Joyce Meyer - It’s Time to Flip Your Switch, Part 2 - Enjoying Everyday Life. You listen to God for you. And you do what you believe God is telling you to do. And you don't go get somebody else's permission and you don't let them pull you down and you don't let them water down your commitment, because when it all is over, you are gonna stand before God, and you are gonna answer for you, not somebody else.
full textual sermon "It’s Time to Flip Your Switch" Part 2 by Joyce Meyer
Joyce Meyer: I want you to decide tonight two things: that you are gonna help more people than you've ever helped before, and that you are gonna let God work with you every day of your life to be more and more excellent and better and better at everything that you do until you don't have to tell anybody about Jesus. They can see him all over you. I'm gonna talk to you a fair amount tonight, part of the time at least, about this thing about excellence, because I'll tell you the truth. A lot of people don't even know what it is anymore. I mean, they really don't. It's kind of like-- and I even kind of feel that just a little bit in here tonight. It's, like, do we even know what that means, to be excellent? It's not perfection. But it does mean that if you have a job, you're gonna do the best job that you can. And you have to decide this for you. For you. You have to decide it for you. And you listen to God for you. And you do what you believe God is telling you to do. And you don't go get somebody else's permission and you don't let them pull you down and you don't let them water down your commitment, because when it all is over, you are gonna stand before God, and you are gonna answer for you, not somebody else.
Joyce Meyer: now, they worked so hard making me this little prop, because I think that pictures say a lot to people. Isn't this a cute little house? Now, you know what? So we're gonna pretend like this is you. This is a believer. Because the bible says that we are the house of God, the home of God. So we're God's house, and if we're not born again, not saved, we haven't given our lives to Christ, then everything inside is dark. There's no light in there. You receive Christ, whoop.
Joyce Meyer: but here's what happens. How many of you remember when you first got saved? Oh my gosh, we were so excited. We weren't mad at anybody. We loved everything that moved. We had peace. It was the most wonderful thing in the world. But you know what our biggest problem? We get too used to it. We get too familiar with the things that God does for us, and then we need something else to excite us. Several years back, I said, "you know, God, I don't understand why you don't do some of the things that you used to do when I first started walking with you." And man, he answered me right back in my spirit. He said, "i still do everything that I did then and more. You've just gotten used to it that it doesn't excite you anymore." See, we are so unbelievably amazingly blessed, but we just-- do you know what some people in the world would give-- do you know how far they would walk to be in this building tonight, to get to do what we're doing here?
Joyce Meyer: I go to india and do this, and people would walk for 4 days and sleep on the ground for 3 nights just to be part of something like this. But man, we got it on every corner so-- that doesn't mean we don't appreciate it, but we have to be careful that we don't just start taking the things that God has done for us for granted, because if we do, then here's what happens if you're not careful. Over a period of time, although you have the light of God in you, it starts to get dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and dimmer. Pretty soon, nobody can tell if you are or you're not. And we don't wanna do one of these things either. Sunday morning!
Joyce Meyer: monday morning. sunday morning! , monday morning. You know what I mean? We love God on sunday, and on monday you couldn't pick us out of a crowd, because we're out there acting just like everybody else and nobody knows the difference, amen?
Joyce Meyer: and I tell you the truth, it's something you gotta make a decision to do every single day of your life. Let me tell you something. I don't wake up like this every morning. I have to stir myself up. I have to stay on fire for God. So here's what I'm telling you. If you don't feel like you've got enough light in your life, it's not even gonna do you good to keep praying about it. You better set yourself on fire and just decide to turn the light up, amen?
Joyce Meyer: and we especially don't wanna just float around and compromise with the rest of the world and just keep getting dimmer and dimmer and dimmer and dimmer til all of a sudden our light just goes out and then we go to church on sunday, whoop.
Joyce Meyer: or the pastor comes to the door, whoop.
Joyce Meyer: fight all the way to church like dave and I used to. See the first person at the church door, whoop! "praise the Lord." How many of you are getting what I'm saying?
Joyce Meyer: you know what? That's the first thing we've gotta do every morning. We gotta turn the lights up. Make that little attitude adjustment that changes everything. I don't care one thing in the world about preaching anymore if I can't in every message bring people to some kind of a decision. I don't want you just to hear a good sermon and go out and not decide anything. I want you to decide tonight two things: that you are gonna help more people than you've ever helped before, and that you are gonna let God work with you every day of your life to be more and more excellent and better and better at everything that you do until you don't have to tell anybody about Jesus. They can see him all over you.
Joyce Meyer: complaining about a problem while doing nothing to change it is one of the worst things in the world that we can do. If you have a problem that you can't change, then why don't you go change somebody else's? Good, three people got that.
Joyce Meyer: if you have a problem you can't change, go change somebody else's problem.
Joyce Meyer: and if you'll do that, then God will change yours. You know, one of the ways that we celebrate our victories, and this is biblical, is when you've had a victory, to not only celebrate and do something fun that you wanna do, but to go help somebody else that has less than you. Two quick examples. In nehemiah, wonderful-- nehemiah's a wonderful book. Man, there's such a lesson in there about how nehemiah wanted to rebuild the walls of jerusalem so the people would be protected. And he went and got permission from the king to rebuild the wall, and he stirred a bunch of other people to help him, and as soon as he wanted to do something good, the enemy started coming against him. I mean, just thing after thing after thing, and I don't know how long it took him, but this just went on and on, and the more he did, the madder the enemy got and the more they came against him. And he just kept praying and working, praying and working, praying and working, praying and working. And finally, the wall was built. And in nehemiah 8:10, after the wall was built, it says: "then [ezra] told them, go your way," and I love this, "eat the fat, drink the sweet," I guess they didn't have anything against fat or sugar.
Joyce Meyer: I mean, you can do it in excess, but I thought that was kind of cool. I thought, "yay, now I have permission to go eat what I want to tomorrow." "Eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to him for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. And be not grieved and depressed, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." So they were commanded to not only celebrate the victory they had, but to send portions of the food that they had and blessings to somebody else who had less than them. It takes a while in our lives to get this, but I can tell you something. One of the highest forms of spiritual warfare that you can do is to be a blessing to other people, especially when you don't feel like it. The story of esther is the same thing. Wicked haman had a plot to destroy all of God's people, but God wanted to use esther to do something about it. At first she was not just all over that idea. I'm sure she had plans for her life, and she had some fear, and her uncle said to her, "how do you know but that you were called for such a time as this? And if you don't do what God's asking you to do, he will raise up somebody else to do it." And I believe there's a lot of people that are called for such a time as this. I don't believe that we're alive in this day and hour by accident because we just happened to show up on planet earth when things are so bad out in the world. I believe that we are chosen by God to live in this timeframe, and it-- we have a purpose, and God has a plan and he expects every one of us to help him in whatever way that we can to get as many people as we can on board for Jesus, because he comes back-- before he comes back and a lot of people get lost.
Joyce Meyer: I won't go over the whole thing, but it's the same thing. After they had their victory they set aside two days that they had to celebrate every single year to remember the victory God had given them. And one of the things he told them is, "this is a day of feasting and gladness, a holiday and a time for you to send gifts to the poor and portions to one another." I wanna tell you something, and I don't have time to stand up here and just harp on this all night tonight. I teach on it a lot, but you can't be selfish and happy. You can't be. The best thing you can do for yourself is do as much for somebody else as you possibly can. So I'm just--I'm gonna tell you one quick story, and I'm gonna give you a challenge. God wants to use you, and he doesn't just wanna use you with your Christian friends and the people you like. He wants to use you with your enemies, and he wants to use you with people that you don't even know. And I wanna tell you something. Life gets so exciting if you go out every day and you're just a little holy ghost spy for God.
Joyce Meyer: every day can get exciting. You won't have to lay down with all your problems anymore and be depressed and in prostration. You can get up and say, "God, what are we gonna do today?" And it may be something teeny-tiny. It may be something big. But you will have a fulfillment that you cannot even imagine. Quick story. I was in utah. Went into a starbucks. I'm really picky about my coffee, and I don't even like the coffee that they brew there anymore, it gets too strong for me. So sometimes if I go in, I'll ask 'em to do a pour-over. You can control kind of the strength of the coffee a little better and that-- they put the grounds in, they pour water on top. Well, the girl that waited on me was certainly not like me. Her hair was about five different colors, and she had piercings in her eyebrows, piercings in her nose, piercings in her tongue, piercings on her lip, and she was just as sweet as she could be. Just, you know, wanted to serve me any way that she could. And so thank God I've gotten over being so religious that I wouldn't even want her to wait on me because she was so different than me.
Joyce Meyer: come on. And so she said, "you know, we don't have the equipment to do a pour-over," but she said, "i can do a french press." I said, "no, I don't really like those. They usually get too strong for me." She said, "oh, no. Let me make you one. We've got a new press. It's a double-wall press. You will love it. And I'll tell you, if you don't like it, I will make you anything that you want." So I said, "well, okay." And she said, "this is new and it's just amazing," and she said, "i really wanna get one myself because you can just use 'em anywhere." But she said, "i can't afford it yet. But when I can, I'm gonna get myself one." Well, I mean, it only took God about a half a second to put in my heart, "just buy her one." Well, I thought, "buy her one? I don't know her. She doesn't know me. So, here I'm about to disobey God because I'm concerned about what a bunch of people might think. So she made me a coffee, and sure enough, it really was good, and she was just really sweet to me, and so I just wasn't gonna do it because I talked myself right out of it. Do you know how easy it is to talk yourself out of doing what God's trying to talk you into? So I got about four stores down the shopping mall, four or five stores, and it was obvious God was not gonna leave me alone.
Joyce Meyer: you know, when God wants you to do something and you're not doing it, it's like having a hangnail. A holy hangnail. He just keeps it up and keeps it up and keeps it up and keeps it up. Well, I've learned a long time ago, I'm not gonna just keep on going and ignore it, 'cause I can stay busy enough all day to act like I'm not hearing God. But when I go to bed at night and it's quiet in that bedroom, man, then-- and there's nothing worse than wishing you would have, knowing you didn't, and it's too late to go back and fix it.
Joyce Meyer: amen? So I went back. I thought, "okay, she may think I'm crazy, but, God, I'm willing to be a fool for you if that's what it takes." And I said, "listen," I said, "i just-- I wanna bless you and I wanna buy you that coffee pot." Well, it was about $150, and so she's, like, "oh, no, no, no, no, no." You know, when people aren't used to somebody doing that, it's hard to talk 'em into it. And so I said, "yeah, I just wanna be a blessing to you. You were just sweet to me. You're a sweet girl." Well, immediately, she starts bawling. I said, "okay, now we're gonna have a scene."
Joyce Meyer: and I don't like a scene. I don't--you know, let's just don't-- just take the coffee pot. Let me pay for it. Let me go and get back to my shopping. I'm just being honest with you. So I buy her the coffee pot. She's all excited, and I'm thinking, "phew, okay, praise the Lord." All right, now, about an hour and a half, 2 hours later, I'm in another store on another floor in the mall, in the ladies' room. I do my business, I come out, I'm gonna walk out the door. Here, this girl comes in. Well, what a coincidence.
Joyce Meyer: okay, she looks at me and she says, "can you tell me why you are the nicest person that I have ever met in my whole life?" So I said to her-- now, the door's wide open, okay? I said to her, I said, "well, I'm a Christian. God has just been so good to me, he has blessed my life so much, and I just really felt like that he wanted you to know that he loves you and that he sees you and he cares about you." Well, right away, she starts crying again and she says--now this is going on in the bathroom, and yes, there's other people in there. And so then she says, "well, I have to admit I've been kind of mad at the higher power." She didn't even know how to refer to God, because she said, "my mother died of cancer when I was little," and she said, "i just have always felt like he didn't care anything about me and didn't love me." And I said, "well, he wants you to know that he loves you and he's got a plan for your life." And so it cost me a coffee pot and a little bit of my pride, but hopefully we're on our way to winning a soul for the kingdom.
Joyce Meyer: and I'm not telling you that to brag on me. My only point is what do you think would happen in the world if every one of us who calls ourself a Christian would get out in the world and actually act like that?
Joyce Meyer: now, man, if you pastor a church, don't get mad at me when I say this, 'cause I love church. I'm all about getting people to get committed to a church. But if you had a choice between going to church on sunday and going to work on monday and acting like everybody else, or not going to church on monday--sunday, but going out in the world and actually showing Jesus to people, I can tell you I think he'd rather that you get out and act like who you say you are than go to church and act religious and then do nothing.
Joyce Meyer: I think we need to do both, amen? So here's my challenge. I'm just gonna throw this down. Will you make a commitment I'd like to say once a week to do something for somebody else but if that's more than you can handle right now--
Joyce Meyer: wherever you're at, if it's once a month or if it's twice a month, I want you to make a commitment to do something for somebody else that's gonna cost you some time, some energy, some effort, or some money.
Joyce Meyer: how many of you will take that challenge? All right, pressing on to the next part of this. Are we okay? All right, I also wanna give you a challenge to make your mind up to live with excellence. Now, you know, I can do a whole six-part series just on excellence, and obviously, I can't do that tonight, but I'm gonna get real practical with you and just tell you a few places that you can begin. How many of you have heard the grocery cart story? Is anybody here who have not? All right, well, bear with me just a few seconds here. When God called me to teach, and I just had a little home bible study, about 25 people coming to my home every tuesday night, and I taught there for over 5 years, doing that. And I was a mom, made lunches, and cooked home-cooked meals every day. I actually used to do that. And we had a grocery store that wasn't very far from us and so a couple times a week I'd have to go to the grocery store, and when I first started really trying to have a serious walk with God, I didn't know that much and I couldn't go off to bible school, I had a bunch of kids. And so God just started training me and teaching me things that I didn't even really realize the impact of at the time. And one of the first things I remember God dealing with me about was putting my grocery cart back in the little place marked off for grocery carts instead of working hard to lean it up against-- start to walk off and it'd start to roll and go back. Kick the wheels and turn 'em in and try to get it leaned up against all the others so it wouldn't-- realizing that when I left, it could roll off and hit somebody's car but not caring, 'cause I didn't know anything about excellence. And here's the thing. It took me 2 years to get to the point where I would do that every single time I went to the grocery store. You know why? 'cause I had all the same excuses: "well, nobody else does it. Well, it's raining. Well, that's what we pay them for."
Joyce Meyer: and then God would speak to me and say, "well, if this was your grocery store, what would you want people to do?" See, we're not gonna get by with doing what everybody else does. God wants us to treat them the way we would like to be treated if it was us. This is the behind the closed doors thing.
Joyce Meyer: "oh, Joyce , surely you could tell us something more spiritual than put my grocery cart back?" Well, here's the thing. If I can't get you to do that, it's not gonna do me any good to tell you something more spiritual. That's why we gotta start with these things. Now, I'm gonna tell you something. You are probably gonna think I'm crazy when I say this, but I don't say things that I don't mean, and I mean what I'm getting ready to say. I really believe if I would have never obeyed God about those grocery carts, I do not believe I'd be standing here tonight.
Joyce Meyer: well, maybe you get it, I don't know. "well, what does that have to do with it?" It has a lot to do with it. Because it's not what I do up here that matters that much or impresses God. It's what I do behind closed doors when nobody's looking that's just between me and God.
Joyce Meyer: that's where your character is built and developed, not somewhere else.
Joyce Meyer: well, God has definitely called us to be lights in a dark world. But you know, it's our job to turn the lights on so we can let it shine. What you've watched today is only a portion of the teaching from our annual women's conference, but you can get the entire conference series with today's offer. It's called "celebrate life." Six teachings and a booklet that we've put together for you that'll be a free gift called "take some happy home." I like the title of that book. Now go on out and let your light shine and have a wonderful day.