Joy Spirit Check Up

by Lillian Humphries

How is your joy spirit holding up lately? Are we joyous in everything we do? Moms with small children, are you joyous with your babies? Middle aged women; are you joyous with your teenagers? Working outside of home women, are you joyous with your co-workers? Older women are you joyous for those around you? Here is a good one – married women, are you joyous with your husbands?

Webster’s gives the definition of joy as:
A - The emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.
B - The expression or exhibition of such emotion.

The Bible (ASV) has joy listed 195 times. So this is definite a topic that needs to be addressed.

What does joyous look like to us? It means a little different to each person, I am sure. But overall I like to think of it as our temperature. As woman in the home, our temperature (attitude) makes or breaks our home. The old "saying if Momma ain’t happy, nobody’s happy" really is the truth.

How do we obtain this happiness in the midst of our crazy world and every day business? Our children can’t give it to us; our husband can’t give it to us; our co-workers can’t give it to us, only we can make ourselves feel joy. Unless we are happy within ourselves we can’t find happiness outside ourselves. I’m not saying we are happy with our hair, our eye color, our height, or the big one, our weight those are all things on the outside. We all have good hair days and bad hair days. J

So how do we find the happiness inside ourselves? Of course God has the answer.

Galatians 5:22-25
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, 23 faithfulness, meekness, self-control; against such there is no law. 24 And they that are of Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts thereof.25 If we live by the Spirit, by the Spirit let us also walk.

If we walk in the Spirit of the Lord we will have that inner joy that will keep us going all day and night.

Try and sing this little song that we teach the children and see if you don’t feel joy inside when we sing. It works, it really does.

          I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy
          Down in my heart
          Down in my heart - Where
          Down in my heart
          I've got the joy, joy, joy, joy
          Down in my heart
          Down in my heart to stay
          And I'm so happy
          So very happy
          I've got the love of Jesus in my heart
          And I'm so happy
          So very happy
          I've got the love of Jesus in my heart

Lean on God’s words and experience the joy that can fill our life.