According to www.dictionary.com (a resource I value at work where medical terminology is a foreign language to me), the meaning of joy is "the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying". Breaking this down, according to this definition, joy is 1) an emotion, 2)represents a feeling greater than happiness and 3) is caused by experiencing something good or satisfactory.
Therefore, to feel joy (a subjective state-emotion) is to experience almost an ecstatic feeling that is a result of something amazing.
So why is it that many Christians, who clearly have reason to experience joy, as a result of Jesus sacrificing his life in their place,and then defeating death, (something I consider to be flippin' amazing) often seem to lack this 'great delight or happiness'? I have a sneaky feeling most Christians don't truly appreciate what Jesus has done for them. Now that might sound somewhat sacrilegious and out of order-but come on, having to grasp that someone who is innocent, died in your place for everything you have done is slightly abstract. In a selfish culture where we are taught to think only about ourselves, where for the first few years of our life, we see the world through egocentric eyes, believing the world revolves around us, its hardly surprising is it?
Last year I really struggled coming to terms with some stuff in my life, and I became pretty bitter and angry. I just focused on how things affected me and my life and always looked at the negative aspects of things. Come the new year, I realised I really needed to get my act together. God hadn't created me to live life like this, and he certainly hadn't given me so much amazing stuff and so many amazing people in my life for my to be so unappreciative. After praying about it and asking God to show me my life in a different light, literally overnight I changed from being a grumpy 20-going-on-80-year-old into a girl who appeared to have got her youth back! This is such an important lesson to learn- if we take a step back from depressing earthly life of the credit crunch (which by the way is a load of rubbish!seriously...) and wars (noticably not in our country), and actually look at what Jesus did for us and all the things we have, man, we would be full of joy to overflowing.
To me, being full of joy and having that aspect of the fruit of the spirit is such an important aspect of life as a Christian. Christians are supposed to have a different outlook to life and act in a different way to non-christians (hence why Paul outlined the Fruit of the spirit and the acts of the sinful nature in Galatians).
I would so encourage you to weekly or even daily make a list of all the things you have to be thankful for. I havent done it for a while, but I think I'm going to start again, and refill the joy in my life that has been slipping away a bit!
1 comment:
your awesome honey!x
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