Joel Osteen (0:00)

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Victoria Osteen (1:02)

Hi, this is Joel in Victoria. Thanks for listening to our podcast and thanks for supporting the ministry. If you enjoyed today's message, why don't you be a blessing and share it with a friend? We appreciate you and pray for God's very best in your life. Well, God bless you. Always a joy to come into your homes. We love you and we're believing for God's very best in your life. If you're ever in our area, I hope you'll come out and be a part of one of our services. These are the finest people in all of Houston right here at Lakewood. So come on out. We'd love to have you, but thanks for tuning in. I like to get started each week with something funny. I heard about these three men that were out hiking through the wilderness. They came upon this very violent, raging river. They needed to get to the other side. The first man prayed, God, please give me the strength to make it across. And poof. God gave him big arms and strong legs and he was able to swim across in two hours. Seeing this, the next man said, God, please give me the strength and the tools I need to make it across. And poof. God gave him a boat. He was able to row across in 30 minutes. The next man said, God, give me the strength, the tools and the intelligence to make it across. And poof. God turned him into a woman. She looked at the map, hiked five minutes upstream and. And then walked across the bridge. And yes, that was sent to me by a woman. Hold up your Bible. Say it like you mean it. This is my Bible. I am what it says I am. I have what it says. I have. I can do what it says I can do. Today I will be taught the word of God. I boldly confess. My mind is alert, my heart is receptive. I will never be the same. In Jesus name. God bless you. I want to talk to you today about the importance of having the right associations. Who your friends are and who you choose to associate with will have a great impact on whether or not you fulfill your God given destiny. We become like the people we continually associate with. If you associate with successful people, there's a good chance you're going to be successful. If you associate with people that have a big vision, people that have a dream, people that are going places, they will inspire you to accomplish more than you thought possible. But just the opposite is true. If you hang around lazy, undisciplined people, people that are negative and critical, people that are always having a problem, that defeat is going to rub off on you. It's so important that we choose the right people to associate with. And it's good to have friends that you encourage and you build up. Maybe you're helping someone overcome in a certain area, you're an inspiration to them. We should be reaching out to others. But what I want us to see today is it's equally important that you have someone in your life that inspires you. Someone that's more successful than you are, someone that's been where you're trying to go. You need a friend or a mentor that you can learn from. You should study that person. Watch how they treat other people, see how disciplined they are, how they carry themselves. And over time those good qualities are going to rub off on you. There's this lady I know, she's in the business world and we become friends. And every time I'm around her, she inspires me. I thought I was a big thinker, but I'm small compared to her. She thinks on a whole different level. The other day we were discussing this project to help the needy and I said, well, I'm going to call some of my minister friends and see if they want to join in and help. She said, that's fine, but I'm going to call the CEO of this corporation, one of the biggest in the world. Then I'm going to call my friend that runs this network and see if he wants to turn it into a television special. I'll talk to him about getting sponsors to underwrite the whole thing. The more she talked, the more I thought, you go girl. I like the way she thinks. She inspires me to think bigger. You need People like this in your life. If you're the smartest one in your group, your group is too small. If you're the one always coming up with the best ideas and giving the advice and solving the problems, you've outgrown that circle. You need people in your life speaking vision into you. There should be someone in your circle of friends that has more wisdom, more experience, more insight than you do. If not, it's limiting your growth. I know people that like to feel like a big fish. The only problem is they're in a little bitty tank. Their circle is too small. They've always got to be the smartest, the greatest, the wisest. They're insecure. If anybody's above them, too proud to ask for advice, all that's doing is limiting them. You take a fish, put it in a five gallon aquarium. It can only grow so big. Its growth is being restricted by its environment. The circle is too small. You take that same fish and put him in the ocean where he belongs. He has unlimited potential. God has already ordained the right people to come into your life, to speak vision, to challenge you, to inspire you. You need to stay open. I'm the first to admit I don't know everything. One reason I am where I am today is because I found people that were a whole lot smarter than I am. God brought them across my path and I watched them, I studied them, I learned from them. They helped me go to a new level. You need to stay open. God's bringing across your path. I like to have people around me that just by their example, just by the way they live their life, they challenge me to come up higher. I have this one friend, he loves to give. Every time I'm around him, I'm inspired. I leave thinking I'm going to be a bigger giver. I love the fact he always has giving on his mind. I have another friend that is so nice to his wife, he treats her so good at first it almost made me sick. I mean, he is so gooey. Everything is. Honey, let me do this for you. Hang on, honey. There may be a little dust on the seat. Just a second, honey. You may get a little wet. I'm thinking to myself, she is not going to melt. But after a month or two of being around all that goofy, it began to convict me. I thought, maybe I can come up higher in this area. Don't you say amen, Victoria? We need friends like that in our lives. Not friends that are running around on their spouse, friends that are disrespectful. Friends that compromise, friends that don't have any goals. You have enough things trying to pull you down in life. Surround yourself with people that are going to help you rise higher, People that are more respectful, people that are more disciplined, people that have a bigger vision than you do. I've made up my mind. I'm not going to hang out with critical people. I hear somebody that always has a bad report. They're always complaining, always finding fault. That's a red flag. I know they're not for me. I don't need that in my life. I'm not going to hang around stingy people. I'm not going to spend a lot of time with people that are never happy, people that don't have integrity, nosy people, people that don't have any goals. I may not have any friends. Why? I don't want those qualities to rub off on me. We need to set these boundaries in our own thinking. You don't have to announce it to anybody. Do you hear somebody that's always gossiping, always stirring up trouble? Cross them off your list. They're not for me. And sure, you can still be kind and polite, hey, how you doing? But you shouldn't let them into your inner circle. Life is too short to spend it with the wrong people. Young people, this is extremely important. Choosing the wrong friends can steal your destiny. Don't hang around with people at school that have a bad attitude, that are always getting into trouble, always bucking the system. You need to find friends that are going to make something out of their life. Hang around people that are disciplined, people that are focused, people that are going places. Don't be concerned about fitting into the right crowd and being the most popular, having the most friends. It's not the quantity of our friends that matter. It's the quality of our friends that really counts. I would rather have one friend that has his head on straight, that's going places, than 20 friends that are just floating downstream doing what everybody else is doing. The scripture says here in Proverbs 27:17, as iron sharpens iron, so a friend sharpens a friend. Notice our friends should be sharpening us. Some of you today, you've outgrown your tank. You've outgrown that circle of friends. They were fine for a time. You blessed them and they blessed you. But now God's trying to increase you, and those friends are holding you back. They were in your life for a season, but you've grown. You've come up to a higher level. And if you're going to continue to rise, you have to break out of the rut and cultivate some new friendships. I know this pastor. He started a church years ago. And for a long time he was happy and growing. He knew he was fulfilling his destiny. But a while back, he began to feel like he was stuck in a rut. He had several hundred members, but he knew God had put bigger things in his heart. And so he talked to the people that helped him start the church, his inner circle of friends, about trying some new things and starting some different programs. But man, they discouraged him. They said, that'll never work here. We need to just keep doing what we've been doing. And that man knew he needed to get different people speaking into his life. He knew he was the biggest fish in his tank, and that's never healthy. And one day he met this minister that was extremely successful. He had been where this man was trying to go. This minister was so kind. He took him under his wing. And for several years, this pastor once a month flew across the country, just a few minutes with this other minister. He studied him, he watched how he led the staff. He talked to different members of his church. He took in everything he could. All the while, his friends back at home, they didn't understand it. They said, you're wasting your time and your money. It's so expensive, you don't need to fly out there. But no, this man understood the power of right associations. He knew the more time he spent with that man, the more faith was growing, the more his vision was increasing. Something was happening on the inside. And today that pastor has a church with thousands of people. In fact, his ministry is much larger than the man that mentored him all those years. But what happened? He found somebody that had what he wanted. He got around him, learned from him those same qualities, those same characteristics got off on him. And he not only went to his level, he took it above and beyond. And could it be today that the thing that's holding you back is you don't have the right people in your life, you don't have anyone inspiring you, anybody that's modeling what you want. If this man would have stayed in that same group of small minded thinkers, I don't mean they weren't good people, because they were. But he had outgrown that tank. If he had not gotten into a bigger circle, he would have those same frustrations, those same struggles. Today he had to get around somebody that had what he wanted, somebody that had been where he was trying to go so he could be inspired and challenged. You need to surround yourself with people that motivate you to go forward and not people that that are constantly tempting you to shrink back. You shouldn't sit around at work all day and let somebody fill your mind with gossip. Don't go home every night and spend hours on the phone with a friend that's dumping all their problems on you, singing their sad song. That's fine. Once in a while we should be loving and caring. You can pray for them and encourage them. But what I'm saying today is if you're going to become all God's created you to be, you have to eliminate any kind of toxic relationships. If somebody is always taking and never giving, that's not a healthy relationship. When you leave, if you feel drained and tired and depressed and worse than you were before, that should be a red flag. Something is not right. Recognize they are stealing your victory. Well, you say, Joel, I don't want to hurt their feelings. I've known them a long time. No, you can be kind, you can be polite, but little by little, you need to spend less and less time with that person. You may not want to hurt their feelings. But let me ask you this. What if they keep you from fulfilling your God given destiny? And I found some people don't want to come up higher. Some people don't want to change. They're too comfortable where they are and they won't discipline themselves to make the right choices. So you have to be strong and have the attitude of I have a destiny to fulfill. You may not want to come up higher, that's fine. But you're not going to keep me from coming up higher. You may not want to be happy, fine. But I'm going to live my life happy. We have to separate ourselves from relationships that are holding us back. And I'm not talking about a marriage relationship. That's a different story. Some of you are thinking you got the word you needed today. I'm talking about the people we choose to speak free time with. If you're spending all your time with negative, critical people, people that compromise, people that always see the worst, you're not going to be able to form the right friendships. You have a responsibility, first and foremost to keep yourself happy, healthy and whole. God has entrusted you with a gift. You have a treasure on the inside, something that nobody else has. But if you don't make the right connections, you won't make it to the right destinations. And God has already ordained the right people to come into your life. But you'll never meet them. If you're Constantly hanging around the wrong people. You need to look at your friends and see if they have anything that you want. If they don't have any joy, they don't have any victory. And they're always complaining. And they're not as far along as you are. Recognize they're not adding anything to you. And yes, maybe they're there so you can inspire them. Maybe your job is to help them come up higher. But what I'm saying is you should not spend all your time with people like that. Because if you're going to continue to grow, if you're going to rise higher, you have to have people that inspire you. People that are further down the road than you are. I think about Daniel. The scripture says that he had an excellent spirit. If you study his life, you'll find that Daniel chose excellent friends. You know who he hung out with? Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego. The three Hebrew teenagers that refused to bow down to the king's golden idol. No wonder Daniel was a person of excellence. His friends were people of courage, people of integrity, people that wouldn't compromise. People that had a big dream for their life. You need to make sure the people you're choosing to spend time with have qualities that you want. Because whether you realize it or not, it's rubbing off on you. Don't think you can sit at the lunchroom every day for an hour and let people fill your mind with gossip and bad mouth the company and not have it affect you. Oh, you say, Joel, I just listen. I don't join in. No, that poison's going into the inside. If you stay there long enough by default, more often than not, you'll become a gossiper just like them. What's the solution? Find somewhere else to eat lunch. Sit at a different table, Go outside. Yes, they may talk about you. Yes, they may think you're odd. But listen, people like that, if they're not talking about you now, they're going to be talking about you later. Your time's coming. You need to just rise above it. You have a destiny to fulfill. You are going places. Keep that poison out of your. Psychologists tell us there's something called the law of the group. That is, we associate with people the way we see ourselves. Have you ever noticed how most of the time people that gossip find other people that gossip? Negative people gravitate to other negative people. Complainers seem to always find the other complainers. That's where that saying comes from. Birds of a feather flock together. We find people just like us. Knowing this, I would encourage you to evaluate your friendships. If your friends are all negative, they always compromise. They're always having problems. You need to get some new friends because victorious people associate with other victorious people. That's why we're all here today. Overcomers hang out with other overcomers. Happy people gravitate toward other happy people. Successful people associate with other successful. I was reading how Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, and Harry Firestone all had summer homes next door to each other in Florida. They spent much of their summers together. You think about, there are three of the most brilliant minds that have ever lived. They helped change the course of history. You notice they didn't spend a lot of time with negative, can't do it people. They associated with other dreamers, with other men of big vision. No wonder they soared to new heights. If you want to know what you're going to be like five years from now, just take a look at your friends. That's a good indication. I have a friend that just got a big promotion. God blessed him and something that he had been hoping for and working toward for years finally came to pass. And he was so excited about it. We have this other friend that had been hoping and praying for this same type of opportunity, probably for even a longer period of time now. I was wondering what he was going to think. Sometimes it's easy when you see somebody succeed, especially at something that you want. It's easy to get jealous and critical toward them. I was so happy that my friend was genuinely happy for this other man. He called him and congratulated him. I could tell that he was sincere about it. And I thought, that's the kind of friends we need to cultivate. People that will celebrate our victories, not people. The moment God promotes you, they start talking and criticizing and get all jealous. There's already enough haters in the world. There's already enough cynical, sarcastic, critical people. Let's surround ourselves with friends that are secure enough to celebrate each other's victories. When you hear people talking about somebody you know, you have a responsibility to put an end to it. You should say, you know what? I'm not going to talk about them. I'm glad they got promoted because I know if God did it for them, he'll do it for me. One thing I found is you cannot help a person that will not separate himself from toxic influences. No matter how much you pray or encourage or advise, They've always got that poison going into them. They've got to be willing to get rid of the source. It may not be something terribly big or Abusive, but just hanging around somebody that's got a jealous, critical spirit that's poisoning your life. Or hanging around someone that's arrogant, condescending, always looking down on others that's polluting you on the inside. And I realize there are no perfect people. We all have something that we're dealing with. I heard somebody say every person has a little dysfunction. But what I'm saying is don't get around people that empower that dysfunction. Your friends should bring out the best in you and not the worst. If you struggle with being impatient, don't hang around other impatient people. That's empowering the wrong things. If you tend to be a little negative and you struggle with discouragement and depression, go find five other friends that are depressed so you can sit around and talk about your problems. You need to find friends that are happy, friends that are positive, friends that are full of faith. What you're around is contagious. Do you realize faith is contagious? Joy is contagious. Hope is contagious. That's why when you come in here and get around all these other faith filled believers, these victors and not victims, you can't help but leave full of more faith, full of more joy, full of more hope, full of more victory. It's contagious. What are we doing? We're empowering the right thing. I know this man that struggled with his temper for years and years. His father was hot tempered and other people in his family for the longest time, it didn't look like he could overcome. But eventually, through prayer, through counseling, through right thinking, through, he was able to change. He's a totally different person. His wife and family are so thrilled. And one day up at the gym, he met this other man playing ball. And they became, over time, good friends. And he liked everything about him. The only problem was this new friend had an anger issue on the court. At times he'd lose his cool and get all upset and people would have to come try to calm him down. Other times during the week, he saw his friend have these angry, emotional outburst, just what he was set free from. And he reached out to him, tried to get him to come to church, tried to get him to see some of our counselors. But over time, he realized his friend was not willing to change. And even though he enjoyed his company, even though he really liked him, he made the difficult decision to put an end to that relationship. He said, joel, I couldn't take the chance. That's just what I came out of. And I knew if I didn't get away from him. I would go right back to being hot tempered and angry myself. He recognized if he stayed in close relationship with that man, all it would do was enable his dysfunction. I'm asking you today to separate yourself from people that are bringing out the worst in you may be difficult, but here's the key. What you won't walk away from is where you stop growing. If you won't separate yourself from toxic influences, you won't rise any higher. And some of you, even two years ago, you felt an uneasiness down in here about that relationship. You knew back then that was God talking to you about making a change. It was causing you to compromise, bringing out the worst. But again and again you put it off. Until you do what you know in your heart you should do, you're going to be stuck. And sometimes we think, why isn't God blessing me? Why don't I see God's favor? Well, are we doing what God has asked us to do? Today is a day of decision. If you have the wrong people in your life, God can't bring the right people in. You may be thinking, well, Joel, if I make these changes, I may not have any friends. I may be lonely. No, just the opposite is true. That act of obedience is what allows God to open new doors, to bring the people he's ordained to be in your life the right people. And yes, you may go through a season of being lonely, but I'd rather be lonely for a little while, knowing that I'm sowing a seed to come up higher than go year after year with a bunch of friends that I know are keeping me being my very best. You need to make sure you have people speaking vision into you, people that have been where you're trying to go. I've been blessed my whole life to be around good mentors and people that I could look up to. I grew up with a great father. He was my best friend and daddy modeled. Excellence, integrity, compassion. I like to believe that rubbed off on me. Recently, I've been honored to spend time with Billy Graham, to hear his heart and see his love and just his compassion for people that inspires me to become everything God's created me to be. You need some heroes in your life, People you can look up to, people you can admire, people that will help bring the seeds of greatness out of the inside. I think about how Elisha hung around the prophet Elijah. He was with him day in and day out. He served him, took care of him. In the end, Elisha received a double portion of Elijah's anointing, you become like the people you hang around. Even Joshua, he stayed closely with Moses. When Moses went on the mountain to receive the ten Commandments, he couldn't go up there, but he waited at the base of the mountain. He didn't want Moses out of his sight. The scripture says Moses put his hands on Joshua and he received a part of Moses anointing, a part of his authority, a part of his honor. Who you associate with will have a great impact on whether or not you fulfill your destiny. Now I believe, and I don't mean this arrogantly, but even being associated with our ministry here, the favor God's put on us because of your association, that favor's rubbing off on you. Blessings, honor, promotion, integrity, joy, peace. You can increase through association. So I challenge you. Evaluate your friendships. Make sure you have some kind of mentor, someone speaking vision into you. Don't be the smartest one in your group. Get a bigger circle. Eliminate any toxic relationships. It may be difficult, but remember, you're going places. You have a destiny to fulfill. Get around people that will bring out the best, not people that enable that dysfunction. If you'll be selective about who your friends are, make sure you choose people that build you up, people that inspire you. Then I know you'll rise higher and higher. God will pour out his blessings, his favor, and you'll live the life of victory he has in store. Amen. Do you receive it today? We never like to close our broadcast without giving you an opportunity to make Jesus the Lord of your life. Would you pray with me? Just say, Lord Jesus, I repent of my sins. Come into my heart. I make you my Lord and Savior. Friends, if you prayed that simple prayer, we believe you got born again. Get in a good Bible based church. He's going to take you places that you've never dreamed of.