I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world." -- John 16: 33 (ESV)
Joyce Meyer has made herself the darling of female Christendom and several million dollars along the way by preaching a feel good, humanistic empowering, biblically vacuous theology that saves no one. We have to understand as the days grow short that every second not preaching the actual Gospel is more wasted time. Every sermon we listen to from Meyer is another half hour wasted. Yes I might feel better about myself on this planet for a little while, maybe deal with an old wound, or feel more empowered in my temporal life but salvation? Not a chance. I get the draw beloved I really do. Joyce Meyer speaks in edible sound bites of sugar coated heresy. Little rancid nuggets of platitudes that have zero power eternally because they are not the Gospel. They may sound pious but they are not the Gospel. Let us reason again through her latest article, linked above.
"I used to be one of the most negative people I knew. My motto was, "If I don't expect anything good to happen, then I won't be disappointed when it doesn't." However, God's way of seeing things is just the opposite! He wants us to live our lives filled with hope, expecting Him to do something great at any moment." -- Joyce Meyer
I used joke that I was neither pessimist nor optimist but rather a realist because I doubted the water in the glass existed. Made for a funny anecdote but it had no eternal value. Neither does Meyer constantly returning to her history of abuse and negativity as some kind of spiritual sign that God has done something when He clearly has not. If God was involved He would start with her false teaching, not her personal pessimism. The more problematic portion here is her teaching that God wants us living our life filled with hope, expecting Him to do something great at any moment. This is the false hope business Meyer is engaged in peddling. When you have a ministry whose sole purpose is in making this life better then you have no chance to recognize the actual Gospel of Jesus Christ. Joyce Meyer believes and preaches that our hope is temporal but it is not. It is eternal. Take a close read of the key verse today, which we all should know. What is Jesus saying here? He does not sell hope in the middle of temporal tribulation but rather peace. This is the same peace that transcends all of our earthly understanding. Our hope is in the eternal. It is in Christ overcoming the world not seeking fulfillment within it. God holds no optimism for this world beloved. He will judge it and set up His millennial kingdom one day. This kind of false teaching sets up an unrealistic hope for things God never promised. What happens to the people who buy into it and God never manifests Himself as Joyce teaches? They will either blame God or blame themselves.
"What is hope? One definition of "hope" is "a favorable and confident expectation."
It's a positive attitude and the happy anticipation that something good is going to happen.
Real hope is not a wishy-washy, vague "let's just wait and see what happens" attitude, but it's believing and trusting that what God promised, He will do. God is just looking for opportunities to be good to His children and He wants us to expect and look forward to it." -- Joyce Meyer
Beloved the issue is not whether or not we have hope but in what we have hope. Joyce Meyer has disobeyed the Bible, taught when she ought not to have, made millions of dollars fleecing the flock of God and because she enjoys temporal wealth and success, she assumes her worldly prosperity is a sign of divine providence. It is not. There is a reason why 50,000 people show up each weekend to hear Joel Osteen preach and it sure is not because they are ardently reaching out for God. They are reaching out for this world. God is looking for opportunities to be good to His children? Is Joyce teaching a powerless god that needs opportunities to do something? Is she teaching a capricious god that blesses on whims or on a performance curve? But it sounds right on some level doesn't it beloved? Except it is not quite right. God does not want us to expect He will do something good but that He already has through His only Son. This is the blessing theology of the prosperity gospel that only sees blessing as thing yet to come instead of what has already been won for us at Calvary. When you engage in the sound-bite Christianity it becomes easier to fool people.
