When you need to send the perfect rose bouquet, only one brand can say they've been the floor authority for 50 years. 1-800-FLOWERS Why should you trust 1-800-FLOWERS? They hand-select every stem to ensure top quality, and with nationwide delivery, smiles and satisfaction are 100% guaranteed. And right now, when you order a dozen multicolored roses, we'll double it at no extra cost! Don't miss out on this limited time offer! Order today at 1-800-FLOWERS.COM slash podcast. Welcome to 15 Minutes in the Word, with New York Times' best-selling author Joyce Meyer. On today's program, Joyce will be teaching from her series, Blessed in the Mess. Choosing to trust God, despite our circumstances, is the answer to everything. This doesn't mean we sit back and do nothing while God fixes all our problems. It means we can live with joy, and be a blessing to someone else while he works things out in his way and in his perfect timing. If we tend to God's business, he will take care of ours. Now, here's Joyce with today's teaching. All right, I'm teaching this weekend on choosing to trust God. You know, trusting God is not something that we just wait to feel like doing. It's something we choose to do. You all have trust, just a matter of where you put it. Have you ever spent, or let's say, wasted years in your life trusting yourself? Found out that didn't work very good, didn't you? Have you ever put your trust in somebody else that just really shocked and surprised you and just disappointed you and really hurt you? Okay. Maybe you had your first trust, maybe you had your trust in your money, and all of a sudden something happened, and whoops, you didn't have that anymore. There are so many things that people can put their trust in that's just not stable. And you know, God loves us so much that he really won't let us keep our trust in other things and simultaneously try to have a great relationship with him. So the minute that you begin to get even a little bit serious about your relationship with God, God's going to start messing in your life and touching some things and changing some things that sometimes you would rather he stay out of. Amen? You don't want to pray, God, do what you want to do in my life if you don't mean it. You don't want to sing, I surrender all if you don't mean it. Because God is on a serious mission, and he wants you and he wants all of you. He doesn't just want a Sunday morning you. He wants all of you. And him we live and move and have our being. I'm liking that scripture more and more and more. The more I think about it. He is our life. What do we have if we don't have Jesus? And so tonight I want to talk about trusting God when you don't understand. It's one thing to trust God far something. This room is full of people tonight and lots of people watching by TV that you're trusting God far something. You're asking God to change something in your life or to give you something or to make something go away that's unpleasant. You're trusting God to change somebody else in your life. It's one thing to trust God to give you something or to do something. It's another thing entirely to trust God through something or to continue trusting God when he's not giving you what you want, when everything around you is shaking and you just do not understand what is going on. I would imagine that we have people here tonight and lots of them that you feel like literally everything in your life is shaking right now. Got anybody? All right. Now, see, for some of you it's just a thing here or there, but some of you, I mean, it's like what is going on? And you just don't understand. But I can tell you from many years of experience and the only way you really learn how to trust God is through experience, by the way. We all start out wanting to trust God and the only way we learn how to trust God is by having a reason to have to trust God. And then as we do trust him, we see his faithfulness and then little by little as we journey with God. And our walk with him is a journey. As we journey with God, we gain experience. Now, the way you trust God now, if you've been born again for five years, is nothing compared to the way you'll trust God. Another five years go by or another 10 years go by or another 20 years go by. And we will never 100% completely trust until Jesus comes back to get us. But thankfully we can continue to grow. Trusting God is a decision. And I want to encourage those of you tonight that feel like everything in your life is shaking, that your only real answer is to trust God and to keep on trusting God and to keep on trusting God. And yes, it's difficult when you don't understand what's going on and it's especially difficult when what's going on in your life just does not seem fair. Isn't it hard when you think that you're doing what you should be doing and yet you're not getting the right result? And it's especially hard when you see somebody else that's not doing what they should be doing, seemingly getting a better result than you are. We can't go over all the material from this morning, but I talked about making that choice to trust God. And you know, I'm sure everybody would say, oh yeah, I choose to trust God. But you know what? You don't even have a clue what you're doing until all of a sudden you get some trouble that you don't understand. And that's when you got to choose. I'm going to keep trusting God. In Hebrews chapter 12 verse 26, which is where we're going to begin, talks about how God shakes things in our life until only those things that cannot be shaken remain. So that means God's going to work with us until we let go of all the unstable things in our life. And we're only hanging on to the rock of our salvation that cannot be moved. Let me give you an example. I like examples Jesus taught in parables, and I just think we need practical examples. Many years ago when my ministry was in the very beginning stages, I had a group of, I thought friends. Have you ever had any people that you thought were friends and then found out they weren't? Do you know people like that are dangerous to you? When you put your confidence in people that really are not who you think they are, it's a constant open door for the devil to work through them to get to you. And so many times in God's mercy, He will remove those people from our lives, and initially we may not understand. It's very difficult when something is stripped out of your life that you're not ready to give up yet. Amen. And so I had this group of women, they helped me in my women's ministry, there was about 12 of them, and I just thought they were my best friends ever. They would never hurt me. They'll always be for me. Well, that's the first mistake. There is nobody on this earth that's breathing that will never hurt you. I don't care how much they love you. As human beings, we do not have the ability to never, ever, ever hurt somebody or disappoint somebody that we're in relationship with. So you're setting yourself up for a lot of pain. If you're looking at anybody thinking, you'll never hurt me. I can always, always depend on you. Don't give that trust to anybody but Jesus. He is the only one that deserves that kind of total, complete, radical trust. And don't ever look at anybody and think, I don't know what I'd do without you. I don't know what I'd do without you. The only one you want to say that to is Jesus. I don't know what I would do without you. And so, long story short, I had a relationship with these ladies for a long time and we were just having fun. Just having fun, being in, I think, really playing at being in ministry at that point. I still couldn't even really tell you what happened. I know now that it was God just revealing their weaknesses. Not that I didn't have a bunch of my own, I did, but God was going to promote me to new levels in ministry. He had a plan for my life and I couldn't take those people with me. Do you know every place where the bus stops, somebody has to get off. Amen. And so, the bus was stopped and God was ready to take me to my next destination, but there were some people that needed to get off the bus. And I didn't know it. So, long story short, I found out they were talking about behind my back. I found out that one of them was after my job. I found out that they were telling lies about me. And look at me when I tell you that I was devastated and heartbroken. I couldn't believe it because they were Christians. Now, I had come from worldly relationships where people did that kind of stuff, but these were Christians. So, don't even look at your Christian friends and think, you will never hurt me. And it's not even that people are mean, they're just people. They're just fleshly people. And so, that's a time when I can remember when man was my world shaken. I mean shaken. I did not understand what was going on. The pain in my soul was so deep. But part of the thing that you have to realize is that what you don't understand now, things that you're going through right now that you do not understand, you cannot make any sense out of it all later on, I promise you later on you will look back and say, now I get it. Now I get it. Amen. And please believe me when I say that a lot of the things that you think are terrible, actually in reality, are good. I didn't think I'd get much of a clap on that. And the things that aren't good, God can work for good. But now listen, we're partners with God. He doesn't just work everything out for good. We trust Him and He works everything out for good. We trust God and He works everything out for good. So for those of you tonight either here in the building or watching from home, and you feel like everything in your world is shaking, I understand what you're going through, but I can tell you that many of those things that are shaking are things that you don't really need in your life anyway. They're not stable things, and God's going to give you something that is stable, which is more of Him. Do you know the less of other stuff you have, the more of God there's room for in your life? I remember one time, Mom, you know God, I just don't have anybody but you. Poor Joyce just stuck with God, isn't that terrible? Thanks for listening. Trials and tribulations are part of life, but if we handle it God's way, He will bless us in the middle of the mess. God uses hard times to strengthen our faith and teach us important lessons. Remember we gain experience through our challenges, which qualify and equip us for God to use us to help others. Looking for more? You got it! Each day you'll find more unique episodes of the enjoying everyday life program and other exclusive content in the Joyce Meyer app and online at joysemire.org. Get your daily dose of encouragement with the Joyce Meyer Ministries app. Catch up on seven days of enjoying everyday life episodes. Grow deeper in God's Word with the Daily Devotional and Question of the Day. And enjoy all your favorite teachings from Joyce in your digital library. Find all this and more with the Joyce Meyer Ministries app. Search Joyce Meyer in your app store and download it today. Thank you for listening to 15 Minutes in the Word with Joyce.
