freshoutlook: Good Morning, Joyce, I have just finished your newest book, Approval Addiction. Could you tell our readers why you feel this subject needs to be addressed?
Joyce: I believe that we have an epidemic of insecure people in our society. And it causes people to need approval from wrong sources in order to feel good about themselves. According to the Bible our confidence is supposed to be in Christ. We are to be confident because we know that we are His children and He loves us and He has a good plan for our lives. God actually wants people to feel good about themselves, to feel right rather than wrong. And the largest majority of people just really feel wrong about themselves — that they are not acceptable, they are not good enough, they never do enough. When we become people pleasers rather than God pleasers, we can easily fall prey to manipulation and control. What happens is that some people want to make a decision and somebody else seems not to approve of that decision, and if that person is insecure they will cave in to what other people think and feel.
freshoutlook: What do you think causes Approval Addiction?
Joyce: I think it is largely situations with our past. Just like in my case: I was sexually abused by my dad so I thought very wrong about myself from the very beginning of my life. It doesn’t have to come from something that bad, it may just be a verbal disapproval that children get from their parents. It could come from a peer relationship; it could come from a schoolteacher, even society itself. Society presents images of what we should be — you know, the 17 year old on the cover of a magazine that has totally perfect skin and not one ounce of body fat. It dictates all the way from physical appearance to what kind of car you should drive. I think someone who doesn’t really know who they are in Christ, who perhaps hasn’t been taught to really embrace themselves, to like themselves, and to realize that everybody is different, will spend their lives reaching for what they think society approves of.
freshoutlook: That is true. What is so dangerous about people that are addicted to other people’s approval?
Joyce: Well, I think the absolute most dangerous thing is you cannot be a God pleaser and a people pleaser. There are obviously times in our lives when what God leads us to do will please people, but a large majority of the time, people are going to have a problem with what God wants us to do. For example, when God called me to do what I am doing, I got such major rejection it was extremely painful to me. I found out that Satan uses rejection from other people to try to keep us out of the will of God. If you are going to be a people pleaser you’re not going to be a God pleaser. Also, people never feel fulfilled if they are not following their own heart. You know that old saying, “To thine own heart be true.” Often people feel like, “Well, I really want to do this and I really feel this is right, but I guess I better do this to keep you happy.” The more of that you do the more you feel you are betraying yourself.
The bottom line is when you look at yourself in the mirror you have to like you. I tell people all the time, “If you don’t like yourself you are in serious trouble, because you are the one person you never get away from.”
I didn’t like myself because of what had happened to me as a child. I didn’t like my straightforward personality, I didn’t like my voice; there are so many things about me that I didn’t like. And as I entered a serious relationship with God, it seemed that nothing was working for me; all the principles in the Bible that I knew in my heart were right — I couldn’t seem to get them to work for me. It really came down to the fact that I just didn’t like myself and I really couldn’t go on until I received God’s love for myself and began to love myself in a balanced way. I tell people, “Don’t be in love with yourself, don’t be selfish and self-centered and doting on yourself.” But, you have to love and accept and approve of yourself in a balanced way.
People get so confused; they get mixed up between who they are and what they do. We look at our words and our actions and we say, “How can God approve of me?”
But the big thing to understand is that when you enter a relationship with Jesus, first of all He makes you something, He changes your heart, He gives you His spirit, He puts new desires way down deep inside of you, and the spiritual part of you is changed.
freshoutlook: Another thing that you touch on in your book is our need to be perfect before God, our feeling as if we are not doing enough or being good enough that God can’t be present or is not working in our lives. How do you get that from head knowledge to heart knowing?
Joyce: It took me so long to get this. The Word of God has power to change your life. It is almost like the words that God speaks are like little containers for power; so when I received the word of God it begins to renew my mind, it begins to do something supernatural on the inside of me. Now getting something from your head to your heart really involves a lot of repetition. The Bible says you have to meditate on the Word of God day and night that you may observe it and then you will do according to all that is written in it. We have very wrong mindsets ingrained in us. If I have heard a thousand times from various sources that I am no good and that I will never amount to anything, I can’t just hear the opposite just one time or two or three or four or even ten and be convinced. I have to hear it over and over and over.
Speaking the Word of God out loud, out of your own mouth, is extremely important. Like my father said out loud to me: “You are never going to amount to anything.” Well, I read in the Word of God that I have a great future, that I am made right with God through the blood of Christ that God loves me. So, it is not really just enough to read it, you need to say it — you need to speak those positive words, which begin to reverse the effect of the negative words that have been spoken about you. And this is not some goofy mind game principal, it is in the Word of God. The Bible says in many places we need to speak the Word. In Ezk.37, can these bones live? Well, prophesy to the dead bones— prophesy to the dead places in your life and they will begin to take on new life.
For years I have daily confessed the Word of God out loud. I will say things everyday like, “God loves me and I am the righteousness of God in Christ. I may not be where I need to be, but thank God I am not were I used to be. I am okay and I am on my way today. I am making progress. The healing power of God is working in my life healing my emotions, healing my body. God has a good plan for my life.” These things are just so life changing for people.
You know, I went to church for years and years and years and never heard anything like we are sitting here talking about this morning. I heard rules and regulations and doctrines. But I didn’t hear things that were affecting my everyday life. I was going to go to heaven but I wasn’t able to live in victory, I didn’t have any joy, I didn’t have any peace, I had lousy relationships, I was having an adverse effect on my children because I was hurting inside and I didn’t know how to change, which is why I changed the title of my magazine from Life in the Word to Enjoying Everyday Life. You know “Life in the Word” is something that a believer understands, but the world doesn’t understand that phrase and many Christians would not even understand that phrase. Therefore, we are making a real effort in our ministries right now to be relevant to society today. We are not changing our message, we are not changing our morals, but we are changing the package that we are presenting the word in.
So many people you ask if they are a Christian, they tell you what their religion is or they tell you what church they go to. My concern is that people are just wearing themselves out and getting spiritual burn-out trying to follow rules and regulations and trying to do enough of the right thing so they feel good about themselves. Are they feeling acceptable to God because they are doing good works? “I went to church everyday this month, so surely God is pleased with me. I am doing good works, so surely God is pleased with me.” But that is not even the basis for salvation. The Bible says that we are only saved through the sacrifice of Christ, not our own works.
freshoutlook: I love the statement you made in your book: “We are called believers not achievers.” But that is largely what we are taught in some churches — “7 steps to prosperity, 10 steps to healing.”
Joyce: You know what the thing is, those steps are right and accurate but until people have a solid foundation of who they are in Christ and know that they are loved on the days when they barely manage to adhere to all those principles and even on the days when they miss one or two, they can never do what they are supposed to do. It would be like telling an oak tree to produce apples. Well, I can’t produce right behavior unless I know that I have got righteousness in me. See, religious people have a real difficult time with this principle of righteousness. I have been judged so severely for teaching people that they are the righteousness of God. I have been accused of saying that I am sinless — which I have never said, and never would say — I make mistakes every single day of my life. But the Bible says, He that knew no sin became sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in Christ. As a believer you have been made the righteousness of God in Christ, you are right with God because of your faith in Jesus. If you believe that, then you can believe to do right things.
What I am saying here is very important. I don’t do what is right to get God to love me. I try to do what is right because He does love me, and I am so amazed about that that I respond to His love by wanting to live my life everyday to please Him. I am so amazed about what He has done for me. So it takes the pressure totally off of me when I am no longer getting up everyday trying to get God to love me by being good. I get up and I know that He loves me and I know that I am going to do my best. The Lord has said to me, “Do your best and I will take care of the rest.” And for a brand new believer their best might be a whole lot less than what your best is right now. But God sees our heart, He knows where we’re at, He knows where we came from. He knows where we are going, He knows were we will end up, He sees the end from the beginning and so He deals with each one of us where we are at and He accepts each of us as we are, simply doing our best.
