I have a burden to see people enjoy the life Jesus died to give them—and I want to see people not just talk about it but walk in it. John 10:10 (AMPC) says, “The thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows).”
The thief in these verses is Satan. But John 10 tells us that while the thief comes only in order to steal and kill and destroy, Jesus came that we may have and enjoy life and have it in abundance, to the full, until it overflows. What a Scripture! Not only are we alive, but we should enjoy being alive.
When Jesus came to give us life, He didn’t come just to give us breath—we were already breathing! Instead, He came to give us life as God has it, life as God knows it. Not only does He want us to have and enjoy life, but He gets radical and says: “in abundance, to the full, till it overflows.”
God wants us to enjoy life just for the sheer sake of enjoying life. But He also wants us to enjoy it because we are His ambassadors. The Bible says in Corinthians 5:20 that God is making His appeal to the world through us. If you are a born-again believer, you are a direct representative of Almighty God. You and I are showing the world what God is like. We’re advertisements for having a personal relationship with Jesus.
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With this in mind, it’s no wonder Satan wants to keep so many people in the body of Christ sad, mad and operating in all kinds of wrong fruit: judgment, criticism, gossip, backbiting. He wants to keep people depressed, angry, stressed-out and full of strife. He doesn’t want us to have any joy because it might make others want to know God.
It’s also important to enjoy your life because you don’t want it to pass you by and leave you with regrets. I know this sounds awful, but when I was raising my children, I loved them and I was a responsible parent, but I look back now, and I did not enjoy my children the way I could have. Do you know why? Because I was a workaholic.
I was also so busy keeping everything neat and tidy and clean—but remember, that dirt will be there tomorrow. That doesn’t mean you should live a sloppy life and never clean up things and take care of them, but I can remember my kids wanting me to stop working and just play with them. I always said something like, “I can’t do that; I’ve got work to do.” Do you know what? You’re always going to have work to do, and you need some balance in your life because some things are passing you by. You don’t want to come to the end of your life and look back with regrets.
The only way you can keep from having regrets is to do something about making better choices right now. The truth of the matter is that you may not really be enjoying the journey. If we are letting the devil steal from us, we need to make a decision. We need to put our foot down and say, “That’s it, devil. You have stolen my joy long enough. I’m determined that I’m going to learn how to enjoy my life.”
When I say, “enjoy your life,” I’m not just talking about vacations, Friday night when the work week is over or payday. I’m talking about enjoying everyday life. That’s why I called my program “Enjoying Everyday Life.” Most of life is not some big hilarious event. It’s Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. And we have years of that. Most of life is very ordinary. It’s about going to work, driving in traffic, taking out the trash and dealing with the grouchy neighbor.
But thank God, we have the power of the Holy Spirit to help us deal with things ordinary people cannot deal with. We are supernaturally anointed to live ordinary life in a supernatural way. You can be happy in situations where nobody else could be happy if they didn’t have Jesus in their life. Why? Because it’s not our situations, it’s the joy of the Lord that is our strength (Neh. 8:10).
I believe the first place we have to start is by saying, “God really does want me to enjoy my life.” Somehow Satan has sold us the lie that we shouldn’t enjoy it. But John 17:13 (AMPC) tells us, “And now I am coming to You; I say these things while I am still in the world, so that My joy may be made full and complete and perfect in them [that they may experience My delight fulfilled in them, that My enjoyment may be perfected in their own souls, that they may have My gladness within them, filling their hearts].”
We need to lighten up and stop being so deadly serious about everything, including our own faults. We are no surprise to God. He told Jeremiah, “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you[ and approved of you as My chosen instrument]” (Jer. 1:5a).
Stop being against yourself, picking on yourself and examining all your faults all the time, and just say: “You know what? I am what I am. I love God and I want to change, and I’m changing all the time. He’s changing me every day from glory to glory, but this is what you have today, and I’m going to enjoy myself because God loves me.”
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For more on this topic, order Joyce’s three-part teaching resource “Joy and Enjoyment.” You can also contact us to receive our free magazine, “Enjoying Everyday Life,” by calling 800-727-9673 or visiting www.joycemeyer.org.
Joyce Meyer is a New York Times bestselling author and founder of Joyce Meyer Ministries, Inc. She has authored more than 140 books, including “Battlefield of the Mind” and “Overcoming Every Problem” (FaithWords). She hosts the “Enjoying Everyday Life” radio and TV programs, which air on hundreds of stations worldwide. For more information, visit www.joycemeyer.org.
Please note: The views and opinions expressed throughout this publication and/or website are those of the respective authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Joyce Meyer Ministries.
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