This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name Your Price Tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and Coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states. Welcome to 15 Minutes in the Word with New York Times bestselling author Joyce Meyer. On today's program, Joyce will be teaching from her series, Pressing In and Pressing On. To press is to push beyond opposition. It means leaving the comfort zone and doing whatever it takes to attain what God has for us. We must let go to grow. Now, here's Joyce with today's teaching. Okay, I started a series last night that I call Pressing In and Pressing On, and nobody seemed excited at all when I told them what it was. But I get it. The reason is because we really don't want to press. We'd rather glide or slide or want something easy. We don't want anything that's going to require any effort. And to be honest, that's one thing that has gone downhill in our nation. I mean, people used to be such hard workers, and they expected to work and to earn things and to wait for things. And today, people don't want to do that. They want to have everything handed to them, and they think it's the right to have everything handed to them. But we need to earn what we get. And I'm not talking about from God. God gives us many things freely and by His grace. We don't have to get into works of the flesh earning what God wants to give us freely. But you can't be afraid of hard work if you ever want to really have a life like God wants you to have. And you can't be wimpy and whiny. And every time a problem comes along, you just fall apart, go into a self-pity fit and pour me. You got to just... We need to get a little... We don't need wishbone. We need backbone. Amen. And so I'm going to start where I left off last night, and we'll just see how far we get. And then thank God for this afternoon. Amen. So we're talking about pressing into new beginnings, and that in order to do that, you have to always be willing to let go of what lies behind. How many of you have had something in your life that you put a lot of yourself into and it just didn't work out? Okay. Well, you got to be very careful that you don't just get stuck at the things that didn't work. And let them get you to thinking that you're just a failure and that it's all over, because I'll tell you something. God is never without a plan. No, you may not know what the plan is, but God knows what the plan is. Now, in the book of Samuel, there's Samuel 1 and 2, we read about Kingsol. Now, first of all, God never wanted the people to have a king. He wanted to be their king, but he, the people insisted on having a king. So he anointed a man named Saul to become king. The Bible says that when the Spirit came on Saul, he was turned into another man. And that's what happens, man. When the Holy Spirit comes on you, whatever you were before, you can kiss goodbye because he's going to turn you into a brand new, sharp, threshing instrument. Do you realize that we have world changers sitting in this room today? I'm telling you, when God gets hold of you, man, it's all over with the shouting for the devil, because if you really stick with God and do what he leads you to do, I mean, you just have no idea what you can accomplish and what you can do. I mean, I'm from a place called Fenton, Missouri. Now, I've got a lot of degrees, honorary degrees, and you know, things that I've been given, and I appreciate all of them, but I have a 12th grade education. And so let's just say for all intent and purposes, I'm not especially brain-y smart, but I love God and I've got a lot of common sense. And so I'm not educated to do what I'm doing. I never went to Bible college. I don't feel like I have got to have some kind of a fancy title in front of my name. I started out Joyce. I'm still Joyce. I expect to be respected and to be honored, but I'm not in the titles and trying to impress people. I was a mess and God got hold of me. And he changed my life through his word, and he called me to share his word with people. And today, the message you're hearing here this weekend will be heard around the world in over 100 different languages. And I almost failed English. I didn't care if it was a noun or a pronoun or a verb or what it was, I just wanted to talk. And so now people think I speak all these languages and I'm still working on English. It's kind of funny, but I still to this day don't know when to use rather and when to use weather. So I just say drother. I'm trying to get a point across that really, to be honest, it's God that makes you special. And you don't have to have a bunch of special stuff going for you for God to use you. All you have to be is available. Here I am, God. Use me. Send me. But you can't be stuck somewhere morning over every mistake that you've made. You can't have a victim mentality. My parents didn't treat me right. I didn't get the right education. I didn't get a chance to go to college. I didn't this. I didn't that. I didn't something else. It doesn't matter what you don't have if you do have Jesus in your life. You understand that if you have Jesus, you have a great personal relationship with Jesus, you have got all that you need to do something great. I said, great, something great with your life. So God anointed Saul to become King. And saw Saul was partially obedient, but he wasn't completely obedient. He did most of what God told him to, but a little bit of what he wanted to. And he did this over and over until God finally said, you're not going to be King. He lost his opportunity because of disobedience. Well, the prophet Samuel had put a great deal of time into Saul, and he loved him. I'm sure he had prayed for him and worked with him. And so when Saul lost the opportunity to be King, Samuel was grieving, very grieving. You know, when we have loss in our life, we grieve over those losses and it's right to do so. But you have to be very careful that you don't let a spirit of grief get on your life and keep it the rest of your life. Because if you do, it will keep you from letting go of what lies behind and pressing on to the things that are ahead. I remember a story a woman told me a friend of mine, her teenage son got cancer and they did everything. Everybody prayed and they did all the treatments and he still passed away. He still passed away. And so naturally she was grieving and hurting and she said one day she was in her basement doing her laundry and she said, I could just, I could feel like the spirit of grief just trying to wrap itself around me. And she said, I grabbed a piece of clothes and threw it around me and said, this is my garment of praise. And I'm not going to live in grief. And she just started dancing around her basement with that piece of clothes wrapped around her. You know, you got to let the devil know that no matter what he's been able to do to you in the past and no matter what he's taken or stolen, that you are going to put your faith in God and God is going to give it back to you not one time, but double what the enemy took. And when you've had some mourning and some grief in your life, oh, it's so sweet when the joy comes. Do you know that we couldn't even know joy if we didn't know sadness? One time I went with my daughter to the, to a spa to get a facial and somehow or another I got home and didn't have my wedding ring and call the spa. They didn't have it. Nobody had seen it. And so I just figured that I must have left it on the counter on the sink and somebody took it. And so it really hurt me that I had lost it. You know, it meant a lot to me. And, and so there was a grieving period of time. And then I finally just said, well, Lord, it's just a thing and I can live without the thing. And so when I'm about my business and two, three months went by, my daughter called me one day, the one that had been with me at the spa and she said, guess what I found? And I said, what? She said, I found your ring. It was in my purse. And I'm thinking, why would it be in your purse? Well, then we realized the purse she had belonged to me at one time and I had given it to her. So when I took my ring off, I just looked at the purse thinking it was mine, put it in her purse. She went home, took the stuff out of it and never used it again for months. And then when she got it, well, I was so overjoyed that I found my ring. Well, here's the thing. I would have never had the experience of that joy had I not had the loss. And I want to tell you something. I want you to get this and believe it today. Some of you have had some terrible loss in your life. You've endured tragedies, injustice. Things have happened to you that are not right, that are not fair. And it's been hard. But oh, oh, come on now. You know where I'm going. Oh, I'll tell you what, if you won't have a bitter attitude and you won't take on a victim mentality and you'll go ahead and love God and be obedient to him and continue to try to help people. Oh, your reward is going to come and you are going to be so overjoyed. So don't look at what you've lost. Look at what can happen in your future. You know, Martha said to Jesus, her brother Lazarus had died and she said, Jesus Lazarus has died. If you would have been here, he wouldn't have died. And Jesus said he will rise again. Martha was looking at what had happened. Jesus was looking at what could happen. Come on, which do you want to do today? Keep staring at everything that has happened or do you want to get excited about what God can do in your life? But you got to hear all of it or it won't work. You cannot have a bad attitude. And also have the great life that God wants to give you. Thanks for listening. Pressing into and through things is a very important life principle because God is always calling us up. He requires us to leave where we are and press toward the next level. Matthew 7, 13 and 14 are some great scriptures that say enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and spacious and broad is the way that leads away to destruction. And many are those who are entering through it. This means it's easy to stay on the broad path. But if we want to be on that narrow path, we are going to have to do some pressing. You can learn more about God's word with every day study. Sign up today at joismire.org. Thank you for listening to 15 minutes in the word with Joyce. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at Progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and Coverage Match Limited by State Law. Not available in all states.
