Joel Osteen gives advice on how to deal with 'alarmists': 'God didn't call you to keep everyone happy'
Pastor Joel Osteen of Lakewood Church is warning Christians against "alarmists," or people who treat everything as a major problem or crisis. These kinds of people are very demanding of other people's time and require others to drop everything else for them.
"If you don't put up a boundary to these types of people, you'll get pulled in, and they'll get you stirred up and stressed out. Don't fall into that trap," Osteen writes on his blog. "If you don't take action and require respect for your time, you'll be dealing with the same issue twenty years from now."
Osteen adds that people's destinies are too important for others to take control of. There are lots of people in this world who are unable to deal with their own issues and therefore hold others back.
"Recognise that's a peace stealer. You need to make some changes. You might think, 'Well Joel, what if I hurt their feelings?'" he says. But Osteen wants people to consider: What if they miss their own destinies?
"God didn't call you to keep everyone happy. Sure, do your part to be a giver. Go the extra mile, but don't become a garbage dump where you allow someone to always dump their burdens on you. That's out of balance," he warns.
Osteen strongly advises people to protect their emotional energies, because they only have a limited supply each day. If they take in other people's drama, then they are not going to have enough emotional energy to deal with things they personally need to do.
"I'm not saying to be selfish, I'm saying be wise," he clarifies. "You can't fix everyone; you can't make people do what's right. You're not called to straighten everyone out. You're not the saviour. We already have a Saviour."
At the same time, Osteen says there are some people who don't really have it in their hearts to change. They only love the attention their issues bring them, so to always be at their beck and call is actually "enabling their dysfunction."
"If you don't bail them out, maybe they'll start taking responsibility. If they can't reach you every three minutes, maybe they'll learn to encourage themselves," says Osteen. "Life is too short to go through it being controlled. You shouldn't spend all your time trying to straighten out everybody or trying to make everybody happy. Draw healthy boundaries, turn them over to God and learn to enjoy your life!"
