Meyer - Enjoying Where You Are on the Way to Where You Are Going

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Amplified Bible (AMP). Old Testament copyright 1965, 1987 by The Zondervan Corporation, Grand Rapids, Michigan. New Testament copyright 1958, 1987 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

Warner Books Edition

Copyright 1996 by Joyce Meyer

Life in the Word, Inc.

P.O. Box 655

Fenton, Missouri 63026

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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I believe that life should be a celebration. Far too many people dont even enjoy life, let alone celebrate it. I frequently say that many people are on their way to heaven, but very few are enjoying the trip. For many years I was one of those people.

God has taught me a great deal about how to enjoy life. He has showed me that the life He has given us is meant to be enjoyed. Jesus came that we might have and enjoy life, and have it in abundance (to the full, till it overflows) according to The Amplified Bible version of John 10:10. There are many other similar Scriptures in the Bible that I will expound on in this book.

I believe that reading this book may be life changing for you. Perhaps you are as I was at one time. You truly love the Lord with all your heart and are trying so hard to please Him that you are forgetting to live to the full the abundant life He has provided.

Enjoyment of life is not based on enjoyable circumstances. It is an attitude of the heart, a decision to enjoy everything because everything even little, seemingly insignificant things have a part in the overall big picture of life.

When I finally realized that I was not enjoying my life, I had to make a quality decision to find out what was wrong and rectify it. This decision demanded learning new ways of handling situations.

Once I discovered that the world was not going to change, I decided that it was my approach to some of the lemons in life that needed adjustment. I had heard someone say that lemons can make us sour or we can turn them into lemonade. My decision to make lemonade instead of turning sour required that I learn balance in my work habits.

I was a workaholic who found great satisfaction in accomplishment. Of course, God desires and even commands us to bear fruit. We should not waste time and be do-nothings, but an unbalanced attitude in this area causes many people to experience burnout from a lifestyle of all work and no play. I was one of those people. Actually, I didnt know how to play and truly enjoy it. I always felt I should be working. I felt safe only when I was doing something constructive.

I also had to change my attitude toward people. I learned that one of the reasons I didnt enjoy life was because I didnt enjoy most of the people in my life. I was trying to change them so I would find them enjoyable instead of accepting them the way they were and enjoying them while God was changing them.

I believe that all of us truly need teaching on this subject of how to enjoy where we are on the way to where we are going. I pray that this book will be a major blessing in your life, and that, as you read it, God will bring you to a crossroads a place of decision where you can choose to begin celebrating life.

Life Is a Journey

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).

John 10:10

I have come to the conclusion that there is nothing as tragic as being alive and not enjoying life. I wasted much of my own life because I did not know how to enjoy where I was while I was on the way to where I was going.

Life is a journey. Everything in it is a process. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. All aspects of life are always developing. Life is motion. Without movement, advancement and progression, there is no life. Once a thing has ceased to progress, it is dead.

In other words, as long as you and I are alive, we are always going to be going somewhere. We are created by God to be goal-oriented visionaries. Without a vision, we atrophy and become bored and hopeless. We need to have something to reach for, but in the reaching toward what lies ahead in the future, we must not lose sight of now!

I see this principle in every area of life, but let us examine just one of those areas.

Spiritual Life

Lets say an unsaved person who has no relationship with God becomes aware that something is missing in his life and so he starts searching. The Holy Spirit draws him to the place where he is confronted with making a decision about placing his faith in Christ. He accepts Him and then moves from the place of searching for an unknown something to discovering what or who that something is. In so doing, he enters a temporary place of satisfaction and fulfillment.

Please notice that I said temporary, because soon the Holy Spirit will begin drawing him to press on to a deeper place in God. The process of conviction of sin will begin in his daily life. The Holy Spirit is the Revealer of truth (John 14:16,17), and He works continually in and with the believer to bring him into new levels of awareness. Entering a new level always means leaving an old one behind.

In other words, we are always heading somewhere spiritually, and we should be enjoying the journey. Seeking Gods will for our lives allowing Him to deal with us about attitudes and issues, desiring to know His call on our lives and yearning to fulfill it all these things are part of the journey of Christianity.

Desiring and seeking are words we will use frequently in this study, and both of them indicate that we cannot stay where we are. We must move on! However, this is precisely the point at which multitudes of us lose our enjoyment of life.

We must learn to seek the next phase in our journey without despising or belittling the one in which we currently find ourselves.

In my own spiritual pilgrimage, I finally learned to say, Im not where I need to be, but thank God, Im not where I used to be. Im okay, and Im on my way!

The spiritual struggle that most of us go through would be almost totally alleviated if we understood the principle being discussed on these pages.

The Ben Campbell Johnson relational paraphrase of Jesus words in Matthew 11:29 gives some insight into what our attitude should be concerning our personal spiritual growth. It reads as follows: Take the burden of responsibility I give you and thereby discover your life and your destiny. I am gentle and humble; I am willing to relate to you and to permit you to learn at your own rate; then, in fellowship with me, you will discover the meaning of your life.

Notice that in this passage Jesus says, Take the burden of responsibility I give you. Many of us take a responsibility the Lord has never given us. We actually try to become Holy Ghost, Jr. Instead of allowing the Holy Spirit to work the Word in us and change us from glory to glory, or from degree to degree (2 Cor. 3:18), we try to do it on our own. We struggle so hard trying to get to the next place we feel we need to be that we fail to enjoy where we are.