Buying a car can feel like guesswork. Is it really the right price or should you wait? With CarGurus you get unbiased deal ratings, price change history and trusted dealer reviews so you can spot a great deal and buy with confidence. Go to cargurus.co.uk for complete vehicle details without any surprises. That's C-A-R-G-U-R-U-S.co.uk. CarGurus.co.uk. CarGurus.search.buy.sortit. This program is supported by you, our viewers and our partners. I don't think anybody should ever have to ask us if we're a Christian. I think they should not be around us more than five or ten minutes and they'll know. I'm Joyce Meyer and I believe that God can heal you everywhere you hurt. I want to talk to you about how to be godly in an ungodly world. The line is getting very blurry between who is a believer and who isn't. Amen? And what I mean by that is you know just because somebody's got a bumper sticker on their car that doesn't necessarily mean that they're walking with God the way that they should or that they're not compromising in their life behind the scenes. And I really believe that if we're going to put bumper stickers on our car and hang Christian jewelry around our neck and carry Bibles and do things that make us look like we're Christians, then I think we ought to live the life. Otherwise, I think we need to just take them off. And it's actually getting extremely concerning. The Bible says that in the last days, which I don't know how much longer it's going to be before Jesus is going to come back, but one thing's for sure a lot of the signs that the Bible talks about are definitely being fulfilled today. And so we have to realize that if God chose us to live in this time frame, now hear me, you're not just kind of born accidentally and put into some time frame somewhere in the world. God puts you in a place in a time frame for a reason. And if you're here in this time frame, at this time in world history, then you've got a job to do. It's not all up to the people standing up here. Matter of fact, most of the people who need help are not going to come in here. They're going to be out there where you're at. And so our job is to train you up that you might go out and do the work of the ministry. I'm going to say that again. The five-fold ministry is called to train you up that you might go out and do the work of the ministry. And this is not a time to just come to church and admire the person on the platform. This is a time to get everything you possibly can and make sure that you're ready to take what you hear and go out in the world and use it. Amen. In Matthew 24, there are signs of the end times. And one of the things it says is that deception is going to be great. Matter of fact, it's going to be so great that if God did not shorten the days for the sake of the very elect, that no man could stand the deception that's coming on the world. Do you pray on even a semi-regular basis that God will protect you from deception that you will not be deceived? Do you pray that? If you don't pray that, I want to encourage you to pray that every day because to think that you can't be deceived is deception itself. Amen. I really want everybody to take this to heart tonight because there is such a pull out in the world to pull people into that gray area, that blurry area. I don't think anybody should ever have to ask us if we're a Christian. I think they should not be around us more than five or ten minutes and they'll know. And not because we're preaching to them and not because we've got on a certain kind of jewelry or we've got a bumper sticker on our car, but there should be something about us, which of course is Jesus and the Holy Spirit on our lives, that comes through our behavior. There's nothing more important than how we behave. It's more important than how often you go to church. It's more important than how often you fast. It's more important than how much of the Bible you've got underlined. Come on, we can get our Bibles out and I've been using this one a couple of years, so it's really marked up good. Stars and underlines and yellow and pink and oh my goodness. And we can look at that sometimes and think we are so spiritual. Or sometimes the pastor has opened a such and such and boy, if we've got that underlined, come on, you know that there's a little puff in the flesh. It's like and we kind of scooted over a little bit and hope the person next to us sees how much we know. You know what, we don't know anything unless we're doing it. And I'd like to even add, it's not even, are we doing it in front of our Christian friends at church on Sunday? You could probably cross that one off too. It's, are we doing it behind closed doors at home? Come on. See, I learned a long time ago that God sees everything I do. And the thing that is very important to me is that I live my life before God. And that I want my reputation with him to be good and that my reputation with him is much more important than my reputation with people. See, sometimes we can do what's right if the right person is watching us that we want to impress, but what do we do when nobody is watching? And I love to encourage people and tell you how much God loves you and how he wants to prosper you. But Paul told Timothy to urge, encourage, warn, and rebuke with his teaching. Not just encourage, but to also warn and rebuke. So, you know, I would have rather come here tonight and just taught some funny message. I've got some really funny stuff. I mean, I could have had everybody just rolling in the aisles, but I knew that this was what God wanted me to bring to you tonight because I really want to keep you out of trouble in the future and trouble is coming. It took the devil three chapters in Genesis to deceive Eve. So, I wonder after all these years he's had to work, work. What kind of deception is going on today? The devil is alive and well on planet earth. Revelation 12, 9, the great dragon was hurled down that ancient serpent called the devil, our Satan, who leads the whole world astray. He was hurled to the earth and his angels with him. And so, he's here. But we have authority over him. But it's not going to do any good to try to cast out devils if you don't even have authority over a sink full of dirty dishes yet. You say, huh? If you're not even taking care of what belongs to you and your whole life behind closed doors at home is a mess, your finances are a mess, but your car is a mess, everything's a mess, it starts at home. It starts with the basic foundation, with getting along with the people in your house. I can't fight with Dave all day and then come up here and preach. Well, I could, but it wouldn't be very anointed. Deception means to believe a lie. If you look it up in the Vines Greek dictionary, it means to cheat, deceive, beguile, that which gives a false impression rather by appearance, statement, or influence. It's crafty. It's bait. It's a snare. It's a wandering from the right path. It's when we believe that good is evil and evil is good, that right is wrong and wrong is right. And boy, we got some of that going on in the world. Amen. You know, we don't even really like to call sin, sin. We call it our problem, our mistake, our addiction, our bondage, our weakness, and sometimes even our disease. But we don't like to say we sinned. But that's what God calls it. Oh, did you hear so and so fell into adultery? You don't fall into adultery. Well, you've been watching my teaching on how to be godly in an ungodly world. It's not always easy, but with Christ, it's always doable. Ginger's here with some of your questions on this subject, and I'm going to try by the grace of God to answer them. Well, we have complete confidence, and we are in tricky world, you know, where it comes to being godly in some circumstances that are quite challenging sometimes. Well, you know, it is very concerning at this point because, to be honest, more and more Christians are compromising, and if you do it long enough, you get to think, and there's not anything wrong with it. That's very true. And you know, like for example, how much, how many Christians are mad at somebody? And yet the Bible clearly says that's a sin. I think that, I think there's sins that have become acceptable sins, but they're not really acceptable to God. You could take jealousy or judgment or, and speaking of judgment, God just showed me two people this week that I have an attitude toward, and it's a judgmental attitude. And so I repented right away, and I'm asking him to show me if there's other. It's strange that you can get, you can get things like that, they just get lost inside you, and you forget that it's even a problem. When you think about them, and you've got this snarly attitude, you don't even recognize what it is. But God knows that you're open to the Holy Spirit's leading. And I think that's a huge thing for all of us. Am I open to the Holy Spirit's leading in these areas that I'd rather say, don't touch that one. Yeah, I don't need help with that one. But that's the only way to survive in a world like this, because like you said, if you take one step, then you'll take another, then you'll take another, and you end up going someplace you were never meant to be. I've said before, and I think it's good to say it here today that I think one of the most challenging things to do is to live a holy life without being legalistic. So I'm sure we'll talk more about that when I get to some other questions. Very, very challenging. Well, let's start with this. Kenneth from Tennessee says, what does holiness really mean? Let's make sure we understand what we're talking about here. Well, holiness means doing in every situation what you believe Jesus would do. And we know, we know, would Jesus watch this? Would Jesus gossip about this person? Would he? Yeah. We know a lot more than we think we do. And the Bible says that we are destined to be transformed into his image. You know, it's a long slow process. You might be the only Jesus that somebody ever sees. Not saying that any of us are Jesus, but we represent him, his representatives in the earth. And so holiness is being obedient to God, obedient to the word, obedient to a rama word, which is just a word that God gives you. It might not be something written in the Bible, but you know, the Holy Spirit just doesn't want you to go there or do that. And we have the Holy Spirit for that purpose to lead us and guide us. And we have a conscience. And we can go by our conscience. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's let's get into some of these real specific questions. Annette from Arizona says she actually came back to Christ watching this program and thanks to prayers from friends. And her husband is not a believer, however, but does not want to encourage her in her faith. Encourage or discourage? He he's not trying to discourage her. Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. He supports her in her faith, but he's not a believer. We used to have activities that I now do not feel comfortable with because I'm a believer. What do I do with those? How do I handle that? Well, obviously some things in her life will have to change. And she'll need to explain that to him. Maybe she can come up with some alternatives, things that she thinks they could do together that you know, wouldn't be a sin for her. But then also I want to say, when you're in a situation like that, you have to be very careful that you're not just being legalistic. Example, I heard one time a woman was married to a man. She was a believer. He wasn't. And she became a believer after they were married. And they always went fishing together on Sunday. Well, now she goes to church on Sunday and he still goes fishing. And I don't know if it's her pastor or who, but somebody with some spiritual clout to him said, you know, he might get saved quicker if you would just occasionally go fishing with him on a Sunday. You know, you're not going to go to hell if you miss church one Sunday or maybe she could go to a midweek service or yeah, that's the first question. Like, is that okay? And that doesn't mean she should do it all the time. Yeah. But just to show him that, you know, because if he thinks not all of a sudden fishing is sinful, well, here's another question that is a great example of some of those very practical things that is all over the place in the world. But we're called to something different. So how do we handle it? Blanca from Texas says, I need guidance in discussing living together before marriage with my son and his girlfriend. I love his girlfriend. They are serious about their future together. But what do I do with this? Well, it would be nice if I knew whether he was a Christian or not. That would make a difference and you would be how that makes a difference. Well, it would be easier to sit down and tell him, you know, that this would be a wrong choice to make. If he was a believer, if he's not, then, you know, so many people do that today that it's not even anything that anybody feels is wrong or yeah, is ashamed of, you know, as she may not be able to tell him right now. You know, we have to remember that we are not the Holy Ghost and we always want to correct people when they're doing something wrong. And sometimes God does want us to do that, but it has to be the right timing. The good thing about like for me, the Holy Spirit, being the leader of my healing was the Holy Spirit always knows what to bring up at just the right time and what to leave alone until the right time. I mean, if I would have known all that was wrong with me day one, I would have just said, forget it. I'll never, you know, be able to do that. Yeah. And I was counseling a woman one time. She'd just been born again the night before, at a conference I was doing. And the next day was a work day and she wanted to come in for some counseling. So I spent some time with her and we talked and she kept talking about what she was doing. And she was like, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. I don't know. I spent some time with her and we talked and she kept talking about how her and her boyfriend live together. And she wasn't having a problem with it at all. And I'm sitting there thinking, well, I'm going to tell her that she has to stop that. And that's wrong. And I mean, I clearly heard the Holy Spirit say, no, you're not going to tell her that she's not ready for that now. I'll tell her when the time is right. And see, she needed to get grounded in the Word and grounded in her love for God. And then the Holy Spirit would tell her that. And Dave was wise enough with me. He didn't even start trying to confront me for a good number of years. And then he felt like the Holy Spirit told him it was time. And he bought a book called Caring Enough to Confront. And he realized that he really didn't love me if he didn't confront me. He needed to care enough about me. But it needed to be the right time. And timing sometimes is everything. You can do the right thing at the wrong time. And it can cause a lot of problems. And he did begin to confront me and it did make me mad. But I loved God enough by then that I wasn't going to run away. And if he would have done that, say in the first few weeks of our marriage, I probably would have just left him. So prayer is a really important precursor to all of this, isn't it? Yeah. You need to. You've got to prepare them to let you know what's wrong. Yeah. And when you see that something is wrong, the Bible does tell us to try to restore people and to do it with a humble attitude, lest we ourselves be tempted at escalation 6-1. And so I'm not saying that you ignore sin and don't confront anybody because you're afraid you'll hurt their feelings. I'm talking about if you see something in somebody that you know needs to be dealt with, first thing you do is pray. Am I the one you want to use? You may be. You may not. Like I said, we have to realize that we're not the Savior. We're not, you know, we work for God. We work with God, but we do it in his direction. You will be done and not mine. And I guess some people could think, well, it couldn't possibly be in the will of God to just let somebody stay in sin. Well, if you tell them it's not the right time, it's not going to change anything anyway. They won't change. They'll just get mad at you. And so I think it's important to wait for the right time. I think that also leads you to the other side of that, is that if the Holy Spirit is telling you something, it's the right time in your life. Right. You're beginning to hear that. Absolutely. This is not right for me, you know. When it was time for me to start confronting the abuse in my past, they bought me a book that was, a woman had written who had had the same background as me. And I started to read the first page and all that old pain came back. And I took that book and threw it across the room. And I said, I will not read this. And the Holy Spirit simply said, it's time. Well, our relationship with Christ is so valuable. And we don't want to do anything that's going to harm that. But God does have a timing. Ecclesiastes says there's a timing for everything. And so just seek God about the right timing before you decide to correct someone. I'm not saying you shouldn't correct them. I'm just saying do it at the right time. And you know what? I hope that you have a wonderful day. God bless you. So sometimes what we think will bring us happiness still doesn't do it for us. We try everything. Look out for number one. But life still feels empty. Well, you know, we typically look at our circumstances and try to change them in order for me to be happy. I know this because I thought this way for years. I was always on my mind. I would constantly think, what about me? What about me? I had no idea that the root of my unhappiness was something I could actually change. I was getting in my own way and missing the blessings that God has for me. You see, selfishness steals our joy. But God has such a better way for us to live. I firmly believe that people need to realize that there is great power in an unselfish life. That's why I've written what about me? Inside I share why it's important to get out of that me mindset and how to change your perspective in a way that will benefit you and others. I have absolutely no doubt that what I share in this book will change your life, just like it completely changed mine. Request what about me today and take important steps to living an unselfish life. It's available to you right now for your gift of any amount. Call us today at 1-800-331-8000 or visit us online at JoyceMeyer.org. You can get out of your own way, walk in love, and live unselfishly. When you request what about me, you'll also receive Enjoy Your Journey. Two powerful books designed to help you find true joy in Christ. Discover happiness not based in circumstances, but in God's gift of peace. These books are available to you right now for your gift of any amount. But wait, there's more. For $60 or more, you'll receive this Radiate Love tote bag along with other gift items. Call 1-800-331-8000, visit us online at JoyceMeyer.org or use the QR code on your screen. Remember, your contribution today allows us to share the gospel and God's love around the world through our Hand of Hope Outreaches and media platforms. What about me and Enjoy Your Journey are available for any amount. Discovering true happiness through Christ is just a phone call or touch screen away. Call 1-800-331-8000, visit us online at JoyceMeyer.org or use the QR code on your screen. Our stories, they matter. Your gifts, your passions, even your quirkiness, they were designed with intention. He can use every twist and turn of your journey to create something new. Out of brokenness, beauty, out of struggle, a life transformed. Join us for the 2026 Love Life Women's Conference and discover how God can bring transformation to your story. With Joyce and her guests, Christine Cain, Lisa Harper, and Worship with Natalie Grant and Hope Darst, October 22nd through the 24th in Tampa, Florida. Register today and say go to JoyceMeyer.org slash Love Life. Register now. We hope you enjoyed today's program. We are so grateful to our JoyceMeyer Ministry's partners who make this and all we do possible, including sharing God's word and offering help to people in need all over the world. This program is supported by you, our viewers, and our partners. Thank you.
