Joy

Theme Verse: But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law. (NKJV)

Joy is hard to find sometimes. But it's something that we can always have in life even when we go through different trials or challenges. The one thing we can keep is Joy. All we have to do is choose it. James 1: 2-5 says My brethren count it all joy when you fall into various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. 4 But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing. 5 If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him. There's a difference between being happy and joyful. Happiness is temporary; for example, I can be happy that I got a new car. I can be happy that I got a Nintendo switch. But eventually, we are going to get tired of those items and probably either put it away and never use it again or trade it in for something new. While joy is permanent, we choose if we want it or not. And while life is hard, sometimes you can control how you handle it. Are you going to try to be positive and trust that God is going to help you through it? Or are you going to whine and complain about everything that happened? This is hard because whenever change hits. We often complain about what we lost instead of what we gained. This is something that I have a hard time with even today because, as humans, we hate change. And we rather have things stay the same and always in our control. However, in reality, nothing is in our control. Something will always be changing regardless of what we do to prevent it. So how are you going to handle it? Whenever you get knocked down, are you going to get back up, or are you going to stay down? Brothers and sisters, I encourage you whenever you face a challenge. Always get back up and know that while we can't always be happy. We can always choose to be Joyful and to remember that God still has our back.