Lives Filled with Glorious Joy!

If you ask people, they will likely say they want to be happy and they make the choices they make so they can be happy. Sometimes, even oftentimes, Christians say the same thing. Yet, happiness depends on circumstances, so no one can be happy all the time as there are things in life which make us happy and things which make us sad. It does not make sense to make one of your "driving principles" to do whatever it is which makes you happy.

God gives us so much more than happiness because He gives us joy! Joy, is completely different from happiness as joy is a gift from God and we can have it no matter what the circumstances we are dealing with in our lives! And not just "joy", but "glorious joy"! Take a look at I Peter 1:3-9 . . . 

³ Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, ⁴ and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, ⁵ who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. ⁶ In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. ⁷ These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. ⁸ Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, ⁹ for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

 Commit to not only teaching, but to modeling this "glorious joy" to the children in your classes. Help them grow up to be people who are not fooled by settling for the counterfeit which Satan offers them, because happiness is a counterfeit for joy. And the truth is we do not have to settle for happiness because God not only offers us glorious joy, but He wants us to experience and live this glorious joy!

The pastor at my church, Jim Samra, is preaching this year on Peter's epistles and he talked about joy yesterday. Take some time to check out this sermon and then share this truth with the children in your class! (You'll find it at this link) Let's be people whose lives are marked by glorious joy!