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Joy is rooted in gratitude. You cannot have a joyful heart without having a grateful heart. And you cannot be a grateful person and not experience joy. Those who can praise God will experience joy. And those who are joyful will thank God. Joy and gratitude always go together.
EYES WIDE OPEN: PRACTICE GRATITUDE
One trait of a joyful person is the ability to see beyond herself and her circumstances, realizing that the eternal is more important than the temporary and making choices that reflect a hope for the future. But paradoxically, focusing on eternity also mean recognizing the power of this moment. This is the time to choose to be joyful. This is the time to love. And this is the time to be grateful for the goodness God has put in the moment in front of us.
Most of us walk around with a gigantic spiritual blindfold over our eyes, focusing on what we don’t have instead of being thankful for what we do have. Why can she eat chocolate all day long and it never shows up on her hips? Why is she married and I’m not? Why does she get those kids and I got these kids? Why did she get a raise and I didn’t? Why do they live there and I have to live here? Why did I pray for my loved one to be healed and he wasn’t but her loved one was? As C.S. Lewis warns, we have a tendency to “reject the good that God offers us because, at that moment, we excepted some other good.”
Instead of being filled with gratitude for God’s unbelievable goodness, kindness, and generosity to us, we are blinded by our unmet needs and accuse Him of not caring for us. Joy simply cannot grow in the presence of ingratitude.
When your heart does not see the goodness of God, you’re not going to say thank you to Him. You’re not going to experience joy because you’re putting your energy into what you don’t have, what you don’t like about your life, what you wish was different. You ignore all that God has already done and will continue to do in your life.
In the Old Testament, we read about the Israelites building altars to say thank you to God. They built not just the altar in the tabernacle and the temple but also stone monuments in the midst of their travels to thank God for a way he had shown up in their lives.
Instead of being filled with gratitude for God’s unbelievable goodness, kindness, and generosity to us, we are often blinded by our unmet needs and accuse Him of not caring for us. Joy simply cannot grow in the presence of ingratitude.
In Joshua 4, for example, God told Joshua to choose twelve men, one from each tribe of Israel, to take twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan River and place them where the priests who had carried the ark of the covenant had stood.
After this was done, Joshua said to the Israelites:
"In the future when your descendants ask their fathers, “What do these stones mean?” tell them, “Israel crossed the Jordan on dry ground.” For the LORD your God dried up the Jordan before you until you had crossed over. The LORD your God did to the Jordan what he had done to the Red Sea when he dried it up before us until we had crossed over. He did this so that all the peoples of the earth might know that the hand of the LORD is powerful and so that you might always fear the LORD your God." (Josh. 4:21-24)
For generations to come, people passed that pile of stones, an altar that represented something God had done. God knew they were a forgetful people. But they obeyed God’s command to mark His presence in their lives so that they, and those who followed them, would remember His goodness.
You and I are not likely to build a stone monument in our backyard this week. I challenge you, though, to take a walk in the coming days and find a rock—something big enough that it captures your attention when you see it. Bring it home, put it on your desk or kitchen counter, and let it be a visible reminder to say thank you to God for being present in your life. That stone of remembrance will bring you back to a place of being a grateful person. Then you can praise God as King David did in Psalm 126:3: “The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy.”
YOU ARE HERE: LIVE IN THE MOMENT
Living in the moment helps us recognize that God can be found in this moment, whether it contains joy or sorrow. As a perfectionist, I’m always waiting for a perfect moment before I enjoy it. But nothing is ever perfect! That’s why the Bible encourages us to “make the most of every opportunity” for doing good (Eph. 5:16, NLT). Make the most of this moment. Make the most of this opportunity to do good. Make the most of this opportunity to choose joy.
The problem is, we’re greedy. We don’t want just moments. We want weeks and days and years. We want a lifetime. And if we can’t have huge blocks of time that are wonderful and stress-free, we decide we can’t be joyful.
Yet sometimes moments are all we have. You and I can decide that we have this moment, and we will choose to love it. We’re not denying that we have problems. We’re not saying our lives are wrapped neatly with a bow on top and we have everything figured out. It just means that this moment is a gift from God, and we will cherish it. We will love it.
Mike Mason says, “A decision to rejoice in the present changes not only the present, it also changes my view of the past and ignites my future with hope.”
Living in the moment helps us recognize that God can be found in this moment, whether it contains joy or sorrow...Make the most of this moment...Make the most of this opportunity to choose joy.
I’ve stopped demanding that a moment last longer than it can. I don’t require a moment to be anything other than what it is: a brief span of time that has been given by a gracious Father. I will wring every bit of pleasure out of this moment because I don’t know when the next one will come.
We’re rarely satisfied with today; we spend too much time regretting the unrepeatable past and wishing we could get a do-over, or we waste our energy on worry and anxiety about the unknowable future. Either way, today is ignored or minimized.
In Psalm 118:24, we read, “This is the day the LORD has made. We will rejoice and be glad in it.” Try this exercise: Repeat this verse out loud, emphasizing a different word each time. You’ll be amazed at how this verse comes alive. Something will begin to shift deep in your soul, and you will stop insisting that God give you days, weeks, months, years, a lifetime. You’ll stop looking for the perfect time to start living. You will begin to enjoy the moments of your life, starting now.
If you want to increase the level of joy in your heart, you’ve got to decide that whether you are in pain or not, this is the moment you are in. God can be found in this moment.
THE CHOICE TO REJOICE: FIND THE BLESS IN THE MESS
A few years ago, I had a professional stress consultant say that one of the ways to decrease stress and increase joy is to find the “bless in the mess.” Finding the bless in the mess is a secular way of saying Romans 8:28: “We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him.” Even in our worst messes, we can find blessings if we look for them.
Who finds the blessings in the mess? The naturally cheerful, happy people? Maybe. The people who are thin, beautiful, and talented? Not necessarily.
The people who find the blessings in the mess are those who intentionally seek them. In every masterpiece, there is a flaw; in everything good on earth, there is something not quite right. But the parallel train tracks of good and bad also mean that in everything bad we can find something praiseworthy. As it says in Philippians 4:8, “Summing it all up, friends, I’d say you’ll do best by filling your minds and meditating on things true, noble, reputable, authentic, compelling, gracious—the best, not the worst; the beautiful, not the ugly; things to praise, not things to curse” (Message).
Even in our worst messes, we can find blessings if we look for them...It’s only in the messes that we start to develop the vibrant faith in God that leads to daily joy...Lord, give me strength and courage to look for your blessings...
Filling our minds with good things does not mean living in denial. It means looking at the messes of our lives and finding the places where joy is hiding. Those two train tracks of joy and sorrow run inseparably until that day when we will meet Jesus Christ. As you and I live in the meantime, we look for the blessings, we look for what is right.
My own life has had a lot of messes that held a lot of blessings. Having breast cancer and melanoma was definitely a mess, but being sick was ultimately a blessing, opening doors of ministry that might otherwise remained closed.
This much I can tell you: I have discovered a more vibrant, richer walk with Jesus Christ than I have had at any other point in my life. Here’s the bottom line for me: I would rather walk every day in the darkness with a God who remains a mystery than in the light with a God I completely understand. Why? Because it’s only in the messes that we start to develop the vibrant faith in God that leads to daily joy.
PRAYER
Father, I’m afraid. Afraid to believe that I could be different, that I could change. Afraid to believe that you could replace my mourning with dancing and that I could become a woman who feels the sadness of life but still chooses to pursue joy. I want to live today, right now, as someone who chooses joy. Give me strength and courage to look for your blessings on this journey. In Jesus’s name, amen.
For Reflection and Application
1. Where have you forgotten to be grateful to God? Consider beginning a gratitude journal and writing down one blessing every day for thirty days. It can be as simple as a word or phrase.
2. Take a minute to think about the day before you. Think about times in your day when you can close down and fully live in the moments God gives you with family, friends, and Him. Commit to embracing each moment in its imperfection.
Excerpt from Choose Joy: Because Happiness Isn’t Enough by Kay Warren. Used by permission.
