by Joyce Meyer
When we go to a new place, we often experience loneliness, a feeling that everything and everyone around us is strange. We don’t feel comfortable or “at home.” But that kind of radical obedience pays great dividends in the personal happiness and contentment that come from knowing we are in the will of God, and in the material blessings that God provides for us in accordance with the promises found in His Word.
THE RIGHTEOUS WILL SUFFER PERSECUTION__________________
Indeed all who delight in piety and are determined to live a devoted and godly life in Christ Jesus will meet with persecution [will be made to suffer because of their religious stand].
2 Timothy 3:12
The Word of God tells us that we will have persecution. In Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words, the Greek word translated persecute is partially defined as “to put to flight, drive away.”1 Satan brings opposition, trouble, trials and tribulations in the hope of driving us away. If we intend to succeed at being ourselves and being all God wants us to be, we must be prepared to stand strong in times of persecution.
If we will keep standing up on the inside, God will take care of the outside.
The Charismatic Church has not been real comfortable with the word sacrifice — but it is in the Bible. In Mark 8:34, Jesus said, in essence, “If you want to follow Me, you will have to give up your self-life to do so.”
THE REQUIREMENT AND REWARD OF SACRIFICE__________________
Now [in Haran] the Lord said to Abram, Go for yourself [for your own advantage] away from your country, from your relatives 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 [with abundant increase of favors] and make your name famous and distinguished, and you will be a blessing [dispensing good to others].
Genesis 12:1,2
We have seen that Abram (later renamed Abraham) had to make a sacrifice when God told him to leave his father’s house and go to the place He would show him at a later time. God required some radical obedience on the part of Abram, but He also made him a radical promise.
When we think of sacrifice, we must always remember that what we sow as a seed, God uses to bring a harvest. When we are called upon to make a sacrifice, we should not feel deprived, but privileged. Jesus sacrificed His very life for us, and we are to follow in His footsteps. (1 Peter 2:21.)
We don’t have to be comfortable all the time. In America and many other parts of the world, God’s people are addicted to “comfort and ease.” It is time to shake ourselves into reality and start doing what He asks us to do, no matter what the cost.
We cannot expect radical harvest in our lives if we sow seeds of disobedience. True to God’s promise, Abraham went on to be the father of many nations and the father of the Old Covenant. Considering the number of people on the earth at that time, I would say that was quite an honor for Abraham.
There are some very radical examples in the Bible of things people did to obey God. It was radical of Esther to walk away from whatever plans she had for her life and put everything on the line when she went before the king without being summoned. Her motive was right, and she did it in obedience; therefore, God gave her favor, and she was instrumental in saving her nation from disaster.
It was radical of Daniel to continue praying three times a day with his windows open after being warned he would be placed into the lions’ den if he did so. He took a radical step of obedience and ended up outlasting three kings, all of whom promoted him.
It was radical of the Apostle Paul to come back among the same people he had been persecuting and preach the Gospel to them. What if they attacked him? He became the bond-slave of Jesus Christ and in his own words, a prisoner for His sake (2 Timothy 1:8). Paul was given approximately two-thirds of the New Testament by direct revelation from God. We see how God honored his steps of radical obedience and personal sacrifice. When God called him, he was a very respected Pharisee enjoying prestige and personal comfort. His steps of obedience often left him hungry, hunted, cold, beaten, and in prison — but he knew the secret of standing up on the inside, and his quiet confidence in God brought him all the way through to the end of the journey.
Paul made a powerful statement when he said, …none of these things move me; neither do I esteem my life dear to myself, if only I may finish my course with joy… (Acts 20:24). That should be our testimony as well, as we are told in God’s Word.
FINISH WHAT YOU START__________________
For we have become fellows with Christ (the Messiah) and share in all He has for us, if only we hold our first newborn confidence and original assured expectation [in virtue of which we are believers] firm and unshaken to the end.
Hebrews 3:14
Do not, therefore, fling away your fearless confidence, for it carries a great and glorious compensation of reward.
Hebrews 10:35
But we do [strongly and earnestly] desire for each of you to show the same diligence and sincerity [all the way through] in realizing and enjoying the full assurance and development of [your] hope until the end.
Hebrews 6:11
All of the Scriptures above should be meditated upon and taken very seriously. God is not interested in our starting things that we never finish. It is easy to begin, but it takes great courage to finish. In the beginning of a new thing we get all excited. We have a lot of emotions (ours and everyone else’s) to support us. When the emotions wear off and all that is left is a lot of hard work and the need for extreme patience, we find out who really has what it takes to truly succeed.
In God’s mind we are never successful if we stop somewhere along the way. He wants us to finish our course and do it with joy!
If you have been tempted even recently to give up — don’t! If you don’t finish the thing you are currently involved in, you will face the same challenges in the next thing you start.
Some people spend all their lives starting new things and never finishing anything. Let us make a decision that we will be more than a statistic that never reached its full potential.
We can start out in faith, but we are supposed to live from faith to faith. (Romans 1:17.) In other words, there are many plateaus along the way that require greater faith than the last one we reached. God is always taking us up — never back and never down! He is always calling us up higher. We must leave the lower life and press on toward the high places. We must live from faith to faith, not from faith to doubt to unbelief and then back to a little faith.
FROM FAITH TO FAITH, FROM GLORY TO GLORY__________________
But the just shall live by faith [My righteous servant shall live by his conviction respecting man’s relationship to God and divine things, and holy fervor born of faith and conjoined with it]; and if he draws back and shrinks in fear, My soul has no delight or pleasure in him.
Hebrews 10:38
If you and I want to move into new levels of glory, we must do so by moving into new levels of faith. Remembering that faith is confidence in God, we can say then that we need to move into new levels of confidence. We should be confident in every area of life.
God has dealt with me about being confident concerning my teaching gift. He always reminds me to be confident in the pulpit and to beware of insecure thoughts that sometimes try to get into my mind even while I am preaching. I am to go from the pulpit confidently into the next thing I need to do. I am to be confident in relationships, confident in prayer, confident when I am driving my car, confident when I make decisions, confident in every aspect of my daily life and ministry.
God has told me not to spend an hour in prayer and then go away thinking that I did not pray long enough or about the right things. He has shown me that I should do things confidently and remain confident after I have finished them.
I have often done things that I felt good about, until Satan started accusing me after I had finished. I finally realized that if I was doing the wrong thing, God would tell me ahead of time,
not after I had finished and could do nothing about it.
We need to take a bold stand and declare, “I believe I hear from God. I believe I am led by His Spirit. I believe I make good decisions. I believe I have a powerful prayer life. I believe people like me, and God gives me favor.”
This kind of boldness does not mean we will never make mistakes. Making a mistake is not the end of the world as long as we are teachable. We dwell too much on the negatives and not enough on the positives.
I am sure that I make mistakes, that I don’t hear from God perfectly. God told me long ago, “Joyce, don’t worry about it; if you miss Me, I’ll find you.”
Instead of worrying about what we might do wrong, we should keep standing up on the inside and pressing forward, attempting to do something right. We can be so afraid of making a mistake that we end up never doing anything.
The Bible says the just shall live by faith, or confidence. We are going to interchange these words to make the message more practical. Sometimes faith seems so spiritual that we cannot see exactly how to apply it practically. It helps me to think of it in terms of confidence in God. So faith is confidence, and confidence is faith.
It does not pleasure God when you and I lose our confidence. Why? It saddens Him because of what we lose. It saddens God if we lose our confidence and let the devil steal from us the inheritance that He sent Jesus to die for us to have. God has done His part; now He wants us to do our part, which is to believe — to put our confidence in Him and His Word and live from faith to faith, so He can take us from glory to glory.
EXCEEDINGLY, ABUNDANTLY, ABOVE AND BEYOND__________________
God:
…is able to [carry out His purpose and] do superabundantly, far over and above all that we [dare] ask or think [infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams].
Ephesians 3:20
When I pray about or simply meditate on all the people who are hurting, I have a strong desire to help them all. I sometimes feel that my desire is bigger than my ability, and it is — but it is not bigger than God’s ability!
When the thing we are facing in our life or ministry looms so big in our eyes that our mind goes “tilt,” we need to think in the spirit. In the natural, many things are impossible. But in the supernatural, spiritual realm, with God nothing is impossible. God wants us to believe for great things, make big plans and expect Him to do things so great it leaves us with our mouths hanging open in awe. James 4:2 tells us we have not because we ask not! We can be bold in our asking.
Sometimes in my meetings people will approach the altar for prayer and sheepishly ask if they can request two things. I tell them they can ask God for all they want to, as long as they trust Him to do it His way, in His timing.
When you pray, do it standing up on the inside. What I mean is, do it respectfully, yet aggressively and boldly. Don’t pray fearfully, and don’t pray what I call “just” prayers.
As I listen to myself and others pray, it seems we frequently say, “Lord, if You will just do this or that…,” “God, if You will just set me free in this area…,” “Father, if You will just get me a raise or a promotion on my job…,” “Master, we just ask You to help us in this area.”
I know part of that is habit, but I believe it goes deeper than that. Most people say things like that in prayer, and I doubt that everyone would have the same habit. I believe it stems from an imbedded attitude within us that God really does not want to do much for a dead dog or a grasshopper like us, so we better not ask for much — only what we can barely get by with.
“Just do this or that” sounds like we are talking to someone who does things in a scanty way, someone who isn’t able to do much. Our prayer is, “If You will just do this one thing, we won’t expect anything else.” It makes us sound like people who really don’t expect to get much, and if we can get just this one thing, we will be satisfied.
I recall God saying that He is the Almighty God (Genesis 17:1), in other words, “more than enough.” The Bible says that Abram was extremely rich, not just barely getting by. (Genesis 13:2.) David was so wealthy, he had provided for the house of the Lord 100,000 talents of gold, 1,000,000 talents of silver… (1 Chronicles 22:14) and more.2
God regularly promoted plain, ordinary people into positions that they could never have gotten for themselves. The very word prosperity indicates more than what is needed. God wants us to prosper in every area, not just financially. He also wants us to have social, physical, mental and spiritual prosperity.
Think about it. God wants us to have so many invitations to minister that we have to choose which ones to accept. It is not God’s will that His people be bored and lonely. He wants us to enjoy great fellowship and companionship. He wants us to feel great physically, not just drag our bodies around every day. He wants us to be vibrant and energetic, to enjoy life and live it to the fullest. He also wants us to be sharp mentally, have good memories and not live in a confused and worried manner.
You may be thinking, “Well, if that is God’s will, why don’t I have all those things in my life?”
Maybe you have not been asking for enough. Perhaps when you pray you don’t do it boldly, standing up on the inside. Don’t pray “just” prayers, pray for all you can dare to ask, think or desire.
When I pray for ministry opportunities so I can help more people, I go ahead and pray to be able to help every person on the face of the earth. I know it sounds really big, but in Ephesians 3:20 God is challenging us to pray for big things.
I always declare that our Life In The Word television program is seen every day, in every nation, city and town. Through satellite that vision is becoming more of a reality every day.
When our desires seem overwhelmingly big, and we don’t see the way to accomplish them, we should remember that even though we don’t know the way, we know the Waymaker! I will be dealing with the subject of confidence in prayer more completely in another chapter.
God has a way for us to do everything He places in our heart. He does not put dreams and visions in us to frustrate us. We must keep our confidence all the way through to the end, not just for a little bit and then when it looks like the mountain is too big, give up!
It is untold what people can do — people who don’t appear to be able to do anything. God does not usually call people who are capable; if He did, He would not get the glory. He frequently chooses those who, in the natural, feel as if they are in completely over their heads but who are ready to stand up on the inside and take bold steps of faith as they get direction from God.
We usually want to wait until we “feel ready” before we step out, but if we feel ready then we tend to lean on ourselves instead of on God.
Know your weaknesses and know God — know His strength and faithfulness. Above all else, don’t be a quitter.
Hebrews 10:38,39 in THE MESSAGE paraphrase Bible gives us very plain instructions on how God views quitters, the fearful and those who don’t finish what they start:
You were sure of yourselves then. It’s still a sure thing! But you need to stick it out, staying with God’s plan so you’ll be there for the promised completion. “It won’t be long now, he’s on the way; he’ll show up most any minute.
But anyone who is right with me thrives on loyal trust; if he cuts and runs, I won’t be very happy.”
But we’re not quitters who lose out. Oh, no! We’ll stay with it and survive, trusting all the way.
I have made up my mind not to be a quitter. In Colossians 3:2, the Apostle Paul tells us to set our minds and keep them set. Don’t say things like, “This is just too hard,” “I can’t do this,” or “I don’t think I’ll make it.” Instead boldly proclaim, “I can do all things through Christ Who strengthens me. I am ready for anything, I am equal to anything, through the One Who infuses inner strength into me. I am self-sufficient in His sufficiency.” (Philippians 4:13.)
FROM THE PIT TO THE PALACE
When Joseph had come to his brothers
, they stripped him of his [distinctive] long garment which he was wearing; Then they took him and cast him into the [well-like] pit which was empty; there was no water in it.
Genesis 37:23,24
And Pharaoh said to Joseph, Forasmuch as [your] God has shown you all this, there is nobody as intelligent and discreet and understanding and wise as you are.
You shall have charge over my house, and all my people shall be governed according to your word [with reverence, submission, and obedience]. Only in matters of the throne will I be greater than you are.
Genesis 41:39,40
A pit is a ditch, a trap, a snare. It refers to destruction. Satan always wants to bring us into the pit.
We know from Scripture that Joseph was sold into slavery by his brothers who hated him. They actually threw him into a pit and intended to leave him there to die, but God had other plans. They ended up selling him to slave traders, and he became the slave of a wealthy ruler in Egypt. Even though he was sold as a slave, he did not have a slave mentality. He believed he could do great things.
Everywhere Joseph went, God gave him favor. He even found favor in prison where he spent many years for an offense he did not commit. Ultimately, he ended up in the palace, second in command to Pharaoh, the ruler over all Egypt.