My Joy

This Thanksgiving, I am grateful for my source of joy.

Feeling joy while feeling sad sounds contradictory. A wonderful pastor once said that the world is a fallen place, and sometimes it falls on us. It can feel this way in our relationships, families, health, and our jobs.

In all of these things, we can find brief blimps of happiness like promotions, a new relationship, setting gym records, or the birth of a child. But just as quickly as these exhilarating things happen, they can be taken away;not because God is mean, but because the world is fallen. And sometimes it falls on us. We lose a loved one, we get laid off, our marriage fails, some other person got the promotion or job that we were so hopeful for.

Putting your source of joy in God will completely change your perspective on life. I'm not saying that you'll never feel grief or disappointment, but inside of that grief, you know there are bigger, better things to come. You know that because of the hope that you have in Christ, true joy is attainable;the kind that is everlasting and won't be gone in a flash.

I have to remind myself of this in different seasons of life, specifically when things don't go my way or when those grief bubbles rise up from losing family members. This is also something hard to swallow while going through hard times; sinful nature wants to self-loathe and hyperfixate on oneself, but in these times, we ought to look up at our lifeline; our real source of joy.

Right now I am working on memorizing 1 Peter 1:3-9 to instill the knowledge of where my joy comes from.

1 Peter 1:3-9 NIV

[3] Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, [4] and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, [5] who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. [6] In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. [7] These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. [8] Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, [9] for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.