Finding Joy Part 1

The topic was your Joy in everyday life situations. How do you find it in the hard times. How do you see Joy in others around you. When you are down, how do you find the Joy in what you are doing. Joy at work, Joy with family, Joy with anyone who is down. Small Group Format. Kevin shares about his grief, and also, the joy we in Christ ultimately have.  He shared a beautiful testimony of his dear friend Glen’s life; his living and dying for Christ.   I mean, he’s in Heaven, and that’s the thing that he. One of the last conversations we had wasn't this week.  It was last week, I think.  He didn’t wish this illness upon himself.  He really felt that if he hadn’t had the illness, he wouldn’t have known God.  If he wouldn’t have known God, then he wouldn’t have been saved, then  his eternal soul would be lost.  So, his position on this was that although I didn’t wish this to happen to me, I’m thankful for it. Robin said,  I was thinking and asking myself, is it only Christians who experience joy, or do all human beings, in spite of their beliefs, or despite their beliefs, experience joy?  Does that make sense? I wondered if it was a gift from God only to his children, to those who are true believers and followers of Christ, because I think it’s more than happiness.  You know, we can derive a lot of happiness in this world from our family, our friends.  We can be happy eating Ben & Jerry’s.  We can be happy on a jog.  We can be happy seeing a really inspiring movie.  But, I think joy goes even deeper than that.  I’m not sure. I’ve just been thinking about it. Angie says, Okay, so let’s define joy, like if we had to put a definition to joy.  Let me look it up joy in the dictionary, and see what the dictionary says.  Let’s define joy.  Let’s define happiness.  And, let’s see where we believe the truth lies.  So, joy, according to Merriam-Webster defines joy as “the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires: DELIGHT”. And then, it boldly says the word DELIGHT.  I like the word delight associated with joy. Another definition would be, “the expression or exhibition of such emotion : GAIETY”. That word they’re equating it to: gaiety.  So. DELIGHT.  GAIETY. Another definition says “a state of happiness or felicity; BLISS”. So, DELIGHT; GAIETY; BLISS. So, it says a state of happiness. So, if happiness is a straight line. Joy on one end, and sadness on the other.  How do you know you’re experiencing joy, if you’ve never experienced sadness, which I don’t know if there’s anyone on earth who hasn’t experienced sadness. But, it’s interesting. The more sadness that you have in life, the joy seems to be, when you look at it that way.  You can focus in on the sadness, and amplify that, and everything’s just more sad.  Then, the Word comes along and reminds you, that, “Oh, hey! The Joy of the Lord is your strength”! MJ said, In fact, I’ll give you three instances that I have seen in each of you.  When I was around Robin at Christmas time, just when she starts singing her songs, and stuff, up like that, I could see the joy, and what’s interesting about that is I started to get joy from her because what she was singing and I could see that with…that thing.  Kevin walks around, when he’s doing household chores, he walks with music. He’s got music in his pocket, and I can feel that joy coming off of him, and then I get some joy out of doing that, out of listening to that.  Angie, she’ll be sitting there doing absolutely nothing and then start singing La,La,La songs. Visit the website for prayer requests and a chance to partner with us here https://angieengstrom.com/godfocusedpodcast/