FORGIVENESS

Unlocking The Prison Door

PART THREE

Joyce Meyer is a name that is well known to Christians around the world, especially amongst Pentecostal and Charismatic Christians and churches.

She has a worldwide television ministry, with her regular program "Enjoying Everyday Life." Together with her husband, Dave, they head up Joyce Meyer Ministries, based near St Louis in the state of Missouri in the USA. They have four grown children. 

Their ministry employs 800 people in 14 offices around the world, including 500 in  the world headquarters in Fenton, Missouri. Joyce Meyer has written a number of bestseller books, including "Battlefield Of The Mind." The ministry has various arms which reach out to the poor, orphans and widows, the sexually abused and women and girls who are trapped in the sex slavery industry. They also have a prison ministry reaching out with the Gospel and also providing help to prisoners and their families. When she first started in ministry, she also had a radio program which aired on a number of Christian stations in the USA.

She was also an associate pastor in a Charismatic church in Fenton, Missouri before starting her own ministry in the eighties.

In 2005, Time magazine's " 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America" ranked her as 17th.

Joyce Meyer was born in St Louis in 1943. Soon after, her father joined the army and to fight in World War 2. He began sexually abusing her soon after his return and this continued until she was eighteen. She has said that her father raped her at least 200 times.

She was "born again" (became a Christian) at age nine, but was desperately unhappy during her childhood because of the continuing abuse from her alcoholic father.

Shortly after finishing her senior year at high school, she married a car salesman. This proved to be a failed marriage which lasted only five years. Later she met Dave Meyer and they married in 1967.

She has related that one day in 1976 while driving to work, she was praying intensely when she heard God call her name. She says she came home later that day "full of liquid love" and was "drunk with the Spirit of God" that night at the local bowling alley.

To quote her, she said: "...I didn't have any knowledge. I didn't go to church. And I had a lot of problems, and I needed someone to kinda help me along. And I think sometimes even people who want to serve God, if they have got so many problems that they don't think right and they don't act right and they don't behave right, they almost need somebody to take them by the hand and help lead them through the early years..."

She was briefly a member of a Lutheran church, then became involved with a charismatic church, leading a Bible study and eventually became an associate pastor of that church. The church became one of the leading charismatic churches in the area, largely because of Joyce's popularity as a Bible teacher.

In !985, she resigned as associate pastor and founded her own ministry with her husband, which eventually became Joyce Meyer Ministries.

As stated above, during most of her childhood, Joyce Meyer endured continuing physical, sexual and mental abuse from her alcoholic father. The extent of this abuse was such, that many would think she would have been justified in hating her father. She certainly had her share of problems as a result of this abuse, and her behaviour at times reflected this. In her early years of her marriage to Dave Meyer, God was working in her life to heal the effects of her past trauma - through much prayer and through immersing herself in the Word of God.

One of the greatest aspects of her testimony concerning the power of God to change a person is that she came to a point where she knew she had to forgive her father for the years of abuse. Because Joyce was willing, on the basis of the Word of God, to forgive her father, she was able to lead him to a personal commitment to the Lord Jesus Christ to become his Savior and Lord.

I am unable to reproduce it here, but I was blessed to see a Facebook post of a photo of Joyce Meyer personally baptising her father in water during a church service! THAT'S POWERFUL!! Her face was beaming with joy! There were a few comments below the post, where people were almost in unbelief that this was possible - maybe from some who had been abused themselves. Joyce Meyer shares often about her abusive father as she ministers - not to relive the past, but to proclaim the power of forgiveness and the healing power of the Word of God, energized by the Holy Spirit's anointing.

Is there someone in your world you need to forgive today? Perhaps you have been harbouring unforgiveness, resentment, even bitterness towards one or more individuals for, even years! Don't wait another day to extend forgiveness. Open the prison door and find full release, and experience the joy of freedom from this cursed sin! 

Remember again the verse quoted in the previous blog post, the words of Jesus:

"If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive you your trespasses." Matthew 6:14,15

If you have read this blog and would like to know how to become a Christian, and experience a new way of living with hope and purpose, one resource I can point you to is: www.vision.org.au This is the online home of Vision Christian Media in Australia. Click on the "Grow your faith" tab at the top of the page, then from the dropdown menu, click on "Looking for God?" God Bless!