Chose Joy

Dear Precious Friends,

On this beautiful new day, this gift from God, I am sharing this amazing reminder of truth. The things of this world are only temporary and soon pass away. The things of heaven are forever...and don't pass away. Have you ever been listening to a Christian song and could hardly contain your joy in the Lord? When the presence of the Lord falls on us, tears fall... but tears of Joy, where our heart feels like it is overflowing with love and joy. Yes true Joy comes from the Lord, our hope in Him and knowing no matter what happens, He is our joy... real Joy comes from Him... not our circumstances. Time spent with the Lord with a humble heart, when our mind and heart work together to bring the presence of God. .

“I have told you this so that my JOY may be in you and that your JOY may be complete” John 15:11

Happiness is based on what "happens" to us. Joy is deep seeded in the Lord.

How do we have joy when everything that could go wrong does go wrong, and our fondest hopes and wildest dreams lie in shattered pieces at our feet. Those are the moments when our heart aches with the bitterness of unfulfilled longings, broken promises, or grief so powerful it threatens to take us to our knees. Where does joy fit into these scenes from our lives? Is joy really a possibility when everything seems to be going wrong in our lives? Joy is not about our circumstances or about how we feel. Joy is something much deeper, richer, more stable, and definitely more accessible than us than we think. That’s the beauty of the joy God offers. God’s joy will always be available to us. In this world you will have trouble, Jesus says. But we can still take heart. We can still receive joy. We are not dependent on anyone or anything other than God to know joy. Joy is a choice.

Joy is a choice. The level of joy we experience is completely and totally up to us. It is not dependent on anyone else—what they do or don’t do, how they behave or don’t behave. Joy cannot be manipulated by the actions of human beings. It is not dependent on the amount of sadness or suffering or difficulties we endure. Joy cannot be held hostage to fear, pain, anger, disappointment, sadness, or grief. At the end of any given day, the amount of joy we experience is the exact amount of joy we chose to experience. How you may ask? God created us to be joyful. There’s really no doubt about it. But God has left the decision whether to access that joy up to us. You and I get to decide if we’re going to choose joy or not—created by God, bought and paid for by Jesus’s death, given as a personal gift from the Holy Spirit—When we think about it like that, it’s hard to imagine why any of us would ever refuse God’s gift of joy. May we ask God to rekindle hope in our hearts and to help us to keep seeking the joy that belongs to us in Jesus Christ and remember as Jesus said in John 15:11 “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete”