Joyce: What kind of influence are you having on the people in your life? Stay with us to find out how you can be a good example everywhere you go.

Joyce Meyer: I set before you life and death; choose life, that you and your descendants may live. Every choice that I make and every choice you make influences other people around us. You are having a greater influence than what you think. The devil may have you convinced that nobody cares about you and you’re not a very influential person. Don’t think just because you don’t have some big fancy ministry and tv lights aren’t shining on you that that makes you not an influential person. You are very influential. It’s possible that you might only influence one person in your life.

But what if you influence that one person in a very positive way and that person influences a million people? What about Billy Graham’s Sunday school teacher who led him to the Lord? That’s quite an influence. Amen? Don’t ever say: Well, I’m just a mother. I’m just a homemaker. If you have a couple of kids or a child or 3 or 4, think of the influence that you could have over their lives and what God might end up doing with just one of them.

You have influence. Influence is the act or power of producing an effect without any apparent exertion. In other words, it’s what happens to people just from being around us with us not even trying to influence them or not influence them; just simply because they’re there and we do what we do, they’re influenced by what we do. Do you know that if you don’t pay your bills on time, that will influence your kids and they probably will grow up and not pay their bills on time.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – If you have bill collectors calling your house all the time, they’ll probably grow up and have bill collectors calling their house all the time because they’re learning how to manage their money by watching how you manage yours.

Joyce: You are an influential person. Did you know that we all influence people? Our children, people at work, even people we meet at the shopping mall. Today on “enjoying everyday life” learn how you can make sure that you are influencing others in a positive way.

This morning I want to talk to you about what kind of influence you’re having in your own world.  We all live in the world but we all kind of have our own little world. I believe every believer has a pulpit. It may not be up here. It may be your desk at work, it may be your backyard fence, but I believe that every believer is being watched. Everybody who calls themselves a Christian, everybody who puts a bumper sticker on their car, everybody who carries a bible, everybody who even mentions: “I go to church on Sunday”, you’re being watched. People are not influenced by your bumper sticker but they are influenced by your lifestyle. What people need to see more than anything – and I want you to listen to this word; this is a big word – is consistency. They need to see stability and consistency and they need to see us walking in love all the time, being kind all the time. They need to see us saying positive things all the time. Obviously we make mistakes and when we do, thank God for the blood of Jesus and thank God for mercy that we can repent and be forgiven, but we also have to realize that we are the hope of God getting glory on the earth. Did you ever think of that? You’re God’s ambassador. The bible says that we are ambassadors for Christ. Listen to what the amplified bible says: God is making his appeal to the world through us.

Joyce Meyer Online – Think about that. When you go to work, maybe there are 50 unbelievers there and you’re crabbing because you’re the only believer and you’re wanting to get another job because: Well, God, I’m the only believer here. You’ve asked for a ministry. You’ve asked for God to use you.

Then the next day I’d be all worn out, have a headache and a neck ache and a backache. “I gotta go to the doctor. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. Something’s wrong with me. It must be my hormones. I don’t know what it is. I just don’t have any energy. I don’t know what’s wrong.” Come on now! Doctors say that, I don’t know what percent, some huge percent of all of our illnesses, the symptoms are real but they’re tied to emotional stuff. You can’t be upset all the time and it not affect you physically. Amen? Amen!: Get out of your rocking chair! Go to John 11.  Hallelujah. John 11:21: Martha said to Jesus, master, if you would have been here, my brother wouldn’t have died. Do you know what Jesus said? He didn’t say: Oh man, yeah, I wish I would have been there. He said: Your brother shall rise again. You have a resurrection coming. I’ve got a message for you: You’ve made it through Friday. Sunday’s coming. Amen? How many of you know what I mean when I say you’ve made it through Friday? You’ve made it through the hard stuff. You’ve got a testimony: You’re still here. Amen? That’s my testimony: I didn’t quit and give up. I’m still here and Sunday’s coming. I don’t have to say anymore: Well, if I just wouldn’t have been abused. If I could have just gotten a college education. If I just wouldn’t have been born on that side of town. If I would’ve just had more advantage and better friends. Jesus said none of that matters. You can rise again. You can rise up out of the ashes. You can overcome defeat and failure but you have to give up the junk. You have to give up the anger. You have to give up the fear. You have to learn how if you need to do something and do it while you’re shaking, if God told you to do it, then you need to do it even if you have to do it afraid.

Joyce Meyer – It’s going to hurt the kingdom of God and it’s going to ultimately end up hurting the reputation of Christianity.

Our feelings are connected to our thoughts. Satan puts a thought in your mind and it’s not very long when you think on it, a feeling is connected to it. You can sit and think about what somebody’s done to you that’s hurtful or unfair, and it won’t be very long and you’re going to feel anger. Even though you’ve probably heard it thousands of times, I have to tell you again you have to guard your heart very carefully. With all diligence you have to guard your heart. Soldiers guard things. That means you have to pay attention to what’s going on in your mind. It means you have to think about what you’re thinking about. You have to choose your thoughts carefully. Some thoughts that came in may be good and you can keep those and meditate on them, but others you have to kick out right away. vs. 5: we refute arguments. The devil tries to argue with you — theories, reasonings, imaginations, and every proud and high thing that does what? Disagrees with the word of God. So make your mind up if you’re going to be a Christian, you’re either going to live by this or you’re going to be a pathetic Christian. You may sneak in the back door of heaven but you will never have any victory here, and you will probably live such a pathetic, defeated life that nobody is going to get to heaven because of you, because people are not looking for something that’s worse than what they already have with just a Christian label on it. They want to see people who are living the life, who have the goods, that have the fruit, that have a smile, that have some peace, that have some joy, that have some hope. And let me tell you something — if we think the only way we can have all that is to have no problems, then we are really deceived because God did not give us the awesome, wonderful power of the Holy Ghost in our life so we can live on easy street. We have the power of God living on the inside of us. We are the home of God, Christ in me, the hope of glory.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – You’re not going to be free even just because somebody lays hands on you and prays for you.

Three people got that, so here we go again. You choose to do what’s right, then your feelings catch up with your decision. If I’m mad at Dave… I still get mad at Dave once in a while; not very often because we’ve been together long enough now I’ve already figured out it doesn’t do any good anyway. When you’re married 40 years, you just finally figure this comes with the package. Praise the Lord. He has to put up with me, I have to put up with him, let’s just all be happy and go on about our business. But occasionally I’ll still get mad at Dave. And the minute you get mad at somebody, you don’t want to talk to them, you don’t want to be around them. “Shut you out of my life.” and I know, I know that I know that I know that what I need to do is just go ahead, go into the room where he’s at… I mean, I prayed the official forgiveness prayer.  ”Well, now, lord, I forgive Dave because I know I can’t stay mad. I know that’s not your will, so I forgive him in Jesus’ name.” Well, now what am I going to do? What am I going to do? Am I going to stay in the other room and not talk to him and act like I’m about ten years old? Or am I going to act like I’ve been saved half my life, been in the word 32 years, and go ahead and just take authority over my feelings and get in there and talk to the man and sit down and smile? I can choose to do that no matter how I feel, and I do it for Jesus because I know that’s what he wants me to do. And when I do it, I am telling you the truth, it’s not five minutes and I don’t feel the way I felt at all anymore because when you choose what’s right, your feelings will catch up with it. Let me just throw this out for good measure: if you would just stop talking about your problems… We talk about it and talk about it, talk about it and think about it, think about it and talk about it, talk about it and think about it, think about it and talk about it, talk about it think about it and talk about it, and think about it. Then we wonder why we don’t have any joy. “I don’t understand, Lord, I’ve just lost my joy.” I found this statement and man, I got excited about this.

Joyce Meyer Online – All of that is part of it but you know the one thing that stands between you and real freedom is disciplining yourself to study.

So if I don’t like myself, then it automatically makes me behave in a way that makes me unlikeable to other people. I don’t really think that people, unless they’ve gone through this and maybe have worked through the process of receiving God’s forgiveness, which is really what it means to forgive ourselves, I don’t think that our viewers today can even imagine the difference that this would make in their life. But I want to ask you a question because you know me — I like to be real practical. I don’t like to just say “do it”; I like to tell people how to do it. So, how do you go about this? I mean, somebody can pray and say, “God, forgive me.” What I tell people to do a lot of times is when you ask God to forgive you for something, then actually go that extra step and say out loud, “I receive your forgiveness now. I take it into myself, and I receive it as a gift.” And even to take a few moments to sit in the presence of God and just meditate on that: I am forgiven. I receive that forgiveness. Don’t you think sometimes we ask God for things but we just don’t receive?

R.T. Kendall: Exactly. In other words, all that is being taught in this book has got to be applied. Total forgiveness is not something you do when you just feel led; it’s a decision. It’s a choice you make. And so with anybody listening in, you make a choice: Did God send his son to die on a cross for our sins or did he not? And if he did, then I believe it and I’m going to enjoy it to the full and dignify the blood. I was brought up in a denomination. The man I was named after used to say to young men going into the ministry, “honor the blood and honor the Holy Ghost.”

Joyce Meyer – If you have a bad temper, you don’t need to listen to a series on prosperity.

Joyce: Right. That’s what I had to do then.

Lisa: It was a season of faithfulness.

Joyce: I think a lot of times people will maybe overspend. “Well, I don’t want to live on thirty-five dollars a week for groceries, so I’m just going to put it on a credit card. I’m going to get those steaks now, and I’m going to get that fresher bread now.” So people today just charge a bunch of stuff because they don’t want to wait, and that’s not being faithful either. You have to be faithful with what you have, and you have to be willing sometimes to say, “I’m not where I want to be but I’m going to get there.”

Lisa: And you kept that in front of you.

Joyce: I kept that in front of me. I started with the complaining, and the murmuring, and the being jealous of other people who had more than I had.

Lisa: Taking it from your account is how I saw it. I was like anytime anybody else got blessed, they must have taken it from my account and now there’s nothing left for me. That was horrible. Joyce, what you’re saying is so crucial that people get it because I believe that we always have to live in a place where we are not borrowing off the future; that we are living with wisdom. I think a lot of Christians say, “I’ll just charge this by faith,” and then that’s not faith. We had little envelopes and whatever was gone was gone; that was it.

Joyce: That’s right. When we come back, I want to talk about another really important area: Relationships. I think a lot of times we’re in relationships, in a marriage, with our children, or even family and friends, our boss, or whatever, where you think: This is never going to change! And you just want to give up. We’re going to talk about that when we come back. We’ll be right back after this break to talk about not giving up on people.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – You don’t need to be worrying about your money or your pocketbook.

But then the second thing he did was set himself to seek God, which that should be our response to trouble. Instead of getting afraid and starting to spit all the fearful things out of our mouth, we need to say: Okay, I’ve got a problem here; I’ve got to see what God says. I’ve got to seek God. So anyway, I don’t have time to read the whole thing, but he sought God. God answered. Verse 15: He said, hearken, all Judah, you inhabitants of Jerusalem, and you King Jehoshaphat. The Lord says this to you: Be not afraid or dismayed at this great multitude; for the battle is not yours, but God’s. Wow. Surely, somebody here needs to hear that today or somebody watching by tv. The battle is not yours; it’s God’s. Well, but God, what do you want me to do? And the devil is always… I think he sends out this little hoard of demons every morning to sit on every believer’s shoulder and just whisper one thing in their ear all day long: What are you going to do? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? What are you going to do? You go to lunch with somebody and they say, “so, what are you going to do? I heard about your problem. What are you going to do?” Verse 17: You shall not need to fight in this battle; take your positions… Everybody say: My position. My position.: Stand still, and see the deliverance of the Lord [who is] with you, o Judah and Jerusalem. Fear not nor be dismayed. Tomorrow go out against them, for the Lord is with you. Now Jehoshaphat took his position and here’s what it was: vs. 18: And Jehoshaphat bowed his head with his face to the ground, and all Judah and the inhabitants of Jerusalem fell down before the Lord, worshiping him. – Now wait – vs. 19: And some Levites of the Kohathites and Korahites stood up to praise the Lord, the God of Israel, with a very loud voice. vs. 20: And they rose early in the morning and went out… And on and on and on. In verse 21 it says: When he had consulted with the people, he appointed singers to sing to the Lord and praise him…

Joyce Meyer Online – You need to read everything you can find on attitude, anger, love, kindness, and goodness, and you need to stick with it until your attitude is straightened out.

They’re saying, “we’ve got to leave with the luggage; you’ve got to get packed!” So I’m packing for the next trip and trying to decide what I want to wear. You guys probably don’t get this, but I’ll talk to women for a minute. You know, trying to pick out the earrings and the shoes and all this stuff. Do I have the top to go under it, do I have the thing to go over it, do I have the right belt, do I have all this stuff. So invariably it seems like lately especially I get out and I don’t have what I need.

Well, last night I had some oil on my fingers and I got that oil on the skirt I was going to wear last night, so that wouldn’t work. So then I put on something else, and I brought – I don’t know what my problem was – I brought like three outfits with brown in them and one pair of brown shoes. I had never had these brown shoes on before – I mean, I had them on, but when I tried them on, I didn’t have them on with nylons which I normally wear when I wear a skirt. Now, guys, just hang on, I’m just talking to the ladies for a minute. That’s okay. You want to get into my personal business here for a minute?

So, these shoes were fine with no nylons, but when I put my nylons on with my skirt, because I usually wear nylons with a skirt because I don’t think my legs really look good enough not to wear nylons with a skirt, and then I could not keep the shoes on my feet because they were slick. So every step I’m taking, I’m having to wiggle my toes… So I’m thinking: Now what am I going to do? I’ve got oil on this one and I’ve got something else on that one. So this morning I got dressed and Dave is like my clothing inspector, so he’s looking me over and he said: I don’t know.

Joyce Meyer – Amen!: Seek ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness – the amplified bible says: His way of being and doing – and all of these things will be added unto you.

Joyce: Am I going to believe what messed-up people told me 30 and 40 years ago in my childhood?  Am I going to believe them more than I believe the word of God? And when you make your mind up that you’re going to base your life on this, it will heal you.

Joyce: There may be a few of you watching today who are hurting so deeply inside that the pain just seems to be overwhelming you. Well, I know how you feel. I was sexually abused by my father for 15 years and I know that when you have that kind of deep emotional wounding in your life, it creates all kinds of other problems, but I also know that through the word of God you can be healed and you can have A Wonderful Life. It is not too late for you. Executive producer Ginger Stache joins me today with viewer questions on healing from emotional wounds. Well, Ginger, we’re back again for one of our question and answer sessions. I enjoy them.

Ginger Stache: I love this! I think this is great! So many of the questions today, I think, are really honest, very revealing of what people are going through, and I think it will be a great thing for people to hear from you.

Joyce: The word of God is practical. Every practical issue that you could face is dealt with in here. I think too often we just look at the bible as some religious book that doesn’t apply to our everyday life but the bible says that he heals the brokenhearted, binds up our wounds, heals our bruises, and gives us beauty instead of ashes. That’s what millions of people watching right now want: hope that they won’t have to keep bleeding and hurting from something that happened to them that they couldn’t even do anything about.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – I found out for me that I don’t even have to “seek” big ministry. What I need to do is seek God and his way of behaving.