a couple of negative things and maybe a couple of poor me things and then I just said no not going there been there done that and I started purposely thanking God for everything that I could think of and thinking about how blessed I was and you know it only took probably less than two minutes and a day that could have ended up in the ditch was turned completely around and I had a great day you see a lot of times we we want to put all of this off on God but we have a responsibility too he's given us what we need but we have to appropriate it and act on it in Ephesians 3:20 it says that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all that we could ever dare to Hope ask or think then it ends with according to the power that worketh in you and I I I don't think I ever really fully understood that because we'd all like for God to just do it all but you see he works through us he doesn't do everything for us but he does things through us he gives it to you then he wants it to go through you to other people so God gives us peace and he wants us to receive it be at peace with oursel and then let it go through us to other people he gives us love he wants us to receive that and even learn how to love ourselves in a balance way not a selfish self-centered way but you need to love the you that God has created that you're becoming amen you know we're all in the process of becoming it's like we have an image inside of us we're being transformed into the image of Christ so we're becoming what we already are and you have to understand the word for that to make any sense but the whole holy spirit is helping us day after day after day be transformed into the image of Jesus Christ well we don't see Jesus ever getting all upset hurrying rushing around telling his disciples come on hurry up we got to got to get over here and I was starting to get that way a little bit in the back room because I didn't know it was as late as it was and I asked somebody what time it was and they said it was 4 minutes to 4: and we were still dabbling around with makeup and I was like right away I got but I'm getting ready to come out here and teach on [Laughter] peace and Dave's helping with my microphone and I said just just stick the wire in there just you know and then I had to say ch the world won't end if you're out there a couple of minutes later than you usually are I always like I can't stand to be late when I'm the one that's going to preach amen and I mean I knew we were going to have worship and I really had plenty of time but it wasn't going according to my plan hello is anybody home out there it wasn't going according to my plan so you know there's no point in trying to do something about something you can't do anything about all right I need a drink of water clap all you want [Applause] to now this will really help you if you'll let it God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all that we could ever dare to Hope ask or think according to the power that worketh in you so God will do it in you and then let it go through you if you cooperate with him and if I cooperate with him amen I've been studying the word for 45 years and it's taken me a long time to get to knowing some of the things that I know now and I'm so grateful for the word and I'm so grateful for some of these little lessons that God has taught me that really turn out to be big things in my everyday life so what have we said so far you can control yourself if you really want to if you were having the biggest argument with your spouse you have ever had screaming and yelling at one another and I rang your doorbell how fast do you think you'd straighten up okay not me okay Pastor Robert how about that if that doesn't work how about Jesus cuz you know what he is there anyway he lives in us and there's nothing that we're hiding from him when we started our ministry when I first started thinking about starting a Ministry back in 19 77 I guess it was the Lord spoke to my heart and this is what he put in my heart there's three things I want you to do and if you do them I'll bless your ministry Keep The Strife out of your life out of your home and out of your ministry and I wasn't even I don't even know that I fully knew what Strife was at the time but I knew it was the opposite of peace and he said do whatever you do with excellent with Excellence don't be a mediocre you know an Excellence doesn't mean Perfection it just means to do the very best that you can with what you have I mean you can have an old car but you can keep it clean amen and he said be a person of Integrity always do what you say you're going to do amen now those are three simple things there are three life principles which every person and certainly every Christian should base their foundation on wear your shoes of peace like Ephesians 6 says if you expect to defeat the Devil then you have to put on the armor of God that he's given us I want to say again I think sometimes we want to put it all on God and yes nothing happens without prayer but you know what I find happens a lot of times when I pray God doesn't do something far excuse me for me he shows me something to do my husband one time was having a real hard time with um feeling jittery and nervous he called it having The Yips whatever that is but he's such a peaceful person that any kind of feeling of nervousness really bothers him I was kind of used to it myself but you know he uh it really bothered him and so he started praying about it and God just simply showed him that he was consuming way too much caffeine he was going by a fast food restaurant and getting a like a 32 ounce soda every day that had caffeine in it and he drank coffee and he ate sweets pretty much every day and so between the sugar and the caffeine he had gotten to a point in life where his body was not handling that you know sometimes you can do something at a certain age and stage in your life that just won't work for you anymore when you get a little bit older is anybody finding that out you see only a fool thinks they can always do what they've always done I found out that I couldn't keep working like I did 30 years ago I had to make changes and we constantly in our life have to make changes and adjustments and if we don't we'll make ourselves sick and then ask God to heal us and sometimes when we ask God to heal us and nothing changes it's because we're not listening to what he tells us to do I'm preaching better than you're acting okay now I'm I don't intend to do a health lesson tonight but some of you if you just got more sleep [Laughter] you know what all those were guilty laughs how about drinking some water I don't like water I personally know two people that died with kidney disease because they never drank water they drank other stuff all the time most of the other stuff has a lot of chemicals and caffeine in it and water is the only thing that will really cleanse your kidneys and your body so like I said I'm not here to do a health teaching tonight but you'd be amazed if you just start asking God why am I having this problem if you're really willing to hear what he has to say he might show you and you might not like what he shows you because you'd much rather it be anything other than something you need to change I'm smiling bigger than you guys are so what about Strife what is Strife Strife is bickering arguing heated disagreement and an angry undercurrent bickering arguing heated disagreement and an angry angry undercurrent and I think the angry undercurrent is the most dangerous because that's when everybody kind of senses that something not good is going on behind the scenes but everybody's still smiling at each other saying especially in church praise the Lord come on I remember the days when Dave and I would argue all the way to church come on don't you know if the devil can start anything that's going to be on Sunday morning or Saturday night or Friday night or whenever you go to church I mean I know some pastors that them and their wives drive separate cars to church because that's the only way they can get there in peace and it's important when you get here that you get here in peace and it's important that I get here in peace because we can sit and smile at each other and say praise the Lord but nothing sinks in if we're in a turmoil I can remember being in the front row with my hands lifted up singing I surrender all and thinking if he thinks I'm going to cook him anything to eat today he's got another thing coming for all I can care he can starve praise the Lord praise the Lord thank you Jesus and I can remember when we'd argue all the way to church but boy when we saw that first parking lot attendant or greeter or oh Dave and Joyce praise God how are y'all praise the Lord we're fine and that's not the way God wants us to be that's that angry undercurrent and if you think that it doesn't get in churches you've got another thing coming because the devil hates us and the one thing he does not want us to have is unity and peace because as long as we're fighting the world is not going to pay one bit of attention to anything that we have to say now I actually have a real concern because there are so many people in the body of Christ that are mad at somebody I just had our yearly Women's Conference we held it this past year in San Antonio Texas and I guess maybe you were there anybody here was there okay there were 16,000 500 women there and on Thursday night I asked how many of them I I did a little exhortation on it first and I asked how many of you have somebody in your life that you need to forgive will you stand up and I was shocked 90% of the 16,000 stood up and if you were there you saw it now out what are we going to do I mean we're living in very dangerous times what are we going to do if we don't make a decision that we're going to stop it Jesus said I've left you my peace now you stop allowing yourselves to get upset and Disturbed stop allowing yourselves to be fearful and intimidated I want to be the kind of person that before you get finished offending me I've already decided to forgive you and the only way that can happen is just through prayer but Alo through special study you need to be familiar with every scripture in the Bible that talks about anger anger does not promote the righteousness that God desires need to be familiar with Mark 11 that says faith can move mountains you can say to that mountain move and it'll have to move and whatever you pray for believe that you receive it and you will get it it doesn't say when but it says you'll get it and there's a waiting time and that's the testing time and then it says and if you have anything against anyone anything against anyone forgive them leave it let it go drop it because if you don't forgive neither will your heavenly father forgive you now that I mean if we really going to believe the Bible then we can't just pull out the I'll bless you and prosper you ones we have to get we can't just keep only wanting to hear God loves you he forgives you you're precious you're created with his hand he's got an awesome future plan for you all of that's true and we need to hear all that but we also need to hear some of these other things because the Bible says 1 Corinthians 1: 9-11 God is faithful reliable trustworthy and therefore ever true to his promise and he can be dependent on boy how many of you are glad about that he's faithful you can depend on him he's always going to keep his word verse 10 but I urge and entreat you Brethren by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that all of you be in Perfect Harmony and full agreement in what you say and that there be no dissension or factions or divisions among you but that you be perfectly United in your common understanding and in your opinion and in your judgments so he's saying God is [Applause] faithful but I've heard if you go ahead and read it from Chloe that there's bicker and arguing and strife and dissension among you so he says God is faithful but you need to get along in Psalm 133 it says that how pleasant it is where there's Unity I love peace I love those first couple hours in the morning when nobody's up I can get along with everybody when nobody's there how many of you find that you can just be so Godly when nobody's home play your Christian music watch Joyce Meyer on TV read Pastor Robert's latest book but boy when the people come in that's when the trouble Starts Now I obviously don't have time and the amount of time I have in one service to do this the full Justice that it deserves but I'm trying to pick some of the key and most important scriptures that God has used in my life to teach me I want to try to impress on you how important this is to your life and to the plan of God for the world that we live in now I've been thinking a lot about our young people about our kids our teenagers and how many of you would agree that a lot of children today are extremely confused [Applause] I mean people doing things today that I'm just like how can you even dream that up one school I heard about it happens to be in the district I live in sad to say say there are some children who identify as furries and so the school provided them with a litter box to go to the bathroom now they'll put furry tals on and sit up on the window Ledge in the classroom like a cat and you know what that's sad for them that the world has gotten so confusing that people don't know who they are anymore but let's look at a scripture and I've taught on this scripture I don't know how many times but I've never seen it like I did a couple of weeks ago James 3:16 for where there is jealousy envy and contention which is Strife rivalry and selfish ambition there will also be confusion unrest disharmony rebellion and all sorts of evil and vile practices so certainly not making any accusations just throwing it out there for anybody who might need it wonder how many of those kids that are so confused live in a house where Mom and Dad are arguing and fighting all the time and I'm not saying we have to be perfect for our kids they have to learn how to deal with stuff I'm not saying if you have one argument in front of your kids that it's going to throw them into confusion but if 90% of 16,000 Christians were willing to stand up and say yes I'm angry at somebody and I've not forgiven them and the sad thing is is I can do that pretty much anywhere I go and get the same result and I'm just saying that we have a problem and we need to address it and we need to start dealing with with it and that means I need to deal with it in my home you need to deal with it in your home you know even in the church today we don't deal with stuff the way that we should not like Paul did Titus 39-11 but avoid stupid and foolish controversies and genealogies and dissensions and wrangling which is Strife about the law for they are unprofitable and feudal now these are new testament Christians that had at one time lived under the law and so they spent a lot of time arguing about the difference between law and Grace I think we still kind of have that argument today sometimes so he said stop arguing about stupid stuff that doesn't make any sense verse 10 as for the man and this is a man in the church who is factu a heretical sectarian and a cause of division after admonishing him a first and a second time you give him two warnings reject him from your fellowship ship and have nothing more to do with him now you know what we would say today well that's not being loving there was another man that Paul talked about who was had committed incest and he was not repentant if a person's repentant and willing to change then I believe God wants us to go to the mat with him and work with him forever but if they're not repentant and they're not going to change and we let them just sit in our midst maybe I got the wrong crowd for this I don't know you know what Paul said about that man he said put him out of the church turn him over to the devil but that's not all he said he said so that perhaps his soul might be saved and he won't end up in hell so if I understand Paul correctly the church was such a holy and an awesome and a powerful place that when people were in the church and functioning as a body there was actually a protective covering over them and so he said we we can't just let a lot of sin get in the church know it's there and nobody deal with it you know I'm 80 and I've just decided I'm going for it I'm not I mean I I am not going to stand before God and have him say why didn't you address the things that really needed to be addressed you know why we don't because we don't want to make anybody mad we don't want to hurt anybody's feelings we don't want anybody we don't want anybody to leave the church but everything the Apostle Paul did he did it for the good of the people he didn't do it to hurt people and he was walking in love when he did some of those things because love is not always you're so sweet sweet and if you really read the things that Paul said he he he said he told Timothy he said your job as a preacher is to urge warn correct rebuke and encourage he didn't say just encourage he said you warn them so I'll just tell you if maybe I talk to myself Joyce if you don't deal with The Strife in your life and get rid of it it's going to affect you and the people around you in a very adverse way amen and if you need that you can have [Applause] it I'm only doing this because I really care about God's people and I don't want to play Church games anymore I really want people's lives to be changed by the word and I don't want us to just be Christians in church I want us to be Christians at home I want us to be Christians at work I want us to be Christians in the grocery store in traffic yeah in traffic that's one of the few times when I see my husband get a little bit uncalm must be a woman driver and I want [Applause] to oh and I've seen him get a little feisty on the golf course too not so much now but man' when he was younger woo sometimes those clubs went flying he's calmed down so much now though on the golf course we're still working on traffic no he's good I just got to have fun okay the only way that we're going to keep Strife away is to confront it and deal with it and I'll tell you what it takes the Bible says in Proverbs that the only way you can have contention is by Pride you can't have it any other way so the only way that you're going to have peace in your home is if you also have humility and just to bring that to a practical level here's kind of how it works you have to be willing not to be right in an [Laughter] argument oh you better be glad I've only got six minutes left you have to be willing to say I was wrong it was my fault I'm sorry you have to be willing to not argue at all it takes two people to argue you know nobody can argue by themselves you have to you have to learn to listen in a conversation when it starts to get heated up enough that you can tell somebody's going to blow a fuse if you don't change the conversation and if nothing else get out of the room if you want to have peace you have to be willing to keep your opinions to yourself sometimes do you know that just because you don't agree with somebody does not mean that you have to tell them you don't agree with them did you ever think of that well I don't agree with that well the devil's trying to start a fire and you've just thrown some fuel on it knowing how to keep your opinion to yourself my son my older son our older son Dave always says I say they're my kids they're actually our kids our older son David he had a pretty feisty temper and he's 58 now so you know you you start calming down a lot the older you get cuz you're just like it ain't worth it nope not going there he said one time he said you know what I finally figured out being right is highly overrated and you know really when you think about it what do you get other than that little smug feeling for just a few minutes but what comes after that the same devil who tempted you to argue to be right will now make you feel guilty because you argued to be right and you'll feel good about it for maybe 30 minutes until you calm down and then you'll get this which was there all the time but because you were so emotional you couldn't hear the Holy Spirit you know when you're in the middle of a conversation that's getting ready to go in the wrong direction at least I've gotten to the point where I can hear the Holy Spirit say how many of you agree that you cannot have peace if you don't have humility what is so hard about saying I think I'm right but I may be wrong I mean could you just open your mind to the possib ability that you might be wrong I mean Dave and I used to argue over some of the stupidest stuff and it was mostly me I'll admit that things like we'd be going somewhere and maybe there were two ways to get there and he'd go to the entrance subdivision and turn right and I'd say what are you going that way for you need to go to the left the shortest route no it's not this way is the shortest and there's so many more important things to be doing than that I was doing that one night and the Lord said to me just let the man go whichever way he wants to go just who cares if it takes two minutes longer what difference does it make you know I had a call on my life and here I am arguing over which way to get to the hardware store or we'd argue over who an actor was on TV and then stay up to 1:00 in the morning watch the movie Waiting for the credits to come on so we could prove who was right I don't do that stuff anymore now I go to sleep usually before the movie's over you know just to make sure you understand what I meant when I said we don't deal with things the way we should in the church I am not in any way suggesting that we should ever be mean to anybody I'm not ever suggesting that we should not accept people that are different than we are but the house of God is a place to bring people to repentance and if they won't do that I always I always say this I can hang out excuse me I can I can hang out with somebody until as long as I am affecting them and they're not infecting me amen well I think we better end this with a prayer close your eyes for just a minute lift your hand up if you need to forgive somebody and you're willing to do it tonight come on nobody's looking but me father I pray for each person that has heard something from you tonight and and they're willing to take action in this area and I pray that you will give them the grace they need to follow through and to let go of the things that they need to let go of we ask it in the name of Jesus Amen okay let me say one [Applause] thing just because you pray to forgive somebody doesn't mean you're going to feel any different about them the next time you see them forgiveness is not how you feel about somebody it's how you treat them every person that you're angry at you pray for them every day it's very hard to stay mad at somebody that you're praying for on a regular basis amen thank you I hope you got something out of this

Channel: Gateway Church

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Keywords: gateway church, robert morris, gateway worship, dfw church, gateway people, robert morris church, pastor robert morris, pastor robert, james morris, gateway church ministry, gateway church texas, bible teaching, online church, church online, church live stream, worship, church near me, dallas church, blessed life church

Id: j9D2P9ag7M4

Length: 49min 50sec (2990 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 20 2023