Is your pastor just a life coach?

Listen to any message by Joel Osteen or Joyce Meyer and there will be plenty to make you feel good about yourself. Guidance on how you can live your best life now, how you can have a balanced life, how to build relationships and have a more healthy lifestyle. An ultra positive message designed to help you fulfil your potential and empower the inner you. If you are to look to any of the other proponents of the prosperity gospel you will find that the message will be the same; positive confession and the promise of financial and personal success. Yet although their words are dressed up in Christian terminology in truth they differ little from the message that is provided by a secular life coach or motivational speaker. Their message is simply a Christianised psychology. They talk of what God can do for you in your life, yet not what Christ has done to give you new life.

Celebrity preachers and star-struck Christians

There are many Christians today, who claim to hold to the fundamentals of the faith, and who attend churches where the gospel is faithfully preached, yet who are also fans of big name celebrity preachers that are anything but faithful to the word of God. Men like Mark Driscoll, Rick Warren and Joel Osteen, women like Joyce Meyer, somehow attract a following within conservative denominations, their status as a celebrity preacher being such that many believers are either deceived or ignorant as to their true nature; that they are 'false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves'. How is this so, that so many within the evangelical church today are attracted to the teachings of these false prophets, and have become 'star-struck', unable to see beyond the name and the personality.

Five Joyce Meyer quotes you won't post on Facebook

Joyce Meyer is one of the most popular Christian speakers and authors around today. In 2005 TIME Magazine placed her 17th in their list of the most influential evangelicals in America. She has sold millions of copies of her books and it would be hard to find many more popular names within Christianity today. Popularity however is not to be the measure by which we judge a person but we are to 'try the spirits whether they are of God: because many false prophets are gone out into the world'. Matthew 12:37 says 'by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned'. It is biblical to look at a person's words that we might test them by scripture to see if they are true, but sadly in Joyce Meyer's case we find that there is much to be concerned about. Although she is often quoted by Christians on social media, there is nothing in the following statements which any believer could recommend to their friends. (It is not our desire to quote anyone out of context and if it can be shown that any of the following quotes have been taken in such a manner we will gladly remove them)