by Joyce Meyer
The way we overcome a spirit of independence is by placing ourselves totally into God’s hands and allowing Him to be the Manager of our life.
Here is a good prayer for that submission: “Lord, in this situation in which I find myself, if there is anything You want me to do, show it to me and help me do it. I am waiting on You, leaning on You. I will pray and praise, but I will not get into works of the flesh, trying to make something happen. If there is nothing I can do to solve this situation, give me the grace to leave it alone for You to work out in accordance with Your divine will and in Your perfect timing.”
So our first responsibility is to trust God. The second is not to try to take His place.
DON’T TRY TO PLAY GOD
However, I am telling you nothing but the truth when I say it is profitable (good, expedient, advantageous) for you that I go away. Because if I do not go away, the Comforter (Counselor, Helper, Advocate, Intercessor, Strengthener, Standby) will not come to you [into close fellowship with you]; but if I go away, I will send Him to you [to be in close fellowship with you].
And when He comes, He will convict and convince the world and bring demonstration to it about sin and about righteousness (uprightness of heart and right standing with God) and about judgment.
JOHN 16:7,8
We must learn to distinguish between our part and God’s part — and then leave His part to Him, refusing to “play God.”
For example, we cannot change other people. I know, because for years I tried to change my husband. The more I tried to change him, the worse the tension between us became. Finally, I received the revelation that people cannot change people. Only God can change people.
For years I had been trying to do something I did not have the power to do. What I needed to do was simply submit my husband to the Lord, believing He would do for him what was best in His own way and time.
It is the Holy Spirit’s job to bring conviction to sinners. It is not our job to drop little hints to make them feel guilty — like leaving the Bible open at just the right place or putting a verse of Scripture up on the bathroom mirror so they will see it.
The Bible says it is the Holy Spirit Who convicts and convinces of sin and of righteousness. Yet for years I tried to convict my husband and my children of what I thought were their sins. I also tried to convince them of my righteousness. No wonder I was always in such a struggle! I was trying to do the work of the Holy Spirit.
So in addition to submitting ourselves entirely to the Lord, trusting Him to work out things for us as He knows best, we must stop trying to play God in our own life and in the lives of other people. We must let God be God.
LET GOD BE GOD
For who has known or understood the mind (the counsels and purposes) of the Lord so as to guide and instruct Him and give Him knowledge?.…
1 CORINTHIANS 2:16
It is not our job to give God guidance, counsel, or direction. In His Word He makes it clear He doesn’t need us to inform Him of what is going on or tell Him what He needs to do about it: For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts (Isaiah 55:8,9).
It is our job to listen to God and let Him tell us what is going on and what we are to do about it — leaving the rest to Him to work out according to His knowledge and will, not ours.
Sometimes we forget that fact, so the Lord has to say to us, “Who do you think you are? Get back in your place of submission and quit trying to be My boss.”
I remember one time when I was trying so hard to figure out something while God was trying to free me from the burden of reasoning. Finally, He said to me, “Joyce, don’t you realize if you ever figured Me out, I would no longer be God?”
God is God — and we aren’t. We need to recognize that truth and simply trust ourselves to Him, because He is greater than we are in every aspect and area. We are created in His image, but He is still above us and beyond us. His thoughts and ways are higher than ours. If we will listen to Him and be obedient to Him, He will teach us His ways. But we are never going to figure Him out. We shouldn’t even try.
DON’T QUESTION OR CRITICIZE GOD
But who are you, a mere man, to criticize and contradict and answer back to God? Will what is formed say to him that formed it, Why have you made me thus?
Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same mass (lump) one vessel for beauty and distinction and honorable use, and another for menial or ignoble and dishonorable use?
ROMANS 9:20,21
It is not our place to cross-examine God. He is not on trial.
“Lord,” we say, “I don’t understand why You don’t answer my prayers.” Yet it never occurs to us that maybe we are praying out of the will of God. It has been noted that the biggest problem for most Christians is their inability to distinguish between God’s will and personal ambition.
“Oh, but I know what I’m asking is God’s will.”
What makes us think that? Usually it’s because what we are asking is what we want, so we assume it must be what God wants too.
There are many things in this life that are not clearly laid out in Scripture, so we must have some discernment from the Lord about whether they are His will for us. Even if they are His will for us, we must also consider His timing, and often that takes patience and trust on our part.
For years I struggled with these matters, usually because I already had my mind made up about the way things were supposed to be, even before I went to God in prayer about them. Too often my prayers were really just PR sessions in which I tried to manipulate God to get what I wanted from Him.
If I didn’t get what I asked for in prayer, I would assume it was because the devil was trying to keep it from me. So I would spend hours rebuking Satan and ordering him to get his hands off my answer and let it manifest. When that didn’t work, I would call in a bunch of my friends to agree with me in prayer. Together we would pray and confess and rebuke and agree, but usually none of it did any good at all. I couldn’t understand why it didn’t work when I was so sure I knew the will of God in that area.
I would go to the Lord and say, “Father, what’s wrong? Why aren’t You answering my prayers as You promised?”
In essence, I was questioning and criticizing God. I was saying, “Lord, I’m doing my part, so why aren’t You doing Yours? What’s going on here?”
Finally, the Lord showed me in His Word what the problem was. Although I was asking, I was doing so with the wrong purpose and motives.
WRONG PURPOSE AND MOTIVES
What leads to strife (discord and feuds) and how do conflicts (quarrels and fightings) originate among you? Do they not arise from your sensual desires that are ever warring in your bodily members?
You are jealous and covet [what others have] and your desires go unfulfilled; [so] you become murderers. [To hate is to murder as far as your hearts are concerned.] You burn with envy and anger and are not able to obtain [the gratification, the contentment, and the happiness that you seek], so you fight and war. You do not have, because you do not ask.
[Or] you do ask [God for them] and yet fail to receive, because you ask with wrong purpose and evil, selfish motives.…
JAMES 4:1-3
The first thing the Lord showed me in this passage is that we often get into struggles and strife because we try to make things happen on our own instead of simply asking that His will be done.
Then He showed me the second part of this passage which says even when we do ask, the reason we don’t get our prayers answered is that we ask with the wrong purpose or with the wrong motives.
The Lord said to me, “Joyce, anytime You ask Me for something and you don’t get it, it’s not because I don’t want to bless you or because I’m holding out on you. It’s because I have something better in mind for you, but you are not yet spiritually mature enough to know how to ask Me for it.”
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LET GOD MAKE THE DECISIONS
Trust (lean on, rely on, and be confident) in the Lord and do good; so shall you dwell in the land and feed surely on His faithfulness, and truly you shall be fed.
Delight yourself also in the Lord, and He will give you the desires and secret petitions of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord [roll and repose each care of your load on Him]; trust (lean on, rely on, and be confident) also in Him and He will bring it to pass.
PSALM 37:3-5
Since the Lord spoke to me about what was wrong with the way I was praying, I have learned not to ask Him for anything out of His will. If I am not sure what His will is in a situation, I always pray for what I want to have or would like to see happen, but I follow my request with this statement: “Lord, if what I am asking for is not Your will, please don’t give it to me. I want Your will more than I want my own.”
I have learned to seek first His will and His righteousness, trusting Him to add to me all the things He knows I really need, the things that will bless me and not be a burden to me or draw me away from Him.
For years I prayed for and sought a big ministry. But God knew that was not what I needed at the time. I wasn’t ready for it — I wasn’t mature enough to handle everything that goes with success. By continuing to pray for and seek something that wasn’t right for me, all I was doing was retarding my growth. Once I started seeking God rather than a big ministry, my ministry started to grow.
For years I sought God for prosperity. I had other needs that were greater. I needed to walk in love and display the fruit of the Spirit. I needed to be freed from selfishness, stubbornness, independence, and many other things. God wanted me to give and believe that His laws of prosperity worked, but He did not want me to spend my time seeking things.
If we seek God for money or things without seeking Him, even if He gives them to us, having them will only cause us to sin. I always say our branches cannot be any wider than our roots are deep. Trees are like that — however far the branches extend, which is the part we see, below the surface of the ground where we can’t see, the roots extend as deep as the branches are wide. Otherwise the tree would topple over in a storm.
If our spiritual life does not go as deep as our outward blessings, we only get in trouble. Our spiritual maturity must match our prosperity and success. God must become and always remain first in our lives for anything else to work properly.
In Deuteronomy 8 we see God give the Israelites a warning. He told them He was going to bless them and then said this: And if you forget the Lord your God and walk after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you this day that you shall surely perish (v. 19).
Many things can become gods to us. A job a person believed God to help them get can become a god to them. A ministry, a home, a spouse, children — literally any blessing of the Lord can get us in trouble if we don’t keep our lives in balance and turn the blessing into a god. We must regularly examine our priorities and be sure they are in proper order.
It is such a deliverance to turn the management of our life over to God. Does that mean we are to become passive an stop resisting the enemy when he attacks us? No, not at all. It simply means we are to trust in the Lord and put our confidence in Him. We are to wait on Him and listen to Him. He will show us when we need to rise up against the evil spirits that come to deceive us and destroy us. If we listen to Him, we will not be so quick to start rebuking every situation that arises or every circumstance in which we find ourselves.
It is God’s will to bless us, but not necessarily òn our terms. Sometimes what we think would be a wonderful blessing would not bless us at all.
In all our seeking, struggling, and striving — even in prayer — we must be careful not to give birth to Ishmaels. If we do, we will have to spend the rest of our days taking care of them. Instead, we need to learn to wait for God to bring forth the Isaacs in our life. They will be a blessing to us for as long as we live.
DO NOT STRIVE WITH YOUR MAKER
Woe to him who strives with his Maker! — a worthless piece of broken pottery among other pieces equally worthless [and yet presuming to strive with his Maker]! Shall the clay say to him who fashions it, What do you think you are making? or, Your work has no handles?
Woe to him [who complains against his parents that they have begotten him] who says to a father, What are you begetting? or to a woman, With what are you in travail?
Thus says the Lord, the Holy One of Israel, and its Maker: Would you question Me about things to come concerning My children, and concerning the work of My hands [would you] command Me?
ISAIAH 45:9-11
In Romans 9:20, 21 we saw we are not to criticize, contradict, or answer back to God. We are not to ask God, “Why did You make me this way?”
For years I did not like the way I was, the way God had put me together. I didn’t like my strong, aggressive, bold personality. I wanted to be sweet, meek, and quiet — because sweet, meek, and quiet people don’t get into as much trouble as people like me.
To tell the truth, I didn’t like anything about myself. So I would pray and ask God, “Why have You made me this way? It’s so easy for Dave to cast his care, and I just seem to worry about everything. Why God, why? Why did You give me this deep voice? Why couldn’t I have had a nice, sweet little voice like most other ladies do?”
The fact is, my voice has turned out to be a blessing because it commands attention. I can’t remember how many people have told me, “I was turning the radio dial when suddenly I heard this voice…” In fact, it is so commanding that Carman, the popular Christian singer, refers to me as “the Voice.”
But at the time I was praying to God and striving with my Maker about how He had made me, I didn’t understand. All I wanted to know was why I couldn’t be “normal,” why I couldn’t be content to stay home and keep house, grow tomatoes, and wash and iron and sew.
I really didn’t want to do those ordinary things, I wanted to have a great ministry. But it seemed I just didn’t have what it takes to do that. So I cried out to God, asking Him why He made me the way He did instead of the way I wanted to be.
Who can say why God puts us together the way He does? But He is the Potter, and we are the clay. It is none of our business why He forms and fashions us as He does.
Not only do we question God about why He made us the way He did, we also question Him about why He made others as they are.
In the beginning of our marriage, my husband Dave prayed and asked God, “Lord, why did You give Joyce the gift of preaching instead of me?” Neither of us could understand why God seemingly reversed the order in our case. He gave me the gift of preaching and teaching, and He gave Dave the gift of administration and support. That didn’t seem “normal” to us. It was not the way other husband-wife ministry teams that we knew worked. But as long as Dave and I questioned the Lord about it, we were miserable.
As long as you and I argue with God and strive with our Maker, we are going to be unhappy. Once we accept God’s will, as Dave and I finally did, then we can be used and blessed by Him as He sees fit.
In Romans 9:21, Paul asks, “Doesn’t the potter have the right to take a lump of clay and make one vessel for beauty and distinction and honorable use, and another for menial or ignoble or dishonorable use?” That does not mean dishonorable in God’s eyes. It means dishonorable in the eyes of those who do not understand God’s purpose, those who think some people are more honorable and some work more important than others.
Some may look at me and think my job is more important than Dave’s simply because I am in front of the microphone and the camera, and he is behind them. But we are where we are because God Himself has placed us there. I did not ask for this position of prominence any more than Dave asked for his work behind the scenes in the ministry of helps. But we must each accept the role God has assigned us and submit ourselves to Him to mold and make us after His will and plan, and not ours.
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e have to remember that as long as we function in the position God has created us for, His grace is with us. But the moment we get out of our God-ordained role, we are operating outside of His anointing.
We must never forget that …we are God’s [own] handiwork (His workmanship), recreated in Christ Jesus, [born anew] that we may do those good works which God predestined (planned beforehand) for us [taking paths which He prepared ahead of time], that we should walk in them [living the good life which He prearranged and made ready for us to live] (Ephesians 2:10). We must not question Him, criticize Him, contradict Him, answer back to Him, or strive with Him.
In 1 Corinthians 13:12 we are told that now we know only in part. That is the best answer we can find to the question of why God does anything the way He does. It is not our job to question God, or even try to explain Him. It is our job to trust and obey Him and to cast our care upon Him.
THE FIRST THREE RESPONSIBILITIES
As for you,…fully perform all the duties of your ministry.
2 TIMOTHY 4:5
As ministers of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, which is what we are all called to be, we have certain basic duties or responsibilities.
We have already discussed our first responsibility, which is to trust God. Our second responsibility is to pray without worry. Our third responsibility is to avoid works of the flesh.
