Joyce Meyer - Forgiving Yourself

Thank you for joining us today on, "Enjoying Everyday Life". You know, I believe that the message that I'm gonna share today is gonna help so many people. I mean, I think that today's message for some of you is gonna be really life-changing. I'm gonna talk today about "Forgiving yourself". Now, obviously, we cannot forgive our own sins. Only Jesus can do that. But do you know, there's a lot of people who do something wrong, they pray for forgiveness, and they may even believe that God did forgive them, but they won't forgive themselves.

Have you ever even said, "I can never forgive myself for this"? Maybe we've learned better than that by now, but people assume if they feel guilty that they're still guilty. And you have to understand that satan is the accuser of the brethren. That's one of his names, "The accuser". And he loves to accuse you. I always say, "When you wake up in the morning, the first thing you hear is not all the good things you did yesterday, but a rundown of everything you did yesterday and how God is so displeased". Well, one thing you need to remember is even if God is not happy with something you did, he's always happy with you.

If you have children, you understand that. You may not like something they did, but you're never going to stop loving your child. And I can't even imagine how many people watching from home, or on your computer, or whatever you watch on that maybe you have been mad at yourself for 20 years, 30 years, over something that you did a long time ago, and maybe it was even a terrible thing. But you know there is no sin that God won't forgive you for. I mean, there is in the Bible one sin that's called unforgivable, and that's, "Blasphemy against the Holy Ghost". But that can only be committed by somebody who has had a strong, close, intimate relationship with God, completely walked away knowing what they were doing. And you obviously haven't done that, or you wouldn't be watching the program today.

So many people worry about, "Have I committed the unforgivable sin"? Well, if you care, then you haven't. Because the only people that can commit that is somebody who walks away and doesn't look back. So, many times, even after asking God for forgiveness, and even believing that he did forgive us, we will still feel guilty. Now, I don't know about you, but I had a massive problem with guilt for many years. And it got started in my childhood from the sexual abuse from my dad. And you know, it's interesting how the devil can make you feel that something's your fault when it's really not your fault. That's what I will just call "False guilt".

And somehow or another, the enemy got me convinced that there was something wrong with me, otherwise my father wouldn't want to do that to me. And I can't even tell you how many years I carried that, even after I knew better in my head. See, it's not enough just to have head knowledge, you've got to have Revelation. We really don't need any more information. We need Revelation. When something gets from here to here, then nobody can ever take it away from you again. I remember knowing up here that God loved me, but I didn't have a Revelation of it in my life. And so, when trouble would come or bad things would happen, I would say things, "Well, God, don't you love me"?

Well, see, when you know, that you know, that you know, that you know, and it becomes a Revelation to you, then you don't ever say stuff like that, because you know God loves you. No matter how much trouble you have, you know that God loves you. And the way it became Revelation to me, instead of just information, was through years of study and meditation.

And I don't remember how long it took, but I know when I first started in ministry, the first public message that I spoke, other than when I was teaching home Bible studies, when 40 years ago I started the women's ministry here in st.Louis that has now become a worldwide ministry for all people, male, female, young, old, I asked the Lord, what he wanted me to teach, and he said, "Tell them that I love them". And I thought, "Well, everybody knows you love 'em". He said, "No, if they did, they'd act a lot different than what they do". Because you see, the Bible says, "Perfect love casts out fear," 1 John 4:18. Well, the only one that can love us perfectly is God.

And so, if we know how much he loves us, then we know that he's always gonna take care of us. He may not always do what we want him to do. There may be things that we won't understand. Do you know we're required to obey God even if we don't understand why he wants us to do what he's asking us to do? That's real faith. You think Abraham understood when God told him to leave his family and everything he was familiar with and "Go to a land that I will show you"? I mean, the guy didn't, I think about that, he didn't even know where he was going.

Why did he have to leave his family? Because they were all idol worshipers. And God had a plan for Abraham, and he had to get him away from that bad influence. And some of you could use getting away from some bad influences in your life. Now, you know, if you're married to it, then you're gonna have to work through it. You can't walk off from that and say, "I'm leaving you because you're a bad influence". No, that's when you stand your ground, you stay, and you work it through with God. But you don't have to choose friends that are a bad influence on you. You don't need to be buddying up every day with somebody that crabs and complains all day and somebody who gossips about other people, somebody that's greedy and stingy.

Get around somebody that you want to be like. Be with people that are gonna make you come up higher, not people that are gonna drag you down lower. Don't hang out with people that are gonna cause you to backslide. Be with somebody that can be an example to you in your life. Anyway, I needed to have that Revelation that God loved me, and I studied a whole year on "The love of God". There's a lot of books out there about loving other people and forgiving other people, but there's not too many on forgiving yourself and loving yourself. It almost sounds selfish to say "Love yourself," but Jesus said that, "The greatest commandment was to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength, and the second is like it, 'love your neighbor as you love yourself'".

Now, we can take that to mean, "Well, you're pretty selfish and self-centered, so if you love everybody as much as you love yourself, then you're going to be okay". But I really think we can't love other people if we don't love ourselves. And I'm talking about the you that God has created you to be. I'm not talking about loving everything you do. I'm talking about that wonderful thing that he created when you were in your mother's womb with his own hand. "Carefully," the Bible says, "Intricately". He took his time. He formed and fashioned something.

The Bible says that, "He knows every word that we have not yet spoken and every thought that hasn't even gone through our mind yet. He already knows everything that you'll ever do wrong, and he loves you anyway". God can't do anything but love. You know why? It's not his occupation. It's who he is. "God is love". And so, you start, when you're having a problem with something, let's just say like you carry a load of guilt all the time even after you've asked God to forgive your sins. How do you start getting over that?

Well, you start by believing the word more than you believe how you feel. Even though you may feel that way, one of the things that I did is I would say, "I feel guilty, but I'm not because I have asked God to forgive me and I've received his forgiveness". You gotta get a little bit feisty. You can't just sit back, "I wish I didn't feel guilty. I don't know why I feel so guilty. Poor me, I just can't get over this". No, you've got to fight. You've got to fight the good fight of faith. And some of these fights, nobody can fight for you. You have to fight it for yourself, and you gotta fight it in the midnight hour when there's nobody around and it's lonely and hard.

There's no telling how many people are tormented by guilt, and it's something they wouldn't even want to share with anybody. There were some things that God taught me that really helped me in this area. One of the things was, is, he said, "Don't you realize when you feel guilty that all you're doing is trying to add your sacrifice to mine"? I was sacrificing my joy and my peace, or any good feelings that I could have about myself. And what I was really doing in essence was saying, "What Jesus did wasn't enough. I need to add my guilt to it".

Now, I didn't realize that's what I was doing, but in essence, that's what we are doing. It must sadden Jesus when we do that, after all that he went through, to set us free from sin. And what does the Bible say in Romans 8:1? "[there is] Therefore", I love this in the Amplified, "[there is] Therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ". And if you read all of Romans 7, you see that "Paul was talking about how even though he wanted to do good, he ended up doing bad". And then toward the end of chapter 7, he says, "Who will deliver me from this body of death"? And then as if he got a Revelation, "Oh, thank God he will through Jesus Christ. Therefore, [there is] Now no condemnation".

So, he didn't say he'd been delivered yet. See, we're all still in the cooker. We're not quite done yet. Got to get a little more tender. Need a little more time in the pot, under the hand of the potter. Amen? But that's okay, because God is not mad if we haven't arrived at the place of perfection. He's just disappointed if we stop pressing on. That's why you gotta just, every day, every day, you gotta get after it. Every day you pray. Every day get some word in you some way, shape, or form. I mean, I have other habits that I like. I really like to try to do something for somebody else every day, even if it's some little tiny something. If it's just give a compliment or, I like to give stuff away. My daughter was coming over yesterday to have lunch with us, and I looked in my closet to see what I could find that I could give her.

You know, you don't have to wait to have some huge desire. Be aggressive in being generous. The devil wants you to be stingy and greedy, but God wants us to be generous. And the more you keep your mind off of yourself, the happier you will be. Some of you that are watching from home, the whole reason why you're unhappy is because you just got yourself on your mind all the time. You know that song, "You were always on my mind"? I used to sing it differently. "I was always on my mind". It's about all the singing you get out of me, so I hope you enjoyed it.

You know, you may need to forgive yourself for something that you did 20, 30, years ago, or maybe it was something from last week. And really, forgiving yourself is really no more than just totally accepting the forgiveness that God wants to give you. Man, if I can't convince you, maybe Paul can in Hebrews. "Whereas this one [Christ]," Hebrews 10:12-14, "After he had offered a single sacrifice for our sins", not sin, sins. Every sin you'll ever commit has already been paid for. You don't have to talk God into forgiving you. It's already there for the taking. All you need to do when you do something wrong is repent. Not just say, "I'm sorry," but repent, "Which means to turn away from it and go in a completely different direction".

So, you don't just say, "Sorry," and do it again, "Sorry," and then do it again, "Sorry," then do it again. Those are the things that we need to take to God and say, "I need to be set free from this. I don't want to just keep dealing with the same thing over and over and over all my life". Because we get in this habit of doing it, telling God we're sorry, doing it again, feeling guilty, and then the guilt makes you so weak that you do it again. You know, guilt is like being on a treadmill you can't get off of. It never does any good. "Whereas this one [Christ], after he had offered a single sacrifice for our sins", listen to this, "[that shall avail] For all time".

Jesus' sacrifice hasn't gotten weaker because he's been gone from the earth for 2,000 years. "That shall avail for all time, he sat down at the right hand of God, there to wait until his enemies should be made of footstool beneath his feet". I bet that was a glorious day for Jesus when he finally got to say, "It's finished. I can come back home now". Wow! Hebrews 10:14 says, "For by a single offering he has forever completely", forever completely, "Cleansed and perfected those who are consecrated and made holy". And Hebrews 10:10, "And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once and for all".

I love that. There's nobody left out. He only had to do it one time. We don't need to add our guilt to it. That's not going to make it any more productive. All it does is render us useless to God as long as we're sitting around all turned in on ourself feeling bad about something. Now, I'm not saying that we don't feel bad about our sin, but after you've repented, then you don't get to go around feeling bad anymore because God needs you. And he needs you up and running with a smile on your face, ready to go and be a blessing to someone else.

And I'll tell you, I remember when God said to me many, many, many years ago, I was back in the "Word and faith movement", and everybody was using their faith for everything imaginable. A lot of stuff that was stupid. Some of you remember those days. Some of you don't know what I'm talking about. But it was a good movement in the church and I'm so grateful that I learned to love the word and that I learned about faith but, you know, once God taught me what faith was, then he said, "Now, I'm going to teach you what to use it for". And one time the Lord put on my heart, "If you wanna use your faith for something big, use it to stay free from guilt".

Come on. I mean, what are we doing when we waste our time feeling guilty all the time about something that Jesus already died and took care of and he doesn't even remember? The Bible says, "Once we have repented, he completely forgives us, forgets it, remembers it no more, and moves it as far as the east is from the west". So, you may be trying to talk to God about stuff he don't even remember. Amen? Well, you know, it's time for a new beginning. And there's no time like now. Now, no matter what I tell you, it's not gonna stop you, especially if you are in this trap, it's not gonna stop you from "Feeling". But are you going to believe the God of your feelings or the God of the Bible?

"Well, I feel". Well, how you feel is not above what God says. You know, there was a time, and I forget exactly where it's at, it's in one of the epistles, Paul was being accused of being unfaithful. And he said, "I don't care what you think". He said, "I don't even judge myself. God is above my heart". So what was he saying? "God is above how I feel". His word is above that. So, if the Bible says, "When you're forgiven, you're completely forgiven, and there's no more sacrifice needed," then there's no more sacrifice needed. Isn't that good news?

See, the gospel is good news. Now, I've given you the information to fight with, now you're gonna have to do some fighting because when you, oh, you're just gonna feel so good today. But then tomorrow you're going to wake up and there's gonna be that creepy feeling again. I used to say, "I didn't feel right if I didn't feel wrong".

I mean, there was something every day for me to feel bad about. Every day I said the wrong thing or I thought the wrong thing or I did the wrong thing or I didn't do enough of the right thing. You know, it was just like something all the time. And it was destroying my relationship with God. And I had to learn to fight. I had to say, "I don't care how I feel. I feel guilty, but I have repented of that sin. God has forgiven me. And I don't care if I feel guilty, I am not guilty".

Now, that's your homework. And you know, when I first started that, I maybe had to do that 10, 20, 30 times a day. But gradually, the more I said it, the more I believed it. And so, do your homework. Satan wants to use those emotions to control us, "But I feel guilty. But I feel so bad. Well, I feel like nobody loves me. Well, I feel like I'm not growing spiritually. I feel like I don't hear from God. I feel like God doesn't talk to me. I feel like when I pray, nobody listens".

Do you know how often we tell people how we feel? "I feel, I feel, I feel". And feelings are fickle. Sometimes you have feelings you don't wanna have and they won't go away. And then sometimes you need some feelings and they disappear. "Well, I would like to feel like doing this today, but you know", I'm not talking about being here preaching to you, but you get up any day and it's like, I thought I'd better clarify that. You know, maybe you get up tomorrow and you don't feel like doing the dishes. Well, say, "Too bad: I don't live by my feelings. I do what I decide to do and God is on my side. He's always helping me". Amen?

And so, I believe that you're ready to do yourself a favor and forgive. God's extending his hand of grace to you all the time, but you gotta believe it. Amen? Well, thank you for being with us today. We enjoyed having you. I wish I could see you like you can see me, but I can't. But we love you and we care about you. And we believe that God has a good plan for your life. And as you become your new you, you're no longer gonna be mad at yourself for stuff that God's forgiven you for a long time ago. You're gonna have joy unspeakable and full of glory. God bless you. Have a good rest of the day.