The Search for Self-Worth - Pt 1 | Enjoying Everyday Life | Joyce Meyer

Added: 2026-05-13

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[00:00:42]This program is supported by you, our viewers and our partners. You could have so much more rest, so much less stress if you would just stop trying to get your worth and value out of doing everything yourself or being afraid that somebody else might get a little credit. I'm Joyce Meyer and I believe that God can heal you everywhere you hurt.

[00:01:14]Hello and welcome to enjoying everyday life. Comparison. It is something that we all do and feel. Often we compare how we look, what we do or what we have instead of just being secure in who God made us and who we are in Christ. Well, today and tomorrow, Joyce wants to help us stop comparing ourselves to others and to be anchored in Christ in this two-part message, the search for self-worth. So, dig into today's teaching. Really pay attention and don't forget to tune in tomorrow for the conclusion. Now, here she is.

[00:01:55]>> All right. The search for selfworth.

[00:01:59]You know, everybody wants to know that they matter.

[00:02:04]Everybody.

[00:02:05]And a lot of people feel they don't matter. They feel like they don't have any purpose. They don't know what their purpose is. They don't know what their value is. Why am I here? What's this all about? And so, if you happen to grow up in a dysfunctional atmosphere, that makes it even worse. I think I think everybody searches for selfworth, but your parents can help you a lot if they start early in your life telling you that you're worth something and that you're important and that you have value and that you can do great things. And if you got to grow up like that, you should thank God every day of your life >> that you did because many of us did not get to grow up that way. I was one of them. And um so I had this little record playing in my head for most of the years of my life. What's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? And uh of course I thought something was wrong with me because my dad sexually abused me. I knew that that wasn't right. That it wasn't happening to everybody else I knew. So I thought, what what's wrong with me? What's wrong with me? It's interesting that children will take the blame of something on themselves and an adult is doing to them and you think, well, what's wrong with me that you want to do this? And it took me years and years and years, even years of being in God's word before that record finally stopped playing.

[00:03:48]And that came through God's teaching about being made right with him through the blood of Christ. I think it's interesting that one of the first things that God wants to give us is rightness.

[00:04:03]Don't you find that interesting that he wants us to know that he loves us and he loves us just because he wants to.

[00:04:18]Matter of fact, I heard something really interesting or read it this past week. It says, "Why did God create us? Why why did he want us? Did he Did he create us to worship him?"

[00:04:33]Not really. He had angels to do that if that's all he wanted. Did he create us to serve him? Well, see, God doesn't really have a need. He doesn't need anything. So, he really didn't create us just to serve him.

[00:04:50]Why did he create us? I think most people might say, "Well, to love him." But he really didn't even need that because God doesn't need anything.

[00:05:00]He God created us because he wanted somebody to love.

[00:05:16]And I I have to admit, I've never really seen it like that either.

[00:05:22]See, because love has to pour itself out.

[00:05:29]Love can't be stagnant.

[00:05:31]It has to be moving. It has to be blessing someone. It has to be it has to be active. And so God is love. It's not something he does. So he had to have somebody to love.

[00:05:46]So you're created for love. So obviously if you feel you don't have that then you're going to always feel like there's something wrong with you. I've had number of people say when you pointed at me through that TV screen and said God loves you, it changed my life. Because many people, even though we think everybody knows that, there are a lot of people that have never been told that in their whole life.

[00:06:17]You can even go to church for years and years and just be told what you should do and shouldn't do and never really learn to get rooted and grounded deep. The Bible said Paul prayed that they would get rooted deep in the love of God. Not just a little, but rooted so deep that no matter what happens in your life, you can't be pulled out of it. Amen.

[00:06:44]>> And we're created in the image of God. So from the get-go, we're assigned worth.

[00:06:55]>> Hallelujah.

[00:06:56]>> I mean, there's no other creature except us that's created in the image of God. And one of the things that makes us created in the image of God is that we have free choice.

[00:07:14]And that's a privilege, but it's also a responsibility.

[00:07:18]And God gives us free choice because he doesn't want people who have to serve him. He wants people that he can love who will then respond to that love by wanting to serve him. And you know how we serve God? The only way that we really can serve God because he doesn't need anything. But what he wants us to do is he wants us to make ourselves available to him so he can work through us to love >> and help other people.

[00:07:51]>> Amen.

[00:07:54]So God wants us to use our free will to choose his will.

[00:08:01]>> It's as simple as that.

[00:08:03]You use your free will not to just do whatever you want to, although you can.

[00:08:10]You can sin if you want to, but you're you won't have a good life.

[00:08:16]God tells us in his word what will be good for us, but we can still choose the wrong thing if we want to. However, everything has a an effect.

[00:08:29]Everything that you sow brings a certain kind of harvest in your life. So the best thing that you can do is read the word and do it.

[00:08:40]Because if you do it, if I do it, we're going to have a life that is unimaginably wonderful. And that doesn't mean we won't have any problems.

[00:08:51]Everybody's going to have problems. You might as well get that through your head. Everybody is going to have problems. And you're going to have more than one problem in your life. And not all storms are in the forecast.

[00:09:15]>> Trouble is a promise, but misery is an option.

[00:09:20]>> And it's so good if we can get that through our heads that we can choose to stay happy.

[00:09:28]no matter what. I know that a lot of you are going through a lot of different things and there's probably some people in here that are going through some really difficult things right now. And the devil may have you convinced that you cannot be happy until your problem goes away. But that is a lie.

[00:09:45]>> It really is a lie.

[00:09:47]And your problem will go away a lot faster if you are happy because the devil's not really after anything but your joy.

[00:09:57]So when you make it clear to him he's not going to get your joy, >> he will more than likely go away and bother somebody else whose joy >> he can steal.

[00:10:08]>> Amen.

[00:10:11]>> So God loves you. There's just nothing you can do about it except receive it.

[00:10:23]And one of the things that I recommend is, you know, for years and years I've got up every morning, oh God, I love you. I love you, Lord. I love you. I love you.

[00:10:32]I love you.

[00:10:34]But I've started something new.

[00:10:38]I love you, Lord. And then I go sit in a chair and I hold my hands out as if receiving. And I take maybe five minutes and I just saying, "I receive your love.

[00:10:55]>> I receive." Let me tell you something.

[00:10:57]For some of you, it would be lifechanging if you did that because the devil starts on you before you ever get fully awake >> about all your faults and how useless you are and everything you did wrong yesterday and how nobody really loves you and nobody does anything for you.

[00:11:16]And am I right?

[00:11:23]So I really believe in being positive and that's saying a lot for somebody who grew up in a very negative atmosphere and was a very negative person.

[00:11:36]Let me tell you something. Anybody can be negative. The world will go right along with you. Everything out in the world today is negative. All you hear is negative talk. Everything's negative.

[00:11:45]Everything's going down the drain.

[00:11:49]But you can choose another blessing of free choice. You can choose to say, "I'm going to have a positive attitude. I don't care how negative my circumstances are. My attitude belongs to me, and nobody is going to take it away from me, and I choose to have a positive attitude."

[00:12:15]And I tell you something, you could pay thousands and thousands of dollars to lay on a psychiatrist couch somewhere and when push comes to shove, this is what you're going to end up with.

[00:12:31]So I'm giving it to you for nothing here this afternoon.

[00:12:37]Just >> you say, "Well, I I can't help it. I just feel." And see, there's the problem.

[00:12:48]Can I tell you something else? You don't have to live according to how you feel.

[00:12:56]>> I mean, what are feelings? They're feelings. They're fickle. They change.

[00:13:00]You feel like doing it. You don't feel like doing it. You feel like doing it. I feel like I'm loved. I don't feel like I'm loved.

[00:13:08]I feel good. I don't feel good. I feel like signing up. I don't feel like showing up.

[00:13:19]But we can actually live on the other side of our feelings. And that means I can feel like acting wrong and still act right.

[00:13:34]And that is very powerful when you no longer have to be controlled by how you feel.

[00:13:39]Your soul is your mind, your will, and your emotions. And when you're born again, Jesus comes to live in your spirit by the Holy Spirit.

[00:13:49]And boy, he cleans up everything on the inside. And in Philippians, it says, "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Work it out. Not work for it. Work it out. And what does that mean? Work with the Holy Spirit so that what God has put in you freely as his gift will work out and begin to take control of your soul and then eventually be seen through your body so other people can see that having a relationship with Jesus is real stuff.

[00:14:22]It's not just fantasy.

[00:14:26]And what that means is through the Holy Spirit, you learn to not live by what you think, but what the word says.

[00:14:35]You learn to not live by how you feel.

[00:14:40]You may have feelings, but you can feel wrong and do what's right. That's powerful.

[00:14:46]I can feel like hating you, but I can forgive you and pray every day for you to be blessed.

[00:14:53]And there's nothing the devil can do about it.

[00:14:58]And I can choose to use my will to follow God's will.

[00:15:06]That's called spiritual maturity.

[00:15:10]If somebody asked you to make a list of the things that you love, how long would it be before you'd be on that list?

[00:15:18]>> Love myself?

[00:15:22]Well, isn't that kind of like being full of myself?

[00:15:25]No.

[00:15:30]Jesus said, "One new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another just as I have loved you. By this shall all men know that you are my disciples." But in Matthew 22, they asked Jesus, "What is the most important commandment?" And he said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. And a second is like it. You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.

[00:15:56]And when you get a revelation that you can't give away what you don't have >> See, God pours his love into us.

[00:16:06]The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost. Soon as you're born again, you you have this peace, this love.

[00:16:17]It's poured into you and you're adopted by God. You're made his own.

[00:16:25]And then you have that and you can begin to love God back and you can begin to love yourself, which is really really what that is is receiving God's love.

[00:16:38]You're not you don't not in love with yourself, but you love the you that God created you to be.

[00:16:46]>> I'm not talking about the you that you do.

[00:16:51]I'm talking about the you that God created you to be. And that's where you're headed.

[00:16:59]We are all destined to be molded into the image of God according to Romans 8:29.

[00:17:08]That's our destiny, to be molded into the image of God. And it's a process.

[00:17:14]It's a work. It doesn't all feel good.

[00:17:17]Some of it's hard. It requires giving up some things that you think you want that you really don't want, but you think you want because that's all you've ever had.

[00:17:26]>> So, you hesitate to give them up because you think that's what you want. But then when you do give them up, you realize it wasn't what you wanted after all.

[00:17:37]We better be glad that sometimes when we ask God for stuff, he says no and doesn't give it to us.

[00:17:44]The worst condition we can be in is to get something that God doesn't want us to have.

[00:17:52]So if I'm praying for something that's not strictly covered in the word, I always saying, "God, please don't give it to me if it's not your will because I don't want something you don't want me to have." Amen.

[00:18:07]>> I think sometimes we keep asking and asking and asking and God's only choice is to give us what we think we want. Let us be miserable with it for a while and then we realize it's not what we wanted after all.

[00:18:20]Do you know how your life will change if you just get a positive attitude and stop living by how you feel? Stop letting the devil control you with feelings and and thoughts and live according to the word of God.

[00:18:35]When people don't know their worth and value in God, they try to get it through all kinds of other things.

[00:18:43]And all you have to do is look at the world to see that. And we've all done it. You try to get your worth and value through how you look, who you know, the clothes you wear, the neighborhood you live in, the level of education you have, what kind of position you have at work.

[00:19:10]And people end up living these phony lives because they're not even doing what they want to do. because maybe you want to do something that the world doesn't think is really important.

[00:19:23]And so you feel like, well, I can't really do that because that's not anything that the world's going to admire. So you end up doing something all your life that you hate.

[00:19:35]I remember a girl coming to me and her church was having early morning prayer and all of her friends were going and she said, "I didn't I didn't want to go.

[00:19:49]I wanted to want to go because I thought that's what I should be doing, but I didn't want to go." She said, "What I really wanted to do was I wanted to watch their kids while they went."

[00:20:03]>> Yeah.

[00:20:04]See, God has every need covered if we'll be bold enough to do the part that God gives us to do.

[00:20:16]Instead of trying, instead of letting somebody else try to push you into what they're doing so they can feel better about themselves, >> be bold enough to say, "Nope, that's not what I'm created for."

[00:20:31]How much better would it have been even for them if she would have just watched their kids and they would have went off to prayer and not had to worry about it and then she would have been fulfilled and they would have too.

[00:20:46]There's some scripture about Moses where he was working way too hard and his father-in-law came and saw what all he was doing and he said, "What are you doing? Why do you sit alone and all these other people stand around you all day long? Why aren't you letting them help you?"

[00:21:14]And he said, 'Well, the people want me to judge them. The people. There we go.

[00:21:20]The people. People pleasers. Well, this is what the people want. So, I got to keep the people happy. I can't be happy.

[00:21:26]I got to keep the people happy.

[00:21:31]And his father-in-law said a very interesting thing to him. He said, "If you do this, you will wear out both yourself and the people."

[00:21:44]Now, why would the people get worn out if they weren't doing anything? Because if you're in a place and you are gifted by God to do something in that place and they won't use you because they insist on doing it themselves, eventually you'll become so dissatisfied you're not going to want to be there because your gift is not being used.

[00:22:11]You know, I'm working less now than I ever have and producing just as much, if not more, >> than I ever have. You know why? Because I'm working smarter, not harder.

[00:22:27]God has put all kinds of talented people around me and instead of me trying to do what they're gifted to do, >> and there was a time when I was gifted to do those things.

[00:22:40]But you know, sometimes God will lift an anointing or a gifting off of you for one thing and put it on somebody else because he has something else he wants you to do. But if you're full of yourself and you think nobody can do a good job but you know what? They won't do it like you.

[00:23:04]>> But they might do it better.

[00:23:09]However, you got to swallow your pride a little bit.

[00:23:14]>> And when you delegate something to somebody else, you cannot just give them a responsibility. You have to also give them some authority.

[00:23:27]>> One person over there understands this.

[00:23:30]I'm really hitting a 100 today, aren't I? One person here, one person there.

[00:23:37]See, a lot of you, you could have so much more rest, so much less stress if you would just stop trying to get your worth and value out of doing everything yourself or being afraid that somebody else might get a little credit.

[00:24:10]We want to be wonderful.

[00:24:13]We want everybody to tell us how wonderful we are.

[00:24:20]But you got to let other people have credit.

[00:24:25]>> You know what? The more you lift other people up, the higher you'll go yourself.

[00:24:37]So Moses's father-in-law at God's direction said, "Take 70 men and lay your hands on them and let the spirit that's on you come on them and make them captains over tens and 50s and hundreds and thousands."

[00:24:59]And the guy finally got a little bit of rest.

[00:25:03]And I've had to learn to do that.

[00:25:08]>> It starts with an email. Frustrating fingers ready to respond.

[00:25:14]>> We got to be careful about our words.

[00:25:20]>> Sometimes a few words can do real damage.

[00:25:23]>> We can choose how we respond to it.

[00:25:28]Face to face patience is hardest.

[00:25:32]>> We have to be especially careful how we talk when we're under pressure.

[00:25:38]>> That's what wisdom looks like in real life.

[00:25:42]>> You've heard sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

[00:25:46]Well, the truth is words do hurt. They can wound, discourage, and work against our goals. That's why I wrote Words of Wisdom to help us pause and consider the impact of our words. Let words of wisdom guide you every day.

[00:26:02]>> Request Joyce's book, Words of Wisdom, available now for any amount. Give $50 or more and receive the book plus the Confident Woman devotional and this leather bookmark. Call 180079-2895.

[00:26:16]Visit joycemeyer.org or scan the QR code. Joyce has has said numerous times that her mouth would get her in trouble.

[00:26:22]My mouth has got me in trouble. Just wind me up and I'll talk.

[00:26:26]>> There are some things that maybe you shouldn't say.

[00:26:29]>> I did not realize how much of a problem I had with my mouth, how much negative things I was saying.

[00:26:34]>> So, it taught me to keep some things to myself and just pray about it.

[00:26:38]>> It was a a hard step to do, but really turned my life around. It's so much better now.

[00:26:42]>> Words of wisdom, they help us use words with intention. The Bible shows how our words affect relationships, attitudes, and our future. This isn't just a book.

[00:26:55]It's a journal with teaching, scriptures, and prompts to help you pause, reflect, and apply wisdom in your daily life. And remember, please send in a generous donation to help us dig wells, feed children, and rescue women and girls from human trafficking. Every gift makes a difference. Thank you.

[00:27:17]>> Give any amount and receive Joyce's book, Words of Wisdom.

[00:27:21]Give $50 or more and get the book plus the Confident Woman devotional and this leather bookmark.

[00:27:29]Call 180079-2895.

[00:27:33]Visit joycemeyer.org or scan the QR code.

[00:27:40]Our stories, they matter. Your gifts, your passions, even your quirkiness. They were designed with intention.

[00:28:00]He can use every twist and turn of your journey to create something new. Out of brokenness, beauty. out of struggle, a life transformed.

[00:28:13]Join us for the 2026 Love Life Women's Conference and discover how God can bring transformation to your story with Joyce and her guests Christine Kaine, Lisa Harper, and worship with Natalie Grant, and Hope Darst October 22nd through the 24th in Tampa, Florida.

[00:28:36]Register today and save. Go to joycemeyer.org/loife.

[00:28:42]Register now.

[00:28:49]We hope you enjoyed today's program.

[00:28:53]We are so grateful to our Joyce Meyer Ministries partners who make this and all we do possible, including sharing God's word and offering help to people in need all over the world.

[00:29:06]This program is supported by you, our viewers, and our partners.

[00:29:12]Let today's encouragement carry you forward. Like, comment, and subscribe to stay connected. Visit joycemeyer.org for more daily inspiration. And watch Enjoying Everyday Life and the Talk It Out podcast right here on YouTube to grow deeper in God's word.