On a wind-sweat walk in Camarthen, while someone tries to use your card details to hire a speedboat in Can, this is a moment you relax, knowing that Bargley's advanced tech has helped to spot the fraud in under a second, and their expert team are on hand to close it down. So you can get back to being wind-sweat. Oh! Just one of the ways we're protecting our customers 24-7. Search Bargley's fraud protection. Bargley's backing your future. 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 Fear Some Four. When we feel discouraged, defeated, or overwhelmed by the pressures of life, chances are we're being hit by what Joyce calls The Fear Some 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 Four. Peace, confidence, love, and courage. Now, here's Joyce with today's teaching. Well, insecurity, it involves our thoughts. So I guess I'd like to start today by saying, what do you think of yourself? How do you feel about yourself? Do you compare yourself a lot with other people? Do you feel belittled or diminished when you're around somebody that can do something that you can't do? Even when it comes to spiritual things, I remember being in a conference one time. And before I got up to speak, they asked a woman to come to the microphone that had a real gift from God in memorization. I mean, there are some people who have photographic memories. The man who runs our ministry in Russia has a photographic memory. He's just like so smart that I can't even imagine being that smart. And he can read a whole book and I'll remember everything that he's seen. Well, I'm not like that. And the older I get, the less I'm like that. And it's getting kind of interesting actually one day last week. One of the girls that works for me in the marketing areas. She showed me a T-shirt. She said, here's those T-shirts that you ask us to design. And I couldn't even remember asking them to design them. Furthermore, I looked at them and I said, I don't know why I ask you to do that. I don't even like them. So I'm just, you know, believing God here and trying to get as much out of my brain as I can so I don't have as much to deal with. But I'm not bothered by the fact that he has a photographic memory. I'm just glad that he works for me. Well, this woman had a gift in memorization. And so she got up and she quoted like this whole song. Just, well, there was a good number of people there. And when she got finished, like, she got a little clap, but it wasn't really all that big. Well, knowing what I do about human nature, I understood why the clap was not louder than what it was. I knew that there were many people sitting out there that because of insecurities, they were threatened by her gift. And immediately they thought about how they could not memorize and what they had not memorized. And so therefore, they couldn't be glad for what God had put in her. So I got up right behind her and came to the platform and I said, well, isn't the gift that God has given our sister wonderful? And once again, you got a little clap. And I said, but I feel led to tell you that I've not memorized any of them. Well, I got a much bigger clap than she did. I mean, they were. Why? Because we're not secure enough to not feel belittled by somebody else's testimony. And we need to learn to be all that we are in Christ and not feel threatened, not feel insecure, not feel belittled or diminished. You know, the devil loves to diminish you. He loves to make you shrink and feel small compared to other people. Once again, I want to say, what do you think of yourself? What is there about you that you don't like? Well, we should all not like the sinful things that we do. But I think everything about you that God created, you need to love it and embrace it. You need to value it and you need to respect it. Even if it's not like what somebody else has. I'm sure you've heard me say this, but just for the sake of saying it again, one of the things that I dislike about myself more than anything else before I learned better was my voice. I dislike my voice because it wasn't like this nice little sweet soft lady's voice. And the God gave me my voice for a reason. My voice is strong. It commands respect. It's amazing. Or maybe maybe the right word is attention more than I hope a command respect, but I know it gets attention because people are like, and when I'm out shopping, people will say sometimes, that voice. I recognize your voice. Well, now I realize that God gave me my voice for his purpose. And it's interesting that sometimes the things that you dislike about yourself the most are the things that God would like to use the most if you would stop feeling bad about them. Amen. So today we want to talk about learning how to be secure. And I want to say out front that you don't have to feel secure to be secure and you don't have to feel confident to be confident. I'm on my soapbox about this thing about feelings and emotions. And I've been teaching on this for years, but really even more so in the last couple of years. I've begun to realize how important it is to teach people that there are a lot more than their feelings. We base way too much on our feelings. What would happen if I stayed home when I'm out doing these conferences? What would happen if I woke up on, say Friday morning and didn't feel anointed so I just stayed in the hotel? Well, I can't go about what I feel because first John 2 says the anointing of God abides and that anointing is the power of God enabling you to do whatever God has asked you to do. So you're anointed to be a mother if you're a mother you're anointed to be a father. You're anointed to be a wife or a husband you're anointed to be a baker or a banker or a businessman or a singer or a preacher or whatever it is. We're not just anointed for spiritual things, but everything that we do is spiritual to God if we're serving Him with that gift and trying to glorify and honor Him with that gift. The gift that I have is no more important than the gift that you have. We just all need to serve God with the gifts that we have. Can anybody say amen? And so it's very important that we not compare ourselves with other people and not compete with other people and that we don't go by how we feel. You don't have to feel confident to present yourself in a confident manner to hold your head up and to boldly go and do whatever it is that you feel like you need to do. When you talk to people don't mumble. When you talk to people look at them. When you shake somebody's hand don't feel like a dead cold fish laying in somebody's hand. We need to realize that God wants us to be bold and aggressive in a right way not obnoxious but bold and aggressive and even in prayer the Bible tells us to come boldly to the throne and that God is able to do exceedingly abundantly above and beyond all that we can dare to hope as your thing. You got to be daring in your prayers. And I hope at the time we get out of here today that you're going to be ready to ask God for some pretty outrageous things because I think he wants to do some very outrageous things in your life. But you have to know who you are in Christ to go and ask him for them. I believe that we have an epidemic of insecure people in our society today and I think more than at any other time we have an identity crisis. People just don't know who they are and they're trying to have an identity through who they know and what they wear what their position is at work and how many degrees they have behind their name. And finally I hope today the people here and the people who watch this by TV can learn that your worth and value is not in anything that you do. I don't care what you ever do. I don't care what you own or how many degrees you have that does not make you more valuable than any other person on this planet. The only thing that gives us value is knowing Christ, having him as our Savior, knowing that we're created by God, that we're his child and that he loves us and cares about us. And therefore every person is equally valuable to God. I said every person is equally valuable to God. And for those watching by TV if you turned your set on today and you were feeling like you were you had no worth and no value and who cares about you and nobody loves me and and if I wasn't even here who would even miss me and maybe somebody's even contemplating suicide right now. Well let me tell you you stop it because God has invested a lot in you. He sent his son to die for you. He loves you. God's got a good plan for your life, a life for you to live. Don't base your value on what other people have said about you. Don't base your worth on how other people treated you. I think it's especially hard for people when they don't get treated properly by their parents because we all just think well our parents ought to love us. But you know there's a lot of hurting people out in the world and hurting people hurt people. It's amazing how people that are hurt and wounded and never get their healing can't do anything else but just hurt the other people around them and I don't even know that they intentionally do that and set out to do it. It's just that when you're full of pain then you end up just putting that pain off on everybody else. So just the people that hurt you just go ahead and forgive them. Just get over it today. Come on right now today. The people who hurt you just get over because I can tell you they hurt themselves even worse than they hurt you and you holding bitterness and unre resentment is only going to make your life miserable and you're going to pass that onto your kids. You need to let it go so you can be whole and healed. Do yourself a favor today and just get rid of all of it. Just say I'm just letting it go. If you're going to be a new creature in Christ then be a new creature in Christ. Don't be halfway new and halfway old. I never felt safe growing up. Never felt safe. I never knew what was going to happen the next moment. I had no security. Our home was very volatile. A lot of moods flying around. A lot of emotions. A lot of anger. So feeling safe and feeling secure is very important to me and I think it's very important to every single person. I think that God created us to feel safe, taken care of, secure, confident and bold. That's what's in your spiritual DNA. Your soul maybe has it blocked but God did not create you for fear and worry and guilt and insecurity and a lack of confidence and extreme shyness and extreme timidity and always being the tail in the everything. My Bible says that we're the head not to tail above and not beneath. Too many people looking for identity and value and they're looking for it in all the wrong places. They look for it in what they do, who they know, what they know, what they own, what they look like. And I think that we need to do our best to look as good as we can. All I can say is take what God's giving you to do the best you can with it. But don't be comparing yourself with somebody else. Don't be comparing yourself with somebody on the front of a magazine that's had every little blemish air brushed out and has zero body fat. They looked for her hard. Amen. Don't ever look around to somebody else and say I wish I looked like you, I wish I had what you had, I wish I could do what you do because the fact is you don't and you won't. It is what it is. So deal with it. Come on. Let's get a revelation today. It is what it is. So deal with it. I don't like to be around people that are always putting themselves down. I don't even like to be around people that's like, oh, you know, I wish I was this. I wish I was that. I wish I looked that good in this and I, you know, it's just like, oh, get over it. I say a 54-17. I say a 54-17. The wonderful scripture. But no weapon that's farmed against you shall prosper. 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. Second Timothy 117 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 joysmire.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 joysmire.org. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to 50 Minutes in the Word with Joyce.
