hi there welcome to joyce on youtube don't forget to join us on the joyce meyer app and at joycemeyer.org for more of what you're about to see and lots of great content to help you in your everyday life thanks so much for joining us well welcome to enjoying everyday life i really hope and pray that the word that i'm going to share today helps you you know god's got a great life for you and he wants you to live it to the fullest sometimes we just don't really know how to do that and so i
want to talk to you today about why is my breakthrough taking so long you know what what you need for a breakthrough might be different than what somebody else needs but i think we all need a breakthrough of some kind i'm going to talk to you about when i was believing god and waiting for my ministry to grow my situation may not be the same as yours was but we're almost all waiting for something and it's interesting because sometimes it's something that we know god could easily do and yet we don't understand why he's not
doing it so i just wonder if any of you have had that question god why is my breakthrough taking so long why is it taking so long for you to answer my prayers well i want to teach you today out of deuteronomy chapter 8 and it's actually one of my favorite chapters in the bible and it's because god used it at a time in my life when i really really needed to have some understanding you know confusion um it's just very unpleasant it's like you've already got a bad situation and then the more you try
to figure it out the more confused you get but if we can have some understanding from god if we know why we're waiting or why something's taking so long it's a lot easier to deal with and so i hope deuteronomy chapter 8 helps you as much as it helps me in the beginning verse 1 it says be careful to follow every command that i am giving you today so that you may live and increase and may enter and possess the land the lord promised on oath to your ancestors okay first thing that i want to
say is any time that god tells you to do something and please hear this before we can go any further he's saying be careful to do everything that i tell you to do so that you may live and go in and possess the things that i've promised you well anything that god tells us to do it's always for our benefit i think obedience to god would be easier if we would really believe and realize that god's not telling us to do things just because he wants to watch us do something that's hard or give up
something that's hard for us to give up but everything every single thing that god says for us to do or not to do in his word is something that is going to benefit us i want you to also notice that he wants you to have a good life you know we call our tv program enjoying everyday life because that is exactly what god wants you to do he wants you to enjoy your life and he wants your needs to be met there are over 7 000 promises in the word of god and so you might
call all the promises in here our promised land he's talking to the israelites here who had been brought out of egypt they'd been slaves in egypt and maybe you've been a slave to sin and you've recently been born again and so now you've you've come out of something and you're headed towards something but it's taking you a long time to get there well they had come out of bondage to slavery in egypt and moses was leading them to the promised land but they had to go through a place called the wilderness you can call that
the waiting period i always say the the beginning of something is exciting the end is always exciting but boy the middle sometimes the middle is a little bit hard and he said i i'm going to take you to the promised land but it took them 40 years to make an 11-day journey i want you to get that 40 years to make an 11-day journey and you know we might laugh at that but how many years have you been dealing with the same issue over and over and over again and you know we keep thinking we're
waiting on god but maybe just maybe god is waiting on you maybe there's some things that god has told you to do or to stop doing and you're not obeying him and you're going to see in here that that's what was happening with the israelites he said i want you to live and i want you to increase god wants your needs to be met he wants you to have all that you need and enough to be a blessing to other people so that you may enter and possess the land that the lord promised to give
you remember how the lord your god led you all the way in the wilderness these 40 years to humble and test you in order to know whether or not you would keep his commands now that's that's very important too you know it's easy to do what god tells you to do when everything is going your way when everything is is up and we're feeling good and we've got plenty of money and our prayers are being answered quickly and nobody's criticizing us they're judging us our kids aren't giving us trouble it's not so hard to obey
god then and to spend time with him and to love him but when things get difficult that's when we're tested and he said i led you the way that i led you and by the way it's not in this chapter but in another chapter it says that he led them the long hard way although there was an easier route so there was a much shorter and easier route from egypt to the promised land but god led them the long hard way and it says that he did it because they were not ready for war and
i want to explain that to you you know we think sometimes that just taking the promises of god are just easy we're just going to sit back and do nothing and god's just going to make these things happen in our life well the word possess he told them to go in and possess the land we're talking about you possessing the promises of god that word possessed in the original language is defined as to first dispossess the current occupants so if you know the bible or if you don't i'll explain it to you well enough every
one of the countries that they went into to take over and occupy that god was giving them there were already people living there they were wicked people they were you know worshiping idols and they had to first do warfare with them and get them off the land before they could occupy it and you know sometimes we're not ready for war either we just want everything to be easy and we don't want to have any problems with anything and so we just think boy you know god says i'll prosper and god says i'll succeed and so
just because i believe that it's going to happen but that's not true there are things that god will show us to do that must be done in order for us to have what god wants us to have now our salvation is by grace and grace alone there's nothing we can do to help god save us it's all his work but the promises of god are a little bit different the rewards of god are a little bit different they're still come from god they're still only by the grace of god we don't deserve them but we
are partners with god and we have to cooperate with him i want to ask you a question is there anything right now in your life that god has been dealing with you about to do or not to do and if you're truthful with me today you would say i'm not obeying what god told me to do i'm sure most people would have to say yes i can think of one or more things and he said i led you this way to humble you now a humble person always leans on god a prideful person leans on
themselves a prideful person tries to make things happen themselves but a humble person knows that only god can do what needs to be done in their life so it's important that we understand if we're going to get along well with god and if we're going to have a quicker breakthrough than what we're having that we have to learn about humility it's a wonderful thing to study to humble you to test you yes god will test us there's several places in the bible old testament and new testament where it talks about how god tests us to
see if we will keep his commandments or not i led you these 40 years to humble you to test you in order to know what was in your heart whether or not you would keep his commandments he humbled you causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna which neither you nor your ancestors had known to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes out of the mouth of god okay this is important god fed them super naturally he fed them with something nobody had ever seen
before he rained down something every morning out of the sky that they called manna which really meant what is it and it was a a substance that ended up being like a bread for them and they could only gather enough for one day and if they gathered more than that it would stink and become rotten god wants us to trust him one day at a time i invite you to join me in the joyce meyer app are at joycemeyer.org today for more on this topic and other teachings i believe god will use these to help
you in your everyday life i'll look forward to seeing you there
