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, Right and Wrong Mindsets. We can learn to think positively about absolutely everything. It takes practice saying no to negative thoughts. But when we replace stinking thinking with the word of God, we'll start winning the battlefield of the mind. Now, here's Joyce with today's teaching. Responsibility means to respond to the ability that God has placed in you or to respond to an opportunity that's put in front of you. I wonder how many opportunities we miss in life. How many times God invites us to do something and he has to go find somebody else to do it because it's not a convenient time for us. We know that Abraham was called by God out of the place where he lived to go to a place that God would show him, which was the Promised Land, the land of Canaan. But do you know that before God called Abraham to leave and go do that, before he gave Abraham that opportunity, he gave that same opportunity to Abraham's father, but let me show you what he did. In Genesis 11, 31 through chapter 12, verses 1 and 2, Tara took Abraham his son and lot the son of Heran, his grandson, and Sarah, his daughter-in-law, his son, Abraham's wife, and they went forth together from Ur the Chaldees to go into the land of Canaan, but when they came to Heran, they settled there. He didn't go all the way through with God. He got tired along his journey or whatever, and he got part of the way there, and he decided to settle there. This is a comfortable place. I'll just settle here. And I wonder how many of you have settled for less than the best that you can have because you get tired somewhere along the journey? Or even worse, how many women have settled for a man that they know is not down deep inside. What they know is not the right man for them, but they're so afraid they'll never have anybody. Come on now, I'm talking to somebody. Because I've been abused by my dad sexually, I thought nobody would ever want me. So the first guy that showed any interest in me when he suggested getting married, I was very anxious. But you know what? I knew down deep in my heart, I knew that it was a wrong decision. Don't do things you don't have peace about. You know why they're always going to blow up in your face? Always. And don't marry somebody that's living a really bad life thinking that you can change them. You know, that may happen on rare occasions, but you need to see a little something first. And you know, if somebody has mistreated you and left you over and over and ran around with other women over and over and now they're wanting you to take them back again, I would say, let's see about a year's worth of proof that you've changed. I did that over and over with my first husband. He'd leave, disappear for months at a time. Every time he'd come back, I'd take him back. He'd run around with other women. Every time he'd come back, I'd take him back. Why? I was desperate. I was fear. Don't make decisions out of desperation and out of fear. Don't settle. Come on. Don't settle for less than what you know is the best that God has for you out of some kind of desperate fear that if you don't settle for second best, you'll never end up having anything. Does anybody know what I'm talking about? Some people park at the point of their pain and they stay there the rest of their life. They never go anywhere. But then the Lord said to Abram, go from your country and your kindred and your father's house to the land that I will show you and I will make of you a great nation and I will bless you and I will make your name great so that you will be a blessing to many other people. And you know what? Abram took the responsibility and he went all the way through with God. There's no blessings without responsibility. Did you hear me? There's no blessings without responsibility. That's why we talk about, you know, how great it is to live in America, the greatest country on the face of the earth. Well, there's a responsibility to living here. It's not just a privilege. There's a responsibility to living here. I don't think people today realize the importance of responsibility. It seems like that we've got generations of people coming up that they always think somebody else should do it for them. Somebody do it for me. I don't want to take responsibility. Even things like trying to find a scripture in the Bible, when you need to find a scripture, don't always call somebody else and ask them where it's at. Do a little digging for yourself and find it. Get some study books. But what you dig out, what you put effort into, you're going to get more out of it than if somebody just gives you the answer. Amen. If you knew what it used to take to study for me to preach, wow, no computers. We couldn't just, you know, get Google to give us a list of every scripture on joy. You know, I mean, it might take me an hour to find all the scriptures on joy. And then I had to get out of concordance and get out a couple of other Bibles and had a couple of dictionaries. And I'd have to look everyone up and find them in the Bible and read them. And then a lot of times I was right while I started out writing all my messages out in longhand all the time. And you know what? I'm not, I'm glad for the technology we have today. But I don't, if everything is made too easy for everybody to be honest, it just keeps making people more and more lazy. And then they feel oppressed. Amen. What happens then is people feel oppressed if they have to put out any effort. We go from an air conditioned house to an air conditioned car to an air conditioned building and Lord help us if we sweat. I mean, that would just be the end of everything. You know, I'm glad that I grew up in the era that I grew up in because we didn't have all the conveniences we have today. And I think it builds character in people. I think when you go through stuff, it builds character in you. Amen. Take responsibility for your life. Take responsibility for your actions. We'll get around a little bit more of that when we get to the wrong mindset of, well, my behavior is wrong, but it's not my fault. Be sure you stick around for that one. The Bible says, go to the aunt, you lazy person. Consider her ways and be wise. That's what a slugger it is, a lazy person. Proverbs 6, 6 through 8. Without having any chief officer or ruler, she prepares her bread in summer and gathers her food in harvest. You know what that actually means? Watch the aunt. They do what's right without somebody standing over them, making them do it. Come on, that's so good. You got to act better than that. Let me tell you something. If you're playing around on the internet, looking up personal stuff at work, and your boss walks over by your desk, and suddenly you pretend like you're working, dear sweet Christian, you're stealing time that you're being paid to work. Well, they don't pay me enough anyway. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. See, that's the whole thing about God. You don't get to do something wrong just because somebody else is. You're supposed to live a more excellent life. Let your light shine. Come on. If you take all the office supplies that you needed home, home from work, come on, all the pens and the pencils and the folders and the paper clips and, you know, all these different things, well, you're stealing. Well, I don't know if I like her. I've never met, I've never seen her before. You poor person who got drugged here by a friend. They offered to feed you, didn't they? People will go anywhere if you offer to feed them. And now you're here and you're thinking, well, I don't, she just called me a thief. Well, you know what, I think sometimes we talk about all kinds of stuff in church that don't do people one bit of good. And we need to talk about some of these more practical things. I'm telling you live because he actually is. The Bible says that God is constantly standing by. And you know what that means? He sees and hears every single thing that we do. And we can hide it from somebody else, but we don't hide it from God. And someday we're going to stand before him and give an accounting of our life. And I don't say that to frighten you because I probably think you can do a lot of that kind of stuff and still go to heaven. But it doesn't honor God. And it's not a good example. And it weighs on our conscience whether we think it does or not. When you do something that you know is wrong, even if you pretend that it's okay, it still leaves a heaviness on the inside of you. And that's why so many people, one of the reasons why so many people are so unhappy and even depressed and discouraged. Let me tell you something. There's nothing, there's no better feeling in all the world than knowing when you go to bed at night that even though you didn't hit it 100%, you did your best to try to obey God that day all day long. Are you the kind of person that will always do what's right, especially if nobody's looking? Come on. Who are you when nobody sees you? That's who you really are. That's who I really am. And I can tell you, God dealt with me about this kind of stuff 40 years ago when he first started giving me the opportunity to teach a little Bible study in my home. And you've heard all my stories about putting the grocery cart back and all that kind of stuff. You know, I didn't get to go to Bible college. I couldn't already had three teenagers, but God will take you to the school of the Holy Ghost. And he can teach you great spiritual principles in the grocery store, in traffic, at work. Come on. God doesn't just talk to us in church. He has a lot more to say about our everyday lives than what we may think that he does. Yeah, Jesus. Hallelujah. I taught a message at our women's conference a couple of years ago and spent with us on excellence. And I had a man. I'm not going to give you his name because you'd know who he is. He's a very popular younger preacher today. And he told me after he listened to that message, he said, I have never, I've been in church all my life and I have never heard anybody teach on being excellent. Now, what's wrong with that? You know, we don't need to just hear nothing but doctrine all the time. We need good sound solid doctrine, but we need to teach people how to live. Thanks for listening to today's message. What we think about matters and developing new mindsets takes time. Instead of wishing everything was easier when life gets hard, we can learn to say I can do all things through Christ who gives me strength. Looking for more? You got it. Each day you'll find more unique episodes of the enjoying everyday life program in the Joyce Meyer app and online at Joycemyer.org. Follow us at www.Jed 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 joismyre.org. Thank you so much. Thank you for listening to 15 Minutes in the Word with Joyce.
