Where Can I Find Joy?

“Where the joy is in this sort of life. Where is the fulfillment?" Christians started down a very steep decline when they started buying into the lie that we need to find some sort of fulfillment in this life. God did not place us here on this earth with the purpose of giving us days filled with happiness and other good feelings. We are here to serve and love others, and you know what? It is in the service and loving of others that we begin to feel, yep you guessed it, fulfilled. It just comes naturally when we are following the path the Lord has laid out before us. It doesn’t mean circumstances will change or our days will be filled with great wonderful feelings. It just means that way deep down in our spirits we will feel peace and fulfillment because we are doing the will of our Father.

If there is one area of life that I feel can lead us into danger spiritually, it is living our lives based on our feelings. If I lived according to my feelings, there would be days when my family would go hungry, my children would go uneducated and babies wouldn’t be changed. Oh! And my marriage wouldn’t survive! I have days when I wake up and don’t feel like cooking, cleaning, teaching, loving my husband and all the other things that living this God given role entails. If I did, perhaps, give into my feelings on any given day, the next day would be chaos and then the next, and then the next. Where is the joy in that sort of life?

The joy in an “off” day may not be felt until you fall into bed at night (exhausted), stare at the ceiling and think about how you handled such a day. You woke up to a grouchy toddler, after being up all night yourself. Some of the children were fighting already. The home was in disarray and by 9:00am it already seemed chaos would rule the day. Instead of giving in to the frustration and tears welling inside of you, you gathered your little chicks and knelt to pray with them. You asked the Lord for His perfect strength and blessed the children with your prayers of thanks for each one of them.

When done praying you turned on the praise music and joyfully (even though you weren’t quite feeling it) exclaimed, “Children, let’s bless daddy and the Lord today by working together to get the house nice and tidy. Jimmy, you dust the chairs. Sally, you sweep under the table.” You work as a family to dust some of that frustration away. Jimmy did give attitude about helping out, but you calmly disciplined him for his attitude. You didn’t allow discipline issues with your child to rule your spirit or your day.

So now you are lying in your bed, house strangely quiet (and clean), and you realize an interesting feeling in your spirit! Is that JOY? Your choice to go against the feelings at the first part of the day, have turned into joy at the END of your day. That joy will begin to flood into the next day and the next and the next. Before you know it, you will be feeling more joy than all the frustrations you left behind!

I can honestly say, that the days when my heart is full of joy and even fulfillment in this role the Lord has given me, are days when I am keeping busy. I have had days when I just wasn’t keeping busy. My mind was busy, mind you. Busy with thoughts of all I should be doing and am not; thoughts of what others should be doing; thoughts that turn into a whirlwind of nothingness! When I am busy, sure my body is tired, but my heart is vibrant. It is during times of idleness when satan begins his work of chipping away our joy. BE VERY CAREFUL! Do NOT allow idle time in your day. If you are, then expect your joy to be robbed and the spirit of discontent to take over. Remember the age old saying, “An idle mind is the devil’s playground.”