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Joyce Meyer - It Is Time For An Upgrade

Well, in the fall I'm gonna be releasing a book. It's gonna look like this. It's called "Healing the soul of a woman", but now, guys, I appreciate you being here. All these same principles work for you. You can get this book and tape over the "W-O". And it'll work just as well for you. Probably more women have wounded souls because of the emotions of our nature but, guys, let me tell you something. If you're not wounded you may be dealing with somebody that is and it's gonna be very helpful for you to understand them a little better than what you do. Because people who are walking around looking like they're fine on the outside but have a wounded soul just can be really difficult to deal with and get along with but the problem is, is they don't think they have a problem. They think you have a problem, amen?

What is a wounded soul? Well, first of all, I wanna start by telling you a little story about me in Albuquerque where we happen to be today. Fifty-six years ago, I was abandoned by my first husband in this town in Albuquerque, New Mexico. I was sexually abused by my father for many years, always really felt like nobody would ever want me or love me and so the first young man that paid any attention to me I grabbed him up because I thought I'd never have anybody. I knew down deep inside it wasn't right when I did it but desperate people do desperate things and desperate people do stupid things, amen?

So we got married. I was 18, I think he was 19. And he was a used car salesman and back then they would pay people to, like, if somebody here wanted a certain kind of car and there was one of 'em in St. Louis or wherever, the car dealership here would pay somebody from there to drive the car here. And so that was part of how he made money, was he would drive cars to places. Well, the plan was he was gonna drive that car here and then he was gonna work at the car lot and I was gonna get a job and we were gonna live happily ever after. So we checked into a motel and I don't remember where this was. I got a little job down the street that I could walk to in some kind of an office. I always did office work and he went off to work. I think another friend had driven down here with us, a friend of his.

And long story short, after, I dunno, ten days, probably no more than that, he just didn't come back. He just went one day and didn't come back. Now, I was married to this guy for five years but it was a totally crazy, crazy ride. He did the same thing to me one time in Oakland, California, and I've also been back there and done a conference and I think it's just interesting that 56 years ago I was abandoned in this city, totally alone, had no money to even get home on, had to call a friend and borrow $75 for a bus ticket. You couldn't take much with you on a bus so what things I did have, which wasn't that many, I remember I had some quilts that my grandmother had quilted and I had to leave a lot of that stuff here. And I was about as low and lonely and felt about as hopeless as anybody could have felt at that time.

Eighteen years old, I'd just gotten away from an abusive father. Now I've married this guy that is starting to show signs already that it's not gonna be much better than what I had. And here I am now, 56 years later, the arena's full of people coming to hear me speak and what I want is for what I'm telling you to give you hope that you could be at the lowest place in your life right now, you can be hurting so bad, maybe your husband or your wife has walked out on you or those of you watching by TV from home, you may just feel like that your whole life is over and little do you know it may just be beginning. And let me just say this to you: you have no idea the amazing things that God has planned for you, but you cannot walk around wounded your entire life and taking those wounds out on other people and have the life that God intends you to have.

So if you would come under the category of a wounded soul, which I think pretty much today in our society almost everybody does in some way, shape, or form, then I want you to make a decision today that it's time for you to learn how to live the life that Jesus died for you to have, to let go of the things that are behind, and to start fresh and to ask God to take everything that's ever been done to you that was unjust or immoral and somehow work it out for your good and turn it into something that can actually help other people. Is anybody up for that today?

Okay, so, you know, we are a spirit, we have a soul, and we live in a body. You're looking at my body but, to be honest, you're not looking at the real me. I look at you. I see your body. Just 'cause you've got a smile on your face doesn't mean you're happy. Just because you look good on the outside, you know, we get so good at pretending and we're very good at trying to make everybody think we've got it all together. And I tell you what, we are walking around in the midst of hundreds of thousands of people that are literally falling apart on the inside and they're trying to make up for it by getting something on the outside.

We think that we need more of this or a promotion or a bigger house or a bigger car or we need to get married or we are married and need to not be married or, you know, whatever. It's always something. It's always something else. But what we really want, the simplest way that I know to say this, is people just want to be happy. I mean, truly, genuinely, peaceful and happy. And the Bible says the Kingdom of God it not about what you eat and what you drink, which really is talking about, we might as well say, "The kingdom of God is not about stuff". It's not about what you own, the kind of house you live in. It is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.

So God is not offering us a perfect outside life. You're gonna have problems just like other people in the world have problems. You're gonna have trials and tribulations, you're gonna have things to deal with you'd rather not deal with. But what he is offering you is right standing with him, how wonderful is it to not have to feel wrong about yourself all the time. I mean, after being abused by my dad, I spent years with a record playing in my head that simply said, "What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me"? Anybody else ever hear that record? I mean, the devil has sold millions of copies of that one to most of us. "What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me"? And then other people would say, "What's wrong with you? What's wrong with you"?

And it's so wonderful now to know that I've been made right with God through the blood of Jesus Christ and that I can be for myself and not against myself. We really want that righteousness and it has to come first. A right relationship with God has to co me before you can have peace and you've gotta have peace before you can have joy. And I can tell you no matter what it is that you came in here thinking you wanted or thinking that you had to have in order to be happy, if it was anything other than those three things, then your thinking is all messed up and you're wrong.

'Cause really, it doesn't matter how much money you have if you're miserable. Doesn't matter how big your house is if you don't have any peace. I mean, you can be the president of five companies but if you hate yourself, then what do you have? So what we really want is this inside part of us, our soul, to be healthy and whole. You have a blood-bought right to have a good relationship with yourself. And I hope before the day is over you will decide to become your best friend instead of your worst enemy, amen? You need to be friends with yourself. If you're a good friend to yourself, then you'll get over caring so much about what everybody else thinks all the time.

So we are a spirit, we have a soul, we live in a body. Our body is gradually falling apart, day after day. And it will one day turn back to ashes and dust. Thankfully, we'll get a glorified body. I bet that's gonna feel good. And it is our spirit and our soul that will go on and endure forever. So, to be honest, if you're born again, everything in your spirit's good. I mean, God had to fix that up before he could come and live in there. He actually had to make you holy in the deepest part of your being in order to dwell in you because he can't dwell anywhere that's not holy.

And so the whole job that's going on now, this whole journey that we're on, that Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to help us make, is to get what's in our spirit all throughout our soul, immersed in our soul, this knowing who we are in Christ, this knowing we're loved, and loving other people and all this wonderful fruit of the spirit, love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, all the wonderful amazing things that God has deposited in us at the new birth. No wonder the Bible says: "If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things pass away and all things become new".

That doesn't mean you're gonna look different when you look in the mirror and it doesn't even mean that your soul is made new immediately. But it means everything in your spirit, you now have a seed. Everybody say "Seed". You now have a seed on the inside of you of everything that you could ever possibly need to have the best life that you could possibly have. So as we water that seed with the word of God, I don't know if you even realize what a favor you have done yourself by taking this Saturday to come and do what you're doing. Because what you will hear today, if you let it, can be life-changing. It's more valuable than anything you could go out and purchase for yourself or any party you could go to or anybody that you think is important that you could go hang out with.

Having a healed soul, being right on the inside, having peace and joy, are the most valuable things that you could ever have and that's what our world is missing. I've made this journey and I'm still making it every day so it qualifies me not only as a teacher of the word but because I've lived through this and experienced it, to tell you that there's no devil in hell that is big enough to keep you from the best that God has for you if you're determined to have that best and if you will do your part.

I want you to make a decision today that you are not gonna live your life wounded and broken, amen? And you're not gonna live your life with a chip on your shoulder because you had a bad beginning and feeling sorry for yourself because you didn't get all the breaks that everybody else got. Number one thing we gotta learn today: no matter how you got to where you are, let's just say that not one bit of it was your fault, which is probably not accurate but let's just say that none of it was your fault, the life you have right now, the mess you're in right now, is all because of things that other people did to you, and I'm sorry about that, but step number one toward wholeness is right now, today, you have to take 100% responsibility for your life and where you're at. It may not be your fault that you got here but you're the only one that can cooperate with God for your life to get you out of here and into the place where God wants you.

So today we give up all blaming, all self-pity, poor me. We're gonna get rid of all the "If-only's," if only I wouldn't have been abused, if only I wouldn't have married that guy, if only I wouldn't have been born into such a ridiculously dysfunctional family, if only I would have got a chance to have more education, if only, if only.

Let me tell you something. There's two little words in the Bible that I absolutely adore and they're called, "But God". Joseph's brothers hated him. They sold him into slavery. He spent 13 years in prison for something that he didn't do. I mean, here's a guy who seems to be trying to do the right thing and every time he turns around, he's getting knocked down. But the Bible says in acts that although his brothers hated him and all these things happen to him, it says: "But God was with him and he found favor everywhere that he went". Are you out there today?

And I wanna tell you that no matter what has happened to you, you have got the edge today. You know why? Because God is on your side. If God be for me, who can be against me? If God is on my side, whom shall I fear? I'm one example, just one, and I'm sure there's many others in this room. One example of what God can do with a totally broken, messed-up, seemingly hopeless situation if you just let him in and. Everybody say, "And," you'll begin to learn what God wants you to do and do it.

You can have everything in your Bible underlined in three colors. But it doesn't do you any good to know something if you don't do what you know to do. And the Holy Spirit has been given to us because we're all different. We're all gonna experience healing in a little different way. The Holy Spirit is the only One who knows when the time is right for us to deal with which issues in our life. And if we will let the Holy Spirit guide us, He will show us one step at a time.

If you're gonna start out on this journey, you might as well make a decision that you're gonna have to learn how to wait well because it's not gonna happen overnight. Matter of fact, I still am being healed. I still am learning things on a regular basis and, based on what I can find in the Bible, that's gonna continue until the day Jesus comes to get us. We have to be lifetime learners.

Your soul is that secret part of you, that inner life that only you and God really know anything about. Your soul is your mind, your will, and your emotions. Tells you what you think, what you want, and how you feel. And we talk about our soul a lot, believe it or not. You hear people more than anything talk about what they want, what they think, and how they feel. "I want, I think, I feel. I want, I think, I feel. I want, I think, I feel". And if that part of us is wounded and we let it run our lives, we are in serious trouble because when you're wounded you don't think right. You don't feel right. And you don't want what's right.

You can be wounded and all you want is revenge when that's the worst thing in the world that you could spend your life working toward because it's never gonna get you what you think you want. 'Cause what you want is righteousness, peace, and joy, and you can only get that from God. So if your soul's been wounded through abuse, unjust treatment, rejection, shame, guilt, other painful things, and you haven't dealt with those things, then you are not functioning in a healthy and a normal way.

You may not realize you're not. You probably are like me: you think everybody else has got something wrong with them. Oh yeah, that's what we think. What is your problem? You've probably heard me tell this but it still amazes me. I remember one day when I was praying for Dave to change. "God, you've got to change Dave. I can't live with this man like this. You have to change him, God. Deal with him. Change him". And one day I was into pretty intense prayer about God changing Dave and I heard the Lord whisper, "Dave is not the problem". But it really confused me because if it wasn't Dave, I couldn't imagine who it was. I mean, look at me, I tell you, I did not have a clue. I thought when I walked away from my father's house that I walked away from the problem. See, you can walk away from a problem physically but you take it with you in your soul. And so you still have it until you deal with it. Your secrets will make you sick.

Well, I encourage you to make a decision today that you're not going to live your life wounded. Choose instead to live the life that Christ died for you to have. Let go of the things that are behind and start fresh. Ask God to take all the unjust things that's ever been done to you and work them out for your good. Let him turn those things into something that you can use to help other people.
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