Joy

“Happiness is within you!”

Happiness or being happy, is within you, because the joy of the Lord is your strength:

The above statement is true only if you have Jesus within you! With Jesus within , there is joy:

Without joy, there is no happiness: I know for myself, if I am not happy, I need to work on renewing the joy of the Lord within:

I always go to the word and look up the scriptures on or about joy: Happiness is actually the outward expression of the joy within: These two go together, for you cannot have one without the other:

You can express a type of happiness in your everyday life, which can look like the real thing but, that is only momentary:

True happiness will show on your face and bring on joy which can be seen on your facial expressions as well as in your speech:

Expressing the joy of the Lord does not come easy for me: It is one thing I must continually work on: This is not because of my upbringing because my Mother and Dad were very good to me, but I , as a young boy and into man-hood, was one of those kids that were made fun of and believe me, it is hard to express joy when you are being made fun of:

I still get very upset when I see young children or helpless adults being made fun of for their looks or inability too do normal things:

I know I mentioned this in my past teachings, but I still remember as I was growing up and going to school, we had a girl in our class that had water on her brain and her head was enlarged:

I would feel so bad for her because daily, other students would hit her and knock he books off of her desk or dump her and her books over onto the floor: However, I must say this, she never retaliated, she would just pick herself and her books up and sit down as if nothing happened:

It is so hard to show joy when you are made fun of: You want to get up and retaliate and knock their blocks off:

But, throughout my years and getting into the word of God, I found out how to put to work the joy of the Lord:

I still get upset when I see kids or adults being made fun of, but instead of getting mad, I pray and forgive that person.

There is still an enemy that constantly wants to keep you down and make you feel depressed and defeated:

When you let that stuff turn into depression, the Joy of the Lord cannot be expressed and without the joy of the Lord, there is no happiness:

Every Christian should be expressing or sporting joy: Joy will lift you up to a higher level and set you free of defeat and depression:

James 1: 2 —- My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into divers (different) temptations:

Galatians 8:22 and 23 — But the fruit of the Spirit, is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith:

Verse 23 — Meekness, temperance, against such there is no law:

All of the above are within you, the moment that you have accepted Christ as your Saviour:

Notice — The word said that these things are in you the moment that you accept Christ: (But they need to be developed)

This all comes out of a Christian after they are developed in Christ: As I said earlier, it is in you when you accept Jesus as your Savior, but it needs to be developed and it takes work and time for you to produce it outwardly so others can see it:

Because of Satan, there will be plenty of times for you to manifest outwardly the joy of the Lord:

Being able to put a smile on your face, when someone does you wrong, does not come automatically, it take time to develop that spirit:

Many times in my life, I just wanted to punch someone right in the face, because they made fun of me or someone else:

As long as there is a devil, you will have plenty of time to demonstrate joy! He (Satan) hates joy, he loves to see us fight and quarrel with each other: He will agitate you until you either fall for his tactics or you some against him with the word of God:

There is an old song we used to sing that went like this — The joy of the Lord is my strength; the joy of the Lord is my strength; the joy of the Lord is my strength ; the joy of the Lord is my strength!

Strength comes from the Lord, through joy: Joy comes through the Love of the Lord, that is inside of us:

Sometimes we tend to put joy and love in a box and lock it up when someone offends us: We tend to grit our teeth and show anger and the enemy (Satan) loves that:

Another thing — When you set joy aside to retaliate, you step out of faith: You cannot retaliate and walk in love at the same time!

Joy is a fruit of the Spirit of the living God! The fruit of the Holy Spirit is — A biblical term that sums up nine attributes of a person or community living in accord with the Holy Spirit, according to chapter 5 of the Epistle to the Galatians: “ But the fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Faithfulness, gentleness, and self control.”

Notice this portion of the statement above — It is the sum of Nine attributes of a person living in accord with the Holy Spirit: In other words, you cannot honestly have or show these attributes unless you have the Holy Spirit residing inside of you:

Your flesh cannot express these attributes unless they come out of a born again, Spirit filled person:

When you show all or any of these nine gifts of the Spirit, you are showing through your expression that you have the Spirit of God in you: He is the one that gives you that joy which gives you that strength to overcome:

My Dad was one that showed these attributes of the Holy Spirit in his life: He would hear people he worked with say nasty or retaliating things about him or others and he would just smile and continue on with whatever he was doing: It was like water running off of a duck's back — It would not stick, he would just smile and move on:

Let’s get ahold of this and watch how fast our faith grows: Do you know that faith won’t work when you are angry or walking in unforgiveness?

These things block the joy of the Lord and stops happiness:

REMEMBER: JESUS IS LORD!

For more of my teaching, go to: williamlear.org