Don't fret or worry. Instead of worrying, pray.
Let petitions and praises shape your worries into prayers, letting God know your concerns. Before you know it, a sense of God's wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It's wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life.
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. Put into practice what you learned from me, what you heard and saw and realized.
Do that, and God, who makes everything work together, will work you into his most excellent harmonies.
I've learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances. I'm just as happy with little as with much, with much as with little. I've found the recipe for being happy whether full or hungry, hands full or hands empty. Whatever I have, wherever I am, I can make it through anything in the One who makes me who I am. -- From Philippians 4 (MSG)
Today's topic is a huge one for us, I think.
What does it mean to have joy? How can our devotion to worship bring joy into our lives?
Isn't the point of our lives to be happy, after all?
I think it's helpful for us to consider what happiness really is. It's a wonderful experience of the mind. It's a truly pleasant emotion, so pleasant, in fact, that we want to re-create it over and over. Which is the problem with happiness. It passes.
Emotions change, most often in relationship to circumstances. In the scripture above, Paul is talking about something much, much, deeper. He's talking about a power that doesn't come and go with the seasons, but that is an essential part of who we are.
Paul is describing what it feels like to have true joy in our lives.
"Joy is a choice," today's devotional reading says, and I think I agree. I might add that it is also a gift. Over the course of his life, Paul had seen God at work so many times, in so many ways, that he chose to receive as truth the gift of God's unfailing presence around and within him.
That allows him to make what to us is surely an amazing statement: "I have learned by now to be quite content whatever my circumstances."
What about us? What would it take for us to choose to believe in God as the giver of abiding joy, whatever the circumstances?
Happy is good, but Joy is so much better.
Grace, Peace and True Joy,
Adam
Today's Simple Step: Write a prayer to God, after reading Philippians 4. Identify one of your life circumstances right now where you will CHOOSE joy, whether you feel joyful or not at this moment. Ask God to show you the way and to help you at every turn.
Today's Big Idea: list the things that bring you joy, regardless of circumstance.
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