If I’m not happy, something is wrong in me – inside of me, something is wrong; there’s an attitude that’s wrong or a behavior pattern that’s wrong. God releases joy in our lives when we’re living to please him and I believe that more than anything else, we need to – get ready now, buckle your seat belt! – we need to forget about ourselves, we need to forget about our own little problems, our own little needs, our own little breakthroughs, and we need to get up every day and say: God, I can’t do anything about me. I’m giving myself to you. You change me.

You do in me what needs to be done. You fix my problem and if you don’t fix my problem, then I guess I’ll just show up at heaven’s door with my problem but I belong to you. You knew what you were getting when you called me into relationship with yourself. I’m not even going to apologize for myself anymore. I’m asking you today, God, to show me what I can do to make somebody else’s life better.

Many of you came here asking God for an answer to your problem and I am giving you the answer to your problem right now. You don’t need to ask God one more time to tell you what your answer is, I’m giving it to you: Get your mind off yourself and let God use you to be a blessing to somebody else. Unless the grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it abides alone, but if it dies, it will produce much fruit.

Joyce Meyer – What kind of an influence are you having on other people? The following story proves that we have an influence on people, especially the people who live in the house with us.

Zoro: Um…

Joyce: …Somebody that you shared with that you felt was really a key person or something that was really important for the kingdom.

Zoro: There’s been countless people that I’ve shared with, and to me anybody where I’ve seen the fruit of their life change… There’s been celebrity people that I’ve shared the Lord with who will remain nameless, but then I would begin to see the fruit and the evidence and the change in their life, and I would go, “wow, God, this is awesome,” because they’re influencers. So if I can influence influencers, we’re changing things dramatically because unfortunately people look up to Hollywood and all that stuff. I always tell young people, “do you know what? Don’t model yourself after that world.” I say, “if the flesh could satisfy, then Howard Hughes and Anna Nicole and Elvis and everybody else would have died the happiest people on the earth.” I say, “follow the spirit because the spirit is the part in you that God has given you to find him, but the flesh can’t find him.”

Joyce Meyer – And everybody is equally important — I totally agree with that — But one of the things that I do pray is that people with positions of influence will be truly born again because when you have a position of influence, immediately you can affect a lot of other people. Now we all have a sphere of influence; I don’t care who we are. If you’re a mother, you have influence over your children. Wherever you work, whatever you do, in the neighborhood, every single person does have an influence. And I think the question that I would like to leave our viewing audience with today is you are having an influence, but what kind of an influence are you having?

Having my pity party today. I feel pitiful on Monday. On Tuesday, I get depressed. On Wednesday, I get mad. I’m busy, though.” Some people are even religiously busy. We can even get busy doing good works. The world is full of wounded people wearing masks because they either don’t know what they’re supposed to be like, they lost themselves a long time ago, or they think they do know what they’re like and they’re ashamed of who they are. They feel unaccepted so they should just pretend all the time that everything is okay when it’s not. David admitted when he was hurting. You can’t get help until you admit you have a need. Stop trying to impress everyone and yourself with your togetherness. I think our motto in life becomes: Look at me, I’ve got it all together. Sister super-Christian. Brother saint. We want to be super-sheep and “super” and “sheep” don’t even go together. Jesus called us sheep because sheep are dumb. They couldn’t get across the yard if somebody didn’t lead them. They’ll eat poisonous weeds and all kinds of stuff. When we come into a relationship with God — and I think this is so awesome — there’s a divine exchange that’s supposed to take place. He takes our sin. He gives us his righteousness. He takes our shame. He gives us righteousness. He takes our blame. He gives us righteousness. When I married Dave, he had a car and I didn’t have one. As soon as I said “I do” I had a car. Now that car didn’t become mine as long as we were just engaged. I didn’t get his name when we were engaged. Anybody getting this figured out? Yes!: Some of you are just dating Jesus; you haven’t said “I do” yet. When you say “yes” to a marriage partner, you’re saying an eternal “yes” to a lot of stuff that you don’t even know what you’re saying “yes” to yet. We need to say that eternal “yes” to God tonight. “Yes, Lord” to whatever. I trust you with my life. Whatever you want to do with me, I want you to do it. Your plan may not be my plan but I’m saying “I do” tonight. I’m saying “yes.” You know what happens? When we really mean it and we say that eternal “yes” to God and we enter into a serious relationship with God… And there is a difference in just going to church and having a very serious committed dedicated relationship with God. There’s a difference.

Joyce Meyer - He likes it all; it doesn’t matter what it is. Here I am now, sitting with two of the most famous ball players in the world and I don’t know very much about sports at all. I told Lou I can at least understand baseball, but as you know, Kurt, I keep losing the football so.

But it doesn’t work to just jump up and down and sing a few warfare songs in church or yell at the devil once in a while when your circumstances get really bad. We have to stop all that what I call “yo-yo christianity.” I don’t think that we should just go around occasionally trying to take authority; I think we need to walk in our authority. We need to just know who we are. I always say I don’t go in my office and say, “alright, I’m here now and I’m taking authority.” When I come in, everybody knows that. We were created to have dominion. If you would go all the way back to Genesis 1, you’d see that God gave man dominion over all the other works of his hands. So hopefully I want to give you a new view of yourself that you’re the head and not the tail, above and not beneath, that everything you lay your hand to is supposed to prosper. You’re more than a conqueror.

The greater one lives in you. God is your strength; by him you can run through a troop and leap over a wall. Now that’s a whole different picture than all this, “well, I’m just hoping to make it until Jesus comes back to get me.” Amen? Amen.: The bible talks about armor. It’s in Ephesians 6. I don’t even know that we’ll get to those scriptures tonight but there’s armor that we have that if we wear it, it will protect us. You might call that defensive weapons. This actually was the armor that they were talking about in the bible. This is the real stuff; just exactly what the roman soldiers wore. You can see it’s pretty mean looking stuff but it doesn’t do us any good just to have it on the stand here, sitting in our house somewhere; you’ve got to wear it.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – Kurt Warner: You sound a lot like my wife. She sits around having a lot of football conversations and doesn’t have a clue either, so I’m familiar with that feeling.

So you’re here for a purpose, and I don’t think you need to be confused about your purpose. I think it’s just so simple; it’s all over the bible what our purpose is. Our purpose is to live for his glory, wherever we’re at, whatever walk of life we’re in, whether we’re preaching or working in a hospital or working in a doctor’s office or working in a school, none of that matters. We’ve gotten too caught up in what we do. I said we have gotten way too caught up in what we do. Now listen to me — we get too much of our worth and value out of what we do. People strive to do something greater than what somebody else is doing. Or they’re always comparing what they do with what somebody else does. We hardly even ask each other how we are; we want to know, “what do you do?” “what do you do?” “what do you do?” “what do you do?” we all need to do something but I don’t think what we do is nearly as important as the attitude that we do it with. I believe that God wants us to live with passion and zeal and enthusiasm.  And I want to say that I don’t necessarily think that’s something that you feel. I’ve been thinking a lot about passion, getting ready for this conference. I think when we think about passion, we think that it’s some kind of an emotion that just gets you hyped up all the time. And to be honest with you, that’s not even my personality. I’m a little bit more of a deeper person and a deep thinker. I’m pretty funny when I preach, but that’s pretty much where it stops. I mean, I’m not like real funny in my ordinary, everyday life.

Joyce Meyer Online – I appreciate you gentlemen taking the time to be here because I know you have plenty to do, and I really believe that what you’re going to say today is going to have an impact on some people’s lives.

We don’t really show that we have forgiven ourselves until we have the joy from it by believing what Jesus did on the cross. It all goes back to the atonement. This is what God did for us, and we are to take this gift with both hands. Now look, when you forgive others, you give them a gift they don’t deserve. Now, I say give yourself a gift you don’t deserve. Let yourself off the hook. We think, “I can’t do that. I feel guilty; I don’t deserve it.” This was my problem as I said last time. I let those years go by when I neglected my family, and the guilt I felt… I felt guilty in accepting the forgiveness, and then I saw this is what God wanted me to do. I’ve been set free and I’m passing it on!

Joyce: I recall one time when I was having another day of feeling guilty, which that was my story pretty much every day of my life… I’d been abused in my childhood and somehow decided there must be something wrong with me if people were mistreating me, and just carried that into my adult life and even into my Christian life, and the devil was just having a real party with it. By then I was already called into ministry and I was having home bible studies in my home, having people come in and teaching them the word but I was on one of my guilt trips. I remember so vividly the Holy Spirit saying to my heart, “how do you plan to get over this?” Well, I knew the right answer: “I’ll just receive the sacrifice that you made for me when you died on Calvary.” It sounded so spiritual. He said, “and when did you plan to do that?” All of a sudden I started getting a revelation. I thought, “oh, probably in two or three days.” “Well, if that sacrifice is good two or three days from now, why isn’t it good now?” and then he said, “I don’t need you to add your guilt to my sacrifice.” Either Jesus did a complete and thorough job or he didn’t. And the truth is we cannot do anything to make up for our mistakes, including feeling bad for years and years and years.

Joyce Meyer – I just want to ask you… First I’ll start with Kurt and then go to Lou: What is the greatest challenge to witnessing that you find in the sports arena?

Lisa: Joyce, there was a real turning point for John and me. When we were first married — and it’s actually kind of comical now — but as soon as we got saved, we started tithing. I remember I would save for like one week and I was given $100 and I was so excited. John was like, “actually, that’s 90 dollars; ten goes to God.” I was like, “you’re kidding me!” So we started tithing right away. We got married. We were part of a church. We not only tithed, we gave in every single offering. We were so excited. People were giving in offerings.

We had given in the same offering and then the next day they’d be like, “oh my gosh, I like came home and someone bought me a mercedes!” I’d be like, “wait a minute! I have to pack my lunch and I can’t even afford to go out because I don’t have gas money. What is going on over here?” John and I had just gotten to a place where we had come to the end of everything, and we walked out to our car and our windshield had exploded from heat exhaustion. We just sat there and we were like, “oh my gosh, this is so bad. We have a car windshield exploded. We have no money.” And we started to really complain against God. We were like, “you know what? We have tithed and we have given offerings, and these other people who don’t even need anything are getting money and this is not right!” John and I both actually sat down and cried together. We just sat there and we cried. We were like, “we don’t know if this is working.” I remember the next day, John was working at Rockwell international and I was actually working at a church, and we didn’t even know how we were going to get to work the next day.

Joyce Meyer – Man, I think there’s a number of challenges but I think probably the greatest challenge to witnessing is staying consistent in your own life.

Man, God, I don’t feel well; my back hurts and my head’s been bothering me, and my neighbor’s driving me crazy. I don’t know what I’m going to do if you don’t just move and help me. And by the way, Lord, thank you for working in my life and for everything that you do for me. Now, I don’t know where I get this stuff; this just came to me this morning that this would help you to remember this. Sometimes a picture is worth more than a thousand words. I couldn’t have this sandwich if I didn’t… I mean, I’d have to have at least one piece of bread. It’s better to have two because you can do a lot more with it if you have two. I mean, if I only had one, I’d have to be really careful. So we start out with that foundation: Lord, I love you, you’ve been so good to me. I praise you, God, you’re awesome. Thank you for the blood of Jesus. Thank you for salvation. Thank you that I can come boldly to your throne. Lord, there are a few things I’d like to mention: My aching back, my head that hurts, my boss that drives me crazy, my big toe, my little toe… Okay, that shouldn’t take very long. We should be able to present all of our needs actually pretty quickly, and then we go right back to: Lord, thank you so much for hearing my prayers and thank you for working in my life. Thank you, God, that I believe you’re going to take care of all of these things. Amen? If you spend more time with petitions than you do with praise and thanksgiving, you’re out of balance. If your whole prayer life is just this list of things you have to have to stay happy, you’re out of balance.

Joyce Meyer Online – There are so many temptations, there are so many people who want a piece of you, there are so many people who will tell you what you want to hear, give you what you want, open doors to whatever it is that you want, that I think the greatest challenge is staying consistent in your walk, in what you believe in, in how you represent Jesus on a daily basis.

Joyce: I believe that you received a lot out of the program today because I believe that God’s word always teaches us something wonderful if our hearts are open to receive. I believe that many of you watching have yourself struggled in this area of not really knowing how to receive the love of God so I’m gonna pray for you right now. Father, we come to you in the name of Jesus and I know that we have to receive your love by faith. There’s no reason why you should love us. We know that we don’t deserve it, we make mistakes, we do things wrong but you love us. I pray right now that every person watching will just by faith say God loves me and he loves me unconditionally, he accepts me, and God is not mad at me. Father, I pray for every person that they would begin to be conscious and aware of your love, that they would see the loving things that you do for us all the time. Even when you correct us, it’s your way of loving us because you say, “I love you so much that I’m not willing to leave you the way you are.” So I thank you, Lord, for covering people today with a blanket of your love. Your banner over us is love and I want them to know, believe in, be conscious and aware of the love that you have for them. In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.

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Joyce: It’s a great privilege for us to be here today in Africa, helping feed these children. Wow, what an opportunity to feed hungry children. You know, if it weren’t for our friends and partners of Joyce Meyer ministries, we wouldn’t be able to do this. These kids are just so precious and so sweet. We have to be grateful for the opportunity to help them. This is not only just a place where they can receive a meal but there’s a church here, a hope center where we’re going to be educating them.  There’s medical help available to them. Right now today there’s an eye clinic going on and people who have not been able to see are going to be able to see, so we’re just privileged. When we come to places like this, people are always thanking us but actually we need to thank them for the privilege of being able to reach out and help them. So I want to thank you for helping us help them. God bless you.

Joyce Meyer- I think that can compromise more than anything, more than doing anything, the witness that you can have on another player or the organization or the people that you’re around.

Call one of my kids and say: do you want to go out to lunch with me? Go shopping! Or sometimes what I do — I have an aunt and a mom that I take care of who are in their eighties that are in assisted living care. Sometimes after I do these conferences I’ll just go see them. That may not be the thing that my flesh really wants to do but it’s amazing how it nurtures my spirit. I could say, “well, I’ve been giving all weekend. I am not just going to go give again. I need somebody to do something for me.” Let me just tell you a little secret I’ve learned. You need to retire from self care and have a retirement party. I mean just go ahead and give it up. I’ve learned honestly if I’m not getting from Dave or anybody else what I think they should give me or if I’m feeling emotionally needy… You ladies get this — sometimes we’re emotionally needy.

Men don’t always get that so you just kind of look over that. But I went away for a week recently to study and get ready for this and work on some upcoming projects that I had. I like a little bit of alone time three or four times a year to just get alone with God, so I was gone all week from my husband. I thought: man, when I come home he’s going to spend all day with me. This is going to be cool. We’ll go out to eat. We’ll do this and we’ll do that. I got home and he said, “oh no. I’ve got tickets to the football game.” I said, “Dave, I’ve been gone all week.” “Well, I can’t miss this game. I mean, I have the tickets. You don’t want me to waste the tickets.” I’m thinking: I don’t give a rip what you do with the tickets.

Joyce Meyer Ministries - We’ll have times that we’ll go in to do a breakdown of all the team — on three, say something — and someone will use a cuss word and we’re all supposed to copy and say that.