GOD SPEAKS THROUGH PEOPLE

As I have mentioned, we should be maturing in our faith
to the point that we don’t run to somebody else every time
we need to know what to do in a certain situation. I am
not implying that it’s wrong to go to people whom we feel
are wiser than we are to ask them for a word of counsel
or advice. But I do believe it is wrong, and insulting to
God, to go to people too often. Having someone give us
advice is not necessarily a problem; the problem comes
when we seek man rather than God. God is a jealous God
(see James 4:5 and Deuteronomy 4:24), and He wants us to
ask for His advice.
King David asked, “Where does my help come from? My
help comes from the LORD, the Maker of heaven and
earth” (Psalm 121:1-2 NIV). It is important to clearly
establish in our hearts that we will seek God first, as
David did. God wants to guide each one of us—not just
full-time preachers, but every individual who puts their
trust in Him.

I encourage you to seek balance in this area and to wean
yourself from seeking other people’s opinions, if you have
a consistent habit of doing so. Discipline yourself to go to
God first, but understand that He may use the counsel of
other believers to clarify things for you or to give you
assurance that you are truly hearing from Him.
People who will never ask for or take advice usually have
a big problem with pride. People can give us a word of
advice that confirms what we already feel in our own
spirit. The best policy is to seek God and let Him choose
how and through whom He wants to speak to us. In
Numbers 22:20-28 we see that God chose to speak to the
prophet Balaam through his donkey. If we won’t, or for
some reason cannot, hear God ourselves, He uses many
natural sources to reach us—including man.

There certainly are times when God uses people to speak
“a word in due season” to one of His children (see
Proverbs 15:23). If He chooses to speak through someone
else, which He frequently does, we should humbly receive
from anyone God chooses to use.
Where there is no counsel, purposes are frustrated, but
with many counselors they are accomplished. A man has
joy in making an apt answer, and a word spoken at the
right moment—how good it is! (Proverbs 15:22-23)
These Scriptures tell us that a right word spoken at the
right time is a good thing.
Our ministry founded and provides oversight to a church
in the inner city of St. Louis. I hired a new secretary, and
she began attending that church. After about two years, I
sensed that she might want to go to church somewhere
else but felt it might offend me if she did so since the
church she would be leaving was an outreach of Joyce
Meyer Ministries.
Seek God and let Him choose how and through whom He
wants to speak.

I waited for a few weeks before saying anything to her
because I wanted to be sure I was hearing from God. I
have discovered that if what I am sensing is from God, it
stays with me over a period of time. Sure enough, the
feeling did not go away, so I approached her one day and
said, “I don’t know if you’re happy at the city church or
not, but I realize it might not be meeting your needs as a
single woman. I just wanted to say that if you ever want to
go somewhere else it will not offend me.”
She looked at me in amazement and said, “Joyce, this is so
good. I have been feeling like God wanted me to go
somewhere else, but I really wanted to be sure I was
hearing from God. This is great confirmation that what I
have been feeling is correct.”
As I have said, it is not wrong to go to other people. It can
even be very beneficial. But mainly we should lean on
God; if He chooses to speak to us through someone else,
that is His choice. As in the case of my secretary, she was
seeking God, not me. God chose to speak to her through
me.
God was offering an answer, but I didn’t like receiving it
through a messenger.
Here is another example from my own life. When
everything is right in my life, I sense a liberty when I
preach. I also sense when there is great opposition against
my message, because I feel a loss of freedom. At those
times I know to pray and depend on God to move on my
behalf.
There was a time that I knew something wasn’t right, but I
couldn’t discern what was bothering me. It went on long
enough that it affected my preaching more than once.
Every week that I went to hold a certain meeting in St.
Louis, I felt like it was the biggest mess I ever had. Each
time we left the meeting I would comment to Dave, “Oh,
that was terrible.”

He’d ask, “What do you mean? That was a great message.”
Something was bothering me, and God was gracious
enough to keep it from showing through my preaching,
but I was uncomfortable. After more than three weeks of
concern, I thought, That’s it. I’m staying up tonight until I
find out what’s going on in my life. I can’t go on like this
anymore. It seemed to bother me particularly when I was
preaching. I stayed up late that night to seek God, but I
couldn’t get any direction from Him.
Then I learned that God sometimes speaks to us through
other people. When I got up the next morning, Dave said,
“I think I know what your problem is.”
I thought, Oh great! God won’t tell me what my problem
is, but He’s going to tell Dave what my problem is. So right
away I had a poor attitude, thinking, Oh sure, Dave is
going to tell me what my problem is when he has
problems himself. He doesn’t need to tell me what my
problems are.
Perhaps you can relate to the apprehension I felt knowing
that Dave was going to tell me what was wrong with me. I
had cried out to God, “Lord, show me what’s wrong!” God
was offering an answer, but I didn’t like receiving it
through a messenger. All I could think was, Well, who do
you think you are, trying to tell me what’s wrong? We beg
to hear from God, and yet it can make us mad if someone
hears on our behalf. But sometimes that is the way God
speaks.

So I said, “What do you think is wrong with me?”
He answered, “The other night when we were talking
about so and so…” We had listened to a preacher, and I
had commented that I felt he took too many directions in
his message without bringing his main points to a close. I
like to organize my thoughts and finish up loose ends
when I preach. I really didn’t say that much about him,
but in my heart I was comparing his style with my own. I
had simply said that he was kind of scattered in his
preaching, and that it was hard to follow and understand.
Dave had agreed with me. Now he was saying, “I feel God
told me you’re having problems because of what you said
about that preacher.”

I resented being told by Dave that God had told him I had
done something wrong, when Dave had fully agreed with
me. Of course my first response was, “Yeah, well you said
the same thing!”
Dave said, “Look, I’m not trying to start anything with
you. All I’m telling you is what I believe God showed me. I
wasn’t asking God to show me what’s wrong with you.
God just showed me.”
Dave is a matter-of-fact sort of person. You can take what
he says or leave it, and it won’t make any difference to
him. He’s kind of like God when it comes to truth, saying,
“Here it is; do what you want to with it.”
It took me a few hours, but I finally laid it before God and
I asked, “Is that really why I am having these problems?”
Once my heart was opened to the truth, God showed me
James 3:1, which says that those who are called to be
teachers of the Word will be judged with greater severity
than others. The chapter deals with the fact that teachers
will be judged for sins of the mouth. As a teacher, I can’t
have a mixture of blessing and cursing coming out of my
mouth (see v. 10). I can’t preach the gospel and expect the
anointing to be upon it if I gossip about somebody
between services. If I judge the style of another preacher,
I am judging God’s anointing on him, and that will always
affect my own preaching.

God taught me this lesson in a way I would never forget. If
we take our God-given talent for granted by criticizing
someone who is doing the same thing, our critical,
judgmental eye will turn back upon ourselves until we
remember that what we do well is only by the grace of
God.
Judging others brings condemnation and judgment on
ourselves, because in judging that person we are saying,
“I’m great at this, but you have a problem.” God lifted
what I call the “holy ease” from what I did until I learned
this lesson. God worked me over until I finally fasted and
submitted to a state of repentance.
When I understood what I had done, I wept and cried out
to God, because I knew He had worked greatly in my life.
God spoke to me through Dave. He was also speaking to
me through inner discomfort, which I will discuss in a
later chapter. But the point I am making here is that we
need to be open to messages God may send through
people who love us and are praying for us. God wants us
to keep humble hearts and be ready to hear from Him
whichever way He chooses to speak.