Theresa wants victims to know that the moment they start seeking God, he’ll help them begin their journey to peace. She has experienced it firsthand, along with her teenaged daughter, Gabrielle, and today they’re free in Christ.

“It does take a lot to move towards that light, but it’s worth it. It is so worth it. We can get medicine to help us through the lumps and the bumps, but the only true healer for our emotional pain, for our wounds, is Jesus Christ himself.”

Just like Theresa and her daughter received help from God and as I received help from God, you can be assured that whatever your situation is, he also will help you. God is no respecter of persons and that’s one thing that we can thank him for. I’m glad that he is no respecter of persons and that anyone who applies his guidelines in their life will get the result he promises them. God is a restorer and he is a God of justice and that means that he takes wrong things that have been done to us or things that were not right in our life and he makes them right as we trust him.

We’ve talked about thanking God for who he is and now we want to talk about thanking God for some of the things he does for us because the bible teaches us that thanksgiving allows us to have a powerful life. There’s nothing about murmuring, grumbling, faultfinding and complaining that adds power to our life but being thankful releases a spirit of joy, and the joy of the Lord is our strength.

The first thing I think we can talk about is that God forgives all of our sins. If you’re a person who received Jesus as their savior a long time ago and you’re kind of used to walking in the blessing of forgiveness of sins, I want to remind you today what an awesome blessing that is and how we need to always thank God that he forgives our sins.

In my own life, I like to stop sometimes and just say, “Lord, thank you that you’re here.” It’s amazing what it does for me just to remember he is here, he’s with me all the time. Another attribute of God is that he is immortal — no beginning and no end. He’s always been here. He always will be here. He created time. He was before time and he will be after time ends. He is the Alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. He existed before the world began and before everything that we see. He is immutable which means that he never changes. The bible says in Hebrews 7:25 that Jesus lives to make intercession for us. He always lives to make intercession for us. That means you can be assured that Jesus is always praying for you without interruption and he will never change his mind about that. The bible also says that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. I think that we need to be thankful for this wonderful God that we serve. He is the God above all Gods, the only one true God, and he is our God. Let us be thankful for him.

One of the many things that I’m so thankful for is how God transformed the trials of my life into triumph. Like many of you, I’m living proof that God restores us, redeems our past, and gives us hope for a better future, just like the bible says in Jeremiah 29. He gives us hope for a great future.

I’d like to share another story of a woman whose sexual abuse began when she was only five years old.

“I was five and the gentlemen were probably anywhere between 16 to 19,” Theresa Gilmore shares. “There were about five or six of them.”

How many of you have some problems right now in your life that you would not have had if you would have followed peace when you made that decision? A lot of times we do things that we don’t have peace about because we feel desperate. We push the envelope and see if we can get by with it, and it always ends up blowing up in our face. First peter 3:10-11: let him who wants to enjoy life and see good days [good-whether apparent or not] keep his tongue free from evil and his lips from guile. (vs. 11) let him turn away from wickedness and shun it and let him do right. Let him search for peace. (vs. 11) which is (harmony, undisturbedness from fears, agitating passions, and moral conflicts) and let him seek it eagerly. (vs. 11) [Do not merely desire peaceful relationships with god, with your fellowmen, and with yourself.] So, three areas where we see we need to have peace: with god first, then with ourselves, then with people.

You may be trying to get along with a person and you’re not even at peace with god. You might be trying to get along with a person and you’ve got a war going on in you about you. You’re not going to be able to get along with other people if you don’t get along with yourself. Jesus was able to calm the storm because he had peace in him. You cannot speak peace in a situation if you don’t have any peace.  I ask you again: what’s going on in you? Do you have righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost? If you don’t,

You might as well set aside all the other stuff. If you don’t have that, you don’t need to be studying prosperity, you don’t need to be studying promotion and success and all those things that are

So popular today. We all want to do well and there’s nothing wrong with teaching people that they can do well, but I like to teach people the roots and the core values that are going to support those things when god does bring them into your life because if you don’t know who you are in Christ, even if god gives you something, the devil’s going to take it away from you.

Do you know who you are in Christ?  How much time do you waste feeling bad about yourself, feeling ashamed, feeling guilty, feeling condemned? Every day that you spend feeling condemned is a day wasted in your life. Do you have peace? Could you say that you’re a person who has peace most of the time? We’re all going to get upset sometimes but thank god, I’ve learned that you can get upset and you can calm down really quick if you decide to because when you go around that mountain enough times, you finally get the revelation: this is not going to do any good. I used to stay mad for three weeks and now I’ve got it down to just a few minutes.

But I can tell you it took work and it took willingness for me to change. Do you have peace most of the time and are you enjoying your journey?  Do you have joy? Are you enjoying?  Could you say basically as a whole, I enjoy every day of my life? Sure, we all have a day now and then that we just can’t seem to get it together but on the average, would you say that you pretty much get up every day and enjoy your life? I can say amen, amen, amen now to all three of those things but it’s been a thirty-year journey.

It didn’t take me the whole thirty years but it did take me about twelve. But it won’t have to take you as long as it took me if you’ll open your heart and let me share some things with you that I know because I’ve walked where many of you are trying to walk. First peter 3:10-11, if you would turn there. The first scriptures we want to look at.  The bible says we’re to follow peace. In Colossians 3:15, where we’re not going to turn, it says let peace be the umpire in your life. An umpire decides what’s in and what’s out. Colossians 3:15 is such a great scripture: let the peace of god rule as an umpire in your life.

John: There are 100 of them in there; you can’t miss them!

Joyce: Number 52: Don’t plan for perfection.

John: Oh, absolutely.

Joyce: So what do you have to say about that?

John: I think when we try to do everything perfectly, we overwork, over-prepare, over-anxious ourselves. And how many times have I seen people who spent an inordinate amount of time to do something that didn’t have any kind of great return to it at all, so they spent three hours getting ready for something that had a three minute kind of a deal to it. Whereas if they would have just taken it into perspective and said, “hey, I’m just going to roll with it. I don’t have to do this much preparation. If I don’t do it as well as it needs to be done, it doesn’t matter anyway — it’s not a life-changing issue.” I think many times we spend way too much time over-preparing, which takes away time that we should have doing things that would really give us the return.

Joyce: To be honest, John, if we have unrealistic expectations, it’s going to really complicate our life because then we’re expecting something out of life that we’re never going to get. Certainly we’re not saying to be negative or plan for failure but you have to be realistic. There’s very rarely ever a whole day that goes exactly the way we planned for it to go.

John: Never. I’ve not had one.

Joyce Meyer Online: So I’ve just kind of learned — I’m not negative but it’s like, “God, this is my day; you know what I have planned but if it doesn’t work out exactly the way I have it planned then help me to adjust and adapt.” Because when a person is not adaptable and they’re not adjustable and they’ve got their plan of perfection — whether you’ve got unrealistic expectations in relationships, from a church, from yourself, whatever the case might be, you’re always going to end up disappointed if you don’t leave a little bit of room to say: If I have to make some adjustments, I can do that. Whatever it takes for me to enjoy my life and keep it simple, I’d much rather do that.

Joyce: and then the last little story that I want to tell you is about a blind man, a man named Bartimaeus. He was a blind beggar but he had heard about Jesus. The bible says he heard that Jesus was passing by. He began to cry out, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me. And everybody around him told him to shut up. It’s amazing to me that when we begin to cry out for Jesus, people want us to shut up. Bartimaeus had a decision to make: am I going to listen to the people or am I going to cry out louder? He just got louder. When I felt like god called me to preach, everybody I knew told me to shut up and I had to make a decision to do what the people wanted me to do or just to cry out louder. Blind Bartimaeus got louder. The bible says he shouted, he shouted all the more. Jesus! Have mercy on me! And Jesus went right to the man and said: what can I do for you? Don’t let people shut you up. Don’t let people discourage you. I’m quite sure in this nation like many others, that for some of you, if you make a decision to follow Jesus Christ, your friends and maybe some of your family won’t like it because maybe that means you’re going to be deciding to do something other than what they’re doing.

When we were called to preach the gospel, we were in a certain denominational church or you might say we were part of a certain religion. Dave had been in that church all of his life. His whole family went to that church but they didn’t believe that women could be used by god. How many of you ladies here in India know that god uses women? God uses women! and the men should be man enough to not let that bother them. Come on, guys! you need to back up your women, not be jealous of them. My husband is a great example.

He’s not a weak, wimpy man. He’s 6’4″, all muscle. He’s the head of our home. He’s my husband but he stands with me and says: be all that god wants you to be! God didn’t create women to be under man’s feet. Eve came out of Adam’s side, not the bottom of his feet. We’re to walk beside our men and together, we can do great things. So many people say: well, women aren’t supposed to preach.

I’ll tell you something that I’ve discovered: the first to preach the gospel after Jesus rose from the dead was a woman. The angel said to Mary, “go and tell my disciples, he is risen!” or Jesus said it to her. Well, “go and tell” sounds like preaching to me, so don’t tell me that god doesn’t use women. It’s too late to tell me that. Sorry, it’s already happening.

Jentezen: I know that’s how God has led us in our ministry. I can so relate to what you’re saying.  When you read the scriptures, It talks about — one of my favorite scriptures about discernment is in the Book of Hosea, the fifth chapter; God speaks and he says “I will come to you as a moth.” A moth is just a little bug around the light. He’s so gentle. He’s talking to his prophet and he says, ” will come to you as a moth,” no big angel visit, no big earth-shaking event. Just a gentle impression. But then he makes this statement in the next part of the verse: “but if you don’t hear me, then I’ll come as a lion.” So many times the greatest way that he wants to deal with us is just those gentle leadings. Sometimes we want the lion or we want something heavy and big, and if we would just learn to listen, I call it the ministry of the moth: just those gentle impressions of the Holy Spirit.

Joyce: I know different people and I’m sure you do too, who talk about how Jesus came and sat on their bed and talked to them for 45 minutes. Some of these people are well-known people in ministry, then others who are seeing angels all the time and stuff. So, like many of us do, I guess I went to God complaining one day like: why have you never come and sat on my bed and talked to me? Why haven’t I had these angels appear to me?

Joyce Meyer Ministries: The answer he put in my spirit was what he told Thomas: blessed are those who believe and have not seen. I think sometimes we think that the people who see all this stuff are the more spiritual but I think it takes a great deal of faith to go just on the word and just step out in that so-called blind faith, really believing that you’re hearing from God and being willing to make a mistake.

Joyce I think we should get wise enough and mature enough to understand that anybody who is spending their life on the side of the highway holding up a sign, willing to live on what people give them and whatever free meal they can get and whatever shelter they can sleep in, even though they’ve become accustomed to that lifestyle and they think they like that, there’s something deeper that’s wrong in that person if they don’t even want any more than that, so what you’re talking about I think is extremely important for people to hear because you’re talking about going deeper than the surface and actually making an investment in loving the person into wholeness, maybe loving them enough to give them some hope, loving them enough to show them maybe by example that there is another way. I think some people who have grown up in very difficult situations may just be so stuck in some bad things in their life that they don’t even realize they have enough worth and value to even rise above that kind of thing. So I do think it’s extremely important being there and being there and being there because sometimes you have to break down a shell around people.

Matt we got to witness firsthand the other night the tunnels in St. Louis. There were two guys, Tim and john, and we were visiting some friends of ours, Brandon and Rebecca, whom we got to know and began a relationship with this past summer.

Joyce they were living on the street?

Matt they were!  They live in the tunnels on a 32 foot ledge and they’ve called it home for years. Brandon grew up homeless so that’s all he’s ever known, he told us. We actually spent the night in the tunnel with them. I slept on a dirty mattress, lance and I did, and Paul slept on a couch but Amy Lambert from the dream center actually Led Tim and john to the lord in the tunnel. We were up there talking with Brandon and Rebecca and we’re constantly spending time with them, praying for them, and just encouraging them because that’s what they need. Tim and john accepted Jesus Christ as their lord and savior and it was miraculous the conversion that happened.

Joyce Meyer Ministries – Their attitudes just changed. We heard Tim arguing with some of the homeless people up on the ledge while we were down on the bottom and he was just like “I have something to live for every single day.  God loves me! It’s through him that…”

Joyce: it’s almost like I’d like to get down on my knees and almost plead with people: please, please, please, please, please get yourself off your mind, get yourself out of your conversation, get yourself out of the center of your life and start asking god, “what can I do to help somebody else? How can I be a blessing?” it’s a seed that you sow that brings an almost unbelievable harvest in your life.  It’s like have you ever wondered… I know as a minister, god uses us to help a lot of people. But I got to wondering one time, “why is it, god, when I’ve got a problem, I can’t help myself?” it’s like I might be down about something and I can’t seem to get myself up. Or I might have a need and I can’t seem to meet my own need, but while I’m in need, god will use me to meet somebody else’s need.  And I thought, “Why don’t you let me meet my need?”  And do you know what he put in my heart? He said, “Because I didn’t build you in such a way to meet your own needs.  I’ve called you to out-reach, not in-reach.” so, god actually prevents us from being able to help ourselves, but when we’re in need, we can always reach out and help somebody else. Then when we do that, god brings a harvest in our own life. That way you keep that flow of giving and people doing things for one another going all the time in your life.

Pastor Barnett: Joyce, that’s profound.  When you were talking about that, I thought how that’s so relevant in my own life. We had those wheelchair buses I told you about earlier.

Joyce Meyer – One of them was coming out of a parking lot, and a lady hit the bus, turned it over — this was 15 years ago — and killed three of our precious older folks.

They may even believe he’s out there somewhere but they really don’t go to God with their troubles because honestly at some point in their life they went to a church or to someone who said they were a Christian, and they went for help and hope and love and comfort, and they got judgment and criticism and rules. They already had so many problems in their life they could hardly even think. The last thing they needed was, “now you need to cut your hair and you need to do this and you need to change that and you need to stop this and you need to do this and you need to do this and you need to do this.” So they just felt like God couldn’t help them.

I just want to say that if we’re going to fulfill the great commission, then we better start getting real, we better start getting honest with ourselves, we better start taking a real strong look at what Jesus said, and somebody needs to have the nerve to start leading a group of people in following Jesus and not just some human being’s idea of a bunch of rules and regulations that everybody ought to follow that aren’t even in the word of God to start with. We have to know the word. You have to know the truth and the truth will make you free. There are a lot of wonderful churches — let me just redeem myself here for a minute. There are a lot of wonderful, wonderful churches, and we’re in relationship with many of them. We hold our conferences in many of them. We founded what I think is a wonderful church in the inner city in St. Louis, and I love the St. Louis dream center. We’re right there in the middle of very needy people, seeing lives restored. That’s what the church should be about — seeing lives restored, seeing people fall deeply in love with Jesus Christ, helping people and teaching people to forget about themselves.

Joyce Meyer Online – We’re making a sad mistake if all we do is encourage people to come to church every week so they can get blessed. I’m just tired of that. “How are you, sister?” “Blessed and highly favored of the Lord.