Just earlier this month on September 13th, Joyce Meyer released her new book entitled “Seize The Day.” As it seems to be the case more and more every form of a distributor that can distribute anything seemingly “Christian” is jumping on the bandwagon of this nomenclature of sub-Christian literate.
Over the past couple of week’s Joyce Meyer has been releasing tweets on Twitter to draw attention to the publication of her book. She has been promoting her book with colorful, but often inaccurate statements. One of those more theologically inept utterances was tweeted out on September 22nd. The shallowness of these 140 words pulls back the curtain and allows us to see one of the biggest lies in the Word of Faith theology and the movement itself — Self-Entitlement.
Teaching such as found above by Joyce Meyer in her tweet are sadly becoming more numerous by the day. These statements by these false proclaimers of twisted truth, who worship a god, not of the Bible need to be exposed for what they are. It is not only the tweets put out by false teachers like Joyce Meyer but her books that do extensive damage by deceiving countless numbers of people into thinking that they are following the God of the Bible, but in reality, they are following a God of their making.
As gathered from the above screenshot of Joyce Meyer’s “#SeizeTheDay” tweet we can see that it is problematic at best and heretical at worst. The meaning behind this tweet is duplicitous in its representation of God. The meaning behind this statement is simple. Joyce Meyer’s message takes and elevates man above God. It is this premise of self-entitlement puts God in the position of owning man something for man following God. In the simplest terms, it comes down to a mentality of “God owes us.”
This self-indulgent attitude towards our position before God is contrary to Scripture. We are told in Scripture (Matthew 5:12) our reward is eternal, not earthly. We are not told to “have what belongs to me as a child of God!” It is that very principle that undermines who we are in Christ. This self-indulgent attitude is a very commonly taught misconception among Word of Faith teachers and followers, the elevation of man’s position above that of Christ and even God. The Bible clearly states the opposite of what is taught by people such as Joyce Meyer. We better understand where we stand before Christ and God when we look at these verses, 1 Corinthians 7:22; Ephesians 6:6; and 2 Timothy 2:24. It is made evident in these verses that we are “bondservants to Christ.” The biblical position of man in relationship to Christ is quite different than that of the position held by Word of Faith teachers.
While Word of Faith teachers like Joyce Meyer promotes a man-centered theology that concentrates on the fulfillment of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. Biblical theology proclaims our need for a Savior and the need for our self-actualization to be found in not choosing an attitude of self-entitlement, but in on of humbleness towards our Lord and Savior. Those who understand their position before Christ rightly know that we are “slaves” to Him who has saved us. We realize that we are owed nothing here on earth, that our greatest “entitlement” here on earth is to pick up our Cross and follow Him daily.
[Contributed by Richard Haas]
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