God is Faithful

Joyce Meyer informs us that when you do that, you're developing the fruit of the spirit that is in you. Faithfulness is in the character of God. God is faithful. It's always the people who do the extra that God promotes when he's looking around for somebody to promote. 

Go to Matthew 25, please. Stretch yourself! Do just a little bit more. That's what they tell me when I'm at the gym. They'll tell me how many reps I have to do. Okay, he'll say, eight reps. Joyce Meyer Ministries states by the I'll get there and just as I come down on that last one, he'll say, "come on, give me one more. You have one more in you." Then I'll do that and he'll say, "I think you still have one more." Those are the hardest! Those are the hardest but those are the ones that really make the difference. Those are the ones that really build the muscle. Well, if you want to develop faithfulness, then that means you're going to have to go the extra mile and not just do what you absolutely have to do. Are you with me? Yes.: But you're gonna go the extra mile, you're gonna do the extra, the extra, the extra. Joyce Meyer says that we have a God who goes exceedingly, abundantly above and beyond, and we sure are excited about it. Everybody loves Ephesians 3:20. I can quote Ephesians 3:20 anyplace and people roar. "For God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly, above and beyond all that you could ever dare to hope, ask, or think." Yay! And we love to hear how God is the God of more than enough. We like that. Oh, yeah, more than enough! Well, you know what? He's in us and the Holy Spirit's working with us to form Christ in us to develop the character of God in us, so if he's a God who does exceedingly, abundantly above and beyond, then we should be people who do exceedingly, abundantly above and beyond. Joyce Meyer Ministries states that you don't do a good job; you do an excellent job. I remember one time I was actually in a Christian book store buying some books. As I was checking out, they had a little thing there where they were collecting money for hungry people or whatever. 

This was a long time ago when I was wrestling with God all the time about giving. I mean, Joyce Meyer was willing to tithe but now he was into that offering thing.

Future Battle

Joyce Meyer: Amen! That's right. This is Chris. Chris is a minister herself. I didn't tell her I was going to ask her to come up, so I hope I've helped you.

Chris: Just - lot of ways. On a personal level someone gave me a tape of yours about ten years ago in Joyce Meyer Ministries. There was a phrase on there that said: hurting people hurt people. For me it was like revelation. I was doing seminars in high schools and they were pre-evangelistic, so we weren't allowed to talk about Jesus but we did these whole seminars called, "hurting people hurt people" which just saw literally at that time tens of thousands of people in our state get this message. For me personally who came from a background of 12 years of abuse and being adopted, it was like the lights went off and suddenly I realized why in so many ways when I wanted to be helping people in Joyce Meyer Ministries, I was inadvertently hurting them, but it was because I was not dealing with stuff in my own life. That phrase alone kind of set me free and helped affect thousands and thousands of people.

Joyce Meyer: Thank you. Case in point. Now, I obviously didn't bring them up just to say: oh, look how good I am and how I'm helping all these people. I'm trying to make a point that I was abused sexually growing up. I had a wretchedly miserable life before being with Joyce Meyer Ministries. I was around alcoholism, violence, every kind of dysfunction that you could be around. I married the first guy that came along that would have anything to do with me and he had more problems than I had. That ended up in just a disaster. So I had a lot to overcome.