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, The Fearsome Four. When we feel discouraged, defeated, or overwhelmed by the pressures of life, chances are we're being hit by what Joyce calls the fearsome four. Fear, guilt, worry, and insecurity. The devil uses these obstacles to keep us from God's calling. But with Christ, we can defeat all of them and reach God's perfect plan for our life. Be empowered with today's teaching and learn to embrace God's fearless form. Peace, confidence, love, and courage. Now, here's Joyce with today's teaching. If there's anybody here tonight or anybody watching my television and you're thinking, oh my gosh, God, you are talking to me. Then I want to give you a piece of advice. If you're going to say to somebody, whether it's a child or a friend, I mean, it could be a parent. I mean, it could be a parent who's got you on a guilt trip. After all I've done for you. And so now, you know, they're pretty much controlling your life, and you know it's not right. And you know it's time for you to stand up for yourself and say, you know, hey, Mom, hey, Dad, I love you. I'm going to help you. I'm going to take care of you, but you're not going to run my life. well here's the thing or you know you say to your children you know I love you I'm going to be a good parent but my whole life is not going to revolve around you because someday you're going to be gone off doing your own thing and then there's going to be me and so I got to start building some kind of a life can I give you a piece of advice you don't have to be at the bottom of your list of who you do something for all the time and that doesn't mean that you're being selfish I hate selfishness and I hate self-centeredness and I preach against it all the time but it's not even wise to not take care of yourself it's not even wise to totally ignore your own needs all the time and furthermore if you let people walk all over you they're not even going to respect you but here's the thing that I want to say. You have to realize that if you begin to change something in a relationship with somebody, you've got to give them a little time to act up. Because even if they know you're right, it's still going to be hard on their flesh. And here's what you need to do. No matter what they do, you must stay happy. Because one of the best things that Dave did for me was he would do what I knew was right and I would react badly to it, but he would not let me make him unhappy. And see, here's the thing. If you know that you're doing the right thing, you really believe before God you're doing the right thing, you're doing it the right way, there's no reason for you to be unhappy. So anyway, I leave you with that thought. people have all kinds of fears in their life little fears, big fears that have been around for a long time some of them you're aware of and you just put up with them because they've been around for so long others maybe you put up with them so long you don't even realize that that's what it is so why don't we just ask God to start revealing all of our fears does anybody want to do that? don ask him to if you don want him to because we don want to live in fear We don want Satan stealing from us We don want him tormenting us or aggravating us We only get one trip through this life. And we need to make it count. And we need to get the most out of it that we can. And we need to leave the greatest deposit here that we can possibly leave. Don't just live for yourself. Leave a legacy. And you're not going to leave a legacy if you don't know who you are in Christ. and make your mind up that you're going to do all that you can do and be all that you can be for the glory of God. Amen? Amen? God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and love and a sound mind. You know, I think that part about a sound mind, I think maybe we could get something out of that that we haven't really gotten out of that before. You know, I think that having a sound mind means that we can look at things accurately and reasonably. We don't have to just let a fearful thought come into our mind and then watch our emotions go wild. But we can look at things accurately and reasonably. And we can say, well, okay, I have a problem, but I also have God. And God is greater than my problem. I actually think you can talk yourself into calming down if you really want to. I had cancer about 22 years ago. and had breast cancer and had to have surgery and thankfully didn't have to have any kind of treatments because they caught it when it was just a real small tumor. But it was a very fast-growing type of cancer. And, you know, anytime that somebody has cancer, there's always that, you know, thought out there that it could come back at some time. And so I've spent 20-some-odd years standing against that every time it tries to come into my mind. But when you go to the doctor and you get checkups, they always want to know on the paper, have you ever had cancer? So then if you have, then they're doubly watching for stuff. And so this past year, I hurt my back. And because of all the years of walking on these platforms and jumping up and down and doing other stuff and improper shoes, I ended up with some back problems. And so now I have to really take care of my back and wear proper shoes and sit down occasionally. That doesn't hurt me either. and work out and take good care of it. But last year, I hurt it pretty bad. I mean, like really bad. And so for about four or five months, it was really bad. So in the process of that, they sent me for an MRI on my back just to see what was going on. And they found some lesions on my spine that they just said looks like a metastasized cancer. So you know the thoughts. Here they come. Well, I've been around the block a few times, and so I was able to talk to myself. And Dave is really great and stuff like this. He's always positive. And, you know, you can talk yourself into stuff, and you can talk yourself out of stuff. Do you know that? Come on, you're talking to yourself anyway. You might as well say something that's going to help you. So, I mean, I don't know what you'll think of this, but this was just kind of what I came up with. I thought, well, okay, I'm certainly not going to believe that I've got cancer on my spine. But the bottom line is, is whatever it is, even if it's that, we'll deal with it. God will be with us and we'll deal with it and we'll do whatever we have to do. And you know really and honestly for the Christian we all know the worst case scenario is well what if I don make it But the Apostle Paul I think knew how to confront that fear the fear of death because he said to live is Christ and to die is gain I'd rather go on and be with the Lord anyway. I'm only staying here for you. So he had a pretty, you know, good attitude about it. Now, you know, I don't mean that. I mean, if you're watching my television or you're here and you've had a bad report from the doctor, I am not in any way trying to be flipping about how you might feel or the fears that might be attacking you. But I am genuinely trying to help you by saying that you can have a sound mind. You don't have to have a spirit of fear, but you can have a spirit of power, of love, and a sound mind. And you can just look at it with a little more soundness in your mind, not let the emotion of the fear take you over. Well, so then they wanted me to go have, let's see, what was first? I had the MRI. Then they wanted me to have a bone scan. So they did a bone scan of every bone in my body. And, of course, you know, you get the test and you got to wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait for it to come back. So I got that test back and they said, we have looked at every bone in your body and you do not have any, you have no cancer in your bones. So I'm like, yes. And so I was excited. And then they said, but there is definitely something that we're seeing on your spine. And so because you did have cancer, we feel like that we need to now do a PET scan. So then I had to get an appointment for that. And then I had to wait for that. And then I had to get that test and wait for those results to come back. And then they said, well, you don't have any cancer. We've checked you from head to toe. So listen, I said, so what are the things you're seeing on my spine? And this is what they said. They said, well, it could have been some metastasized cancer from years ago that healed. Or they said, it could just be a birth defect. Or we don't know what it is, but we know it's not cancer. So, here's the thing. I could have, over that couple of month period of time, I could have made myself an absolute 100% total wreck. I could have had my whole family scared. I could have had all the people that enjoy my teaching scared. I could have made myself miserable. And the bottom line is, is none of that would have changed it. So I needed to just stay strong and say, God, I believe that you're going to take care of me, and I don't want it to turn out that way. But even if it does, I am not going to be afraid of the problem because you will be with me whether I'm on the mountaintop or whether I'm in the valley. And that's the place that God wants to get us to. Can you hear me? That's the place that God wants to get us to. I don't have to be problem-free to be happy and to keep my trust in God. and I'm hoping and praying that in saying these things, that there's people even watching by television that maybe you've gotten a bad report from the doctor, and I mean Satan is attacking you with fear and trying to just frighten you. What I'm encouraging you to do is just think about what I've said tonight. Look at it with a sound mind. Just look at it realistically. God is on your side. He loves you, and I believe that He will have an answer for you, and whatever you have to go through God will walk you through it and I believe that he will work good out of it in your life Amen This is a good message to tuck away for those later days. Amen? This is one of those good ones to hang on to just in case something happens that wants to try to rise up and frighten you. Fear steals, kills, hinders, and prevents. Hebrews 10, 35. Do not therefore fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a great and a glorious compensation of reward. So when something comes against you that wants to frighten you, he's saying, don't throw away your confidence, because if you just remain confident, you'll end up with the reward of that confidence. There's an incidence that I talk about once in a while from my past, a ministry example, but it can be related to anything in your life. And I guess if you listen to a lot of my teaching, you may have heard this story, but I'm sure there's also lots and lots of people that haven't heard it. And anytime I talk about fear, I always think back to the first really sizable speaking engagement that I had where I got an opportunity to actually stand in front of what now would be a small crowd of people, but then look like a million people to me. And actually, a speaker had canceled, and just because somebody knew somebody that knew somebody that knew somebody that knew me. So it wasn't even really like they wanted me. They just like, they desperately needed somebody. So I was there. And I wasn't even speaking in the main meeting. I was doing like a workshop in the afternoon, one of those conferences where you have the main meeting with the big speakers, and then you have the little speakers with the workshops. And so I had a workshop and on opening night, all the speakers were sitting down here on the front row and I was sitting there. And I mean, we had Bishop so-and-so and Apostle so-and-so and I mean, Doctor so-and-so and Reverend so-and-so and Joyce. I mean, I felt like I was about that big and the devil was screaming in my ears, what are you doing here? What are you doing here? Why don't you go back to Fenton where you came from? You are going to make a fool out of yourself. Thanks for listening. Despite the challenges we may face in life, when we put our trust in God, we receive an incredible promise from Him. 2 Timothy 1.17 says that we have not been given a spirit of fear, but of power, of love, and of a sound mind. This promise gives us the strength to look at our problems and know that God is on our side. He wants to give us His peace as we face whatever lies ahead. For more resources from Joyce, visit JoyceMeyer.org. Well, I hope that you feel that I'm a partner in your life by teaching you the Word of God. And I'm asking you to partner with me in helping us continue reaching out, not only to you through this program, but to so many people around the world that still don't know Jesus. Together, we can do so much more than what we can do by ourselves. So please, become a brand new partner with us today. To join us in partnership right now, go to joycemeyer.org. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to 15 Minutes in the Word with Joyce.
