What to Do When You Can't Feel Joy: Breaking Through Barriers to Lasting Joy as a Christian Woman

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Speaker 1: Life Audio. Hey, there head their Creek war here. I'm glad you're listening to the Compared to You podcast today. Here's my question for you. That's February. How are you doing with joy this year? Is joy something that overflows in your life? Or is joy something that you feel like you work hard to find or act like you have it but it just doesn't feel real most days. If that's where you're at today, this episode is for you today. We're talking about what do you do and you can't feel joy? Where do I find joy? How do I grow in joy? That's where we're going today. I'm so glad you're here for it. Hey. I want to tell you about something that we did just for you, and I want to make sure you take advantage of it. It's a free mini course available at improvedbody image dot com. It's called Obsessed to Blessed and I'm getting so much positive feedback from the women that have jumped in with that. There's a lot there. It's just a couple modules, it's absolutely free, and it really could be helpful to you if you're lacking enjoy and if you think your body image is the reason for that. So go to improvebody image dot com backslash obsessed, dash to dash Blessed, Obsessed to bless The link is also in the show notes and grab that free mini course.

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Speaker 2: Now let's get to today's episode.

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Speaker 1: How do we grow enjoy? That's the million dollar question today and where I want us to go is I'm going to start by sharing my story. It's been a few years since I shared my story on the podcast in this way, and so maybe if you're nearer to the show, you've never even heard my story, but I want to share it today in the context of the struggle I had, even as a Christian woman, even as someone who knew all the God and Jesus answers, a knew scripture, but man, it felt hard to find joy in my life. And so I'm going to share my story, and then I'm going to share with you three things that I think block us from feeling and finding joy, the joy that Jesus kind of tells us we should have and can have as Christians in this life here now on earth, no matter what the circumstance is. And then we're going to talk about three ways that you can grow in joy. I've been immersed in this topic this week, as I've been preparing to teach on joy at our women's conference at our church, shout out to Lakeview Bible Church, Austin and woot woot. And I thought, as I was preparing with It's like, you know what, my podcast listeners could probably be encouraged by this too, So I hope you are. Let's jump right into it. So my story, it's always funny for me to tell my testimony because I feel like it is like the most vanilla, most boring testimony out there. I used to feel jealous, envious of people who had these dramatic testimonies of you know, being caught in addiction or just like having a long rap sheet of things and feeling like God just rescued them and restored them and healed them and changed them and helped them just do a one eighty turn from where they were. And my story isn't like that at all. In fact, did I use the word vanilla because I feel like it's pretty vanilla, Like a white girl raised in the suburbs in church three times a week, started going to Christian school in seventh grade, went to Christian in college, went to Christian graduate school. Boring and Honestly, I was a good girl. I mean, yeah, remember lying a few times, twisting the truth colorfully, omitting facts sorts of things. But I felt like as far as living the Christian life went, I was doing pretty well. I hadn't really done anything that bad. I had avoided all the quote unquote major sins, and yet I did not have joy. Now was I happy sometimes? Of course, of course there were moments of happiness, but a lot of that happiness had to do with achievement, and I learned pretty quickly that the buzz of happiness after achievement fades really fast. And I just had this one, like all consuming struggle, and it was something that was just always in my head all the time, twenty four hours a day. Okay, maybe not twenty four hours a day, but I'm pretty sure I dreamt about it too. And that was changing my body, you see. Starting around the third grade, I remember looking into the full length mirror in my bedroom, wearing pink pleather pants and deciding that my legs were too fat. And I went to school and I looked around and I noticed that the legs of the other little girls were not as big as mine, and therefore I did have a problem. My legs were indeed too fat. That was third grade. So by middle school I was dieting with my mom. Whatever diet she was on, I was on too, just maybe to a lesser degree, but I tried to follow the points plan or only drink the shakes two times a day and need a healthy dinner, you know, whatever plant she was falling, I was trying to do it too. By high school, though, you know, I'm an overchiever, I was like, ah, following a plan, like I can do better than that. I can just not eat. And so I became a goal of mine every day to try not to eat. And what happened is I could make it most of the day, you know, rush out the door to school, be busy at school all day, skip lunch, which is a very unfortunately typical thing for high school girls to do. I could do after school activities, get home around five o'clock and have made it most of that time or all of that time without eating. But then I get home and I'd be ravenous, and so I would snack and I would grab things, and I would eat a normal dinner with my family, and I would just eat, eat, eat, and I would go to bed feeling like I'd done something wrong, like I had failed because I vowed to myself that I wasn't gonna eat and I broke val i ate and that happened almost every single day. And the thing is, I didn't know that was disordered thinking or disordered behavior. I mean, in some ways, like people would applaud you for being able to skip the meal or say no to the pizza or whatever it was, it felt like I was doing something good by choosing not to eat. By college, my sophomore year, I had lost my period for about nine months, and at that time there wasn't a category of eating disorders for people like me. If you were anorexic, you were underweight and you looked like you were on and after school special you were super thin. And if you were a bulimic, you were purging. And I wasn't able to purge, although I did try, and I did feel some shame about not being able to do that, And it felt like to me, joy was something that I could attain if I just got my body the way I wanted it to be, like I had again, I had the God of Jesus answer, Yeah, Jesus is where the joy is joy of the Lord is my strength. I could tell you all the verses, and yet what I really believed, right, because what we believe is more than just what we think. What we believe is how we act. Right. If you say you believe something and then you act otherwise, you don't really believe what you say you believe. And so I said, I believe Jesus was where the joy was. But the way I acted was that the joy was actually going to be found in something here on this earth. That the joy was going to be found when I could get my body just the way I wanted it to be. I wanted to be a certain size, I wanted to look a certain way. I wanted certain parts to be shaped in a certain way. I wanted my skin to be clear, I wanted my air to be good. All of those things sessions of mine, and I chased body change, thinking that's where I'd find joy. I told you about my restrictive tendencies. But what I didn't tell you was when I got out of college and moved to Washington, d C. To work on Capitol Hill, I discovered exercise. Now, I dabbled an exercise. I did some running that sort of thing. But I was able to go into a gym and see those fitness instructors, and I had a thought when I saw them. I thought, you know what if I could just be one of those people with a little microphone and the word instructor across my back. I am sure those people they're satisfied, they have joy, they're not trying to fix their bodies. They're there, they've arrived, and so I made that a personal goal. Now I had jobs, like full time jobs, but on the side, I was pursuing becoming a certified fitness instructor, and eventually I started teaching classes after work, before work, anytime I could, because that was how I was really going to prove myself. The only problem was it didn't work and I didn't find more joy once I started teaching kickboxing or spinning classes. In fact, almost app as it happened, I got to that place that I had always dreamt of being, and instead of feeling free and alive, man, I compared myself more than ever. I noticed every woman in that room, in that aerobic studio, who had better legs than I did, who was more in shape than I was, who was thinner than I was it didn't work, and then I realized, Okay, you know what, maybe this hasn't been really about my body. Maybe this has really been about me being single. If I could just fix my single status, then that's where the joy comes, right. I've always longed to be married. I could just find a man, get married, my body image issues will disappear, and joy will flood over me like a tsunami. And so finally, at age thirty, my husband and I met on a little dating app. At the time, it actually was in an app. It was a computer program appstentdic Sis, then called e Harmony. We had both just turned thirty years old. He was a marine fighter pilot, and when I got matched with him, I clicked yes please. I wasn't really a choice, and I felt like I was cooking and we started dating and we were just kind of together after that first date, and we got married about fifteen months later. And I remember distinctly waking app after our wedding night. We were in a little hotel room in Washington, d C. Downtown by the White House. So the rooms at those hotels are not very large, and I remember sitting up in bed and looking in this very old antiquish mirror that was kind of in front of the bed, and thinking, I don't feel any different, like I am supposed to feel like the happiest woman on earth right now because I am married, and I still just feel like me. I feel the same. It didn't work. I was so devastated that it didn't work. In fact, I was so devastated that didn't work. I pretty much spent most of our honeymoon blaming my husband, like, you must be doing something wrong because I don't feel the way I thought it was going to feel. You must not be saying the right things, you must not be acting the right way, Like this is not what I wanted it to be, and it must be your fault. And as you can imagine, that didn't make for a very wonderful honeymoon. Our journey into marriage was a little rough. Four months into marriage, I actually got pregnant, and again I thought, well, this is where the joy is because I've always wanted to be a mom. I'm gonna have a baby. I mean, I'm just gonna be flooded with warm, fuzzy mommy feelings and this is going to solve everything. This is going to make our marriage better. This is going to take away my body image issues because I am going to have another person to keep alive. So how in the world could I have time to obsess over what I look like Like I'm going to have something important to do. And I really believe motherhood would solve everything, that it would bring the joy that I had longed for, and instead it was just hard. Oh man. I loved, loved, loved our babies. We had four in just under five years, no twins, so I was pregnant or breastfeeding for a solid four plus years. And I loved each of those babies. But I struggled too. I had some postpartum depression in there, even maybe a little bit of postpartum psychosis. I did not feel joyful. I was living this dream that I had always always wanted to be a wife, to be a mom. I had a great husband, I had beautiful, healthy children, and yet I did not feel joy. And the bigger struggle was I thought I had the cut in Jesus answer right, Like I listened to the sermons, Jesus is where the joy is. You know, find joy and the Lord. Just get to know the Lord and then you have joy. And I was like I do know the Lord, I do read the Bible. Sometimes I pray a lot, I go to church, I'm involved in church. Where's my joy? Why don't I have it? And so that's where're going today. I'm going to continue to share with you my story as I share with you what I discovered about why I didn't feel joy, and then I'm gonna give you three strategies for increasing and joy. Okay, So to begin, we have to define terms correctly. Okay. So a lot of times we might say we're in the pursuit of happiness, and there's nothing wrong with happiness. Happiness is fantastic. But there's a difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is really sourced by circumstances or outcomes or experiences. I did this thing, I experienced this thing and made me happy. Joy is deeper. The source of joy is always and only Jesus and our salvation in him. Happiness is more of an emotional response, whereas joy goes beyond our feelings. It's a deeper posture. It's a more settled place of knowing who you are and who you belong to. And so that makes it different from just feeling happiness. Happiness is temporary and changeable, whereas joy is enduring and resilient, and happiness answers the question is life going well right now? If life's going well, then I'm happy. If it's not going well, maybe I'm not so happy. But joy answers the question is my life grounded in something or really someone secure. If we're looking for happiness, we're vulnerable to stress, loss, and disappointment because those things can make our happiness that disappear in a flash. But joy is different because joy is able to coexist with grief, with hardship, and with uncertainty. You see, joy doesn't deny pain. Joy atlasts our pain. So why couldn't I find joy? I think I couldn't find joy because I spelled joy wrong. Okay, I don't mean that literally. I know it's spelled joy, But I thought that JOI stood for just over yonder. I thought joy was something that I needed to strive for, work for, try to find, achieve. And what I've learned now is that misspelling joy is what creates that that we all feel sometimes. And there's three main ways that I think we search for just over yonder joy. And those three ways are we believe that joy comes when you get it all right, that joy comes when you get there it's an arrival based joy, or that joy comes when you just get positive. We just have great positive thinking. So we're going to go through those three lies because these are lies. This is not where joy comes from. Joy comes from Jesus alone. And a lot of us believe a Jesus plus gospel that joy will come when I have Jesus plus this. And these are those three lies that kind of fill in the blank, and that Jesus plus equation. So the first one is just over yonder. Joy believes that joy comes when you get it all right. I'm gonna call this get it right joy, and get it right joy looks forward to do list for success right, Like if I just do parenting just right, if I do just right, I have to do this, this, this, this, then I will unlock joy. It's like joy is locked in this combination lock box. And if I do this three clicks to the right, and if I do this, seven clicks the left, and if I do this fourteen clicks to the right and boom, the box of joy is unlocked for me. We can even treat our Christian life in this way, right, we can believe that I need to be a good Christian three clicks to the right, seven clicks to the left. If I just do all the things, then I will feel joy. But in that in even just doing all the things, even if they are good things, we miss the giver of joy, We miss Jesus, and so believing that you unlock the formula for joy when you get it right, what does this lead to? A friend? This leads to perfectionism, legalism, It leads to this be the best or do better kind of drive, or we're always shoulting all over ourselves, like you should do this, you should do this, you should this. We are striving to do all the things and friend you know as well as I do, especially especially in the realm of body image issues or what we may call health. Right now, doing all the things is almost enough to make you crazy. In fact, when I give this talk, when I gave it this weekend, I shared a hilarious video from Instagram, which you can see in the YouTube version of this podcast, and this woman is talking about like what if you tried to change your body in the decade of January And she just goes through hilarious lists of like you have to do all the things, and after you do all the things, you have to make sure you get the nine hours of sleep, and you have to make sure that you're not stressed about doing all the things. And we know what this feels like. Don't we get it all right? Joy? When we believe that if we just get it all right, like a perfect combination. A friend that puts us on a treadmill, and it's a treadmill that doesn't stop because we think we're getting in the treadmill, like we're going to get there. I'm gonna get my health right, I'm gonna get my body ride, I'm gonna get my marriage or at my family right, my Christian life right. And you get on, you start running, run and run and run and run in but you're on a treadmill. You never really arrive anywhere. And in fact, what happens is as you try to get it right and try to get it right and try to get it right, the pressure increases. So it's beep, beep beep. Before you started maybe running out of four speed, and now you're at a five, and then you're at a six. Beep, beep beep, beep. Now you're at a seven. Okay, now we're gonna add some incline. Beep beep beep. And you're running and you run it, and you running and you run it and you running and running, and what happens, Oh, frun. It is exhausting, and instead of finding joy, you find burnout, You find stress. The joy that you thought would come, that would unlock when you've got it all right, never comes that way. In the talk I gave, I created a lot slide with a theme song for every one of these lies, and I think the theme song forget it Right Joy is the song from Greatest Showmen, I Love the Greatest Shoman, and it's the song where she sings I'm not gonna try to sing it for you, but it's never enough, never enough, never never, never enough, never, never right. That's what happens when we believe joy comes from getting it all right. And so right now, I'm just gonna ask you a question, what are you chasing? Are you chasing Jesus? Because if you're chasing Jesus, you won't be exhausted, you won't be stressed out, you won't be on a treadmill to nowhere. In fact, it's more like being on the walking path. Right where you're walking. You're getting somewhere through the airport, but you're actually getting to a destination with him. You're not on a treadmill to nowhere. Are you looking for joy to come from personal fulfillment, from accomplishments, friend, this is not where joy comes from. Accomplishments can mark what we've done or who we are. But joy blossoms when we rest in belonging to Jesus and what He's done for us. Okay, Our second lie for just over yonder joy is that joy comes when you arrive. And I call this get their joy. Joy becomes a destination if I can just get there. For some of you, it's if I can just lose enter number here pounce. If I can just get my body right. You heard that in my story. If I can just get to the next stage of these kids. Oh the baby days are hard. Oh the tather days are hard. Oh the preschool days are hard. Oh the middle school days are hard. If I can just get out of car seats, if I can just get out of diapers, if I can just get everyone like driving themselves to school, If I can just get everyone out of high school. If I can just get everyone off the payroll, like friend, it does not end. If we believe if the joy will come when we arrive somewhere in this earth, we are never going to find joy because that's not how life works. The only heaven we were created to experience will come in the next life, not in this one. So in this life it's just a series of not destinations. But maybe like BUCkies, Okay, like it's great to stop at BUCkies. You feel a little elated when you stop at BUCkies, which is kind of like this Texas. To call it a truck stop or rest stop is completely underestimating BUCkies. But it's just this amazing, magical place that has all kinds of drinks and snacks and a thousand gas pumps, and you can feel happy and joyful to some degree when you were there. But then and it's really not joy, right, because it's happiness because it goes away as soon as you pull out of BUCkies and get back on the highway. And so believing that joy comes when we arrive is really believing the Jesus plus gospel. Then I need Jesus plus this thing in my life. I need Jesus plus this next job. I need Jesus plus this next season. I need Jesus plus this next vacation. Or maybe it's as simple as every day you spend waiting to get to the place where at nine o'clock you can sit on the couch with your ice cream. That is your destination, that is your arrival point. Every day, a friend, you miss joy all day long, believing that it can only come at nine pm, when you have your U time. And that's not how we were designed to live. That's not the kind of joy that God created us for. And so when we live in this lie of joy comes when you arrive. There's another theme song that we use. It's a very famous theme song from the Wizard of Us and it goes like this, somewhere over the rainbow, I'm not going to sing for you. We believe that joy is out there. It's just somewhere over the rainbow way a pie bluebird is singing, But it's not here. It's there. And here's what I want to tell you about both the lie that joy comes on your arrive and the lie that when joy comes when you get it right. Both of these lies are something called idolatry. And idolatry is something that in my own story, I didn't think I had a problem with, right, I didn't have any idols in my house. I didn't look at the Buddhist statue in the Chinese restaurant. There was nothing I was bowing down to idolatry. Check, I don't have that problem. But here's what's true. I had made an idol out of marriage. I believed that once I got to that destination, once I had that title of missus, oh, everything in my life would be different. That was the kind of salvation that I needed. Once I got my body a certain way, that was the salvation I needed. Once I got that title of mom, that was the salvation I needed. I believed the God and Jesus answer of salvation for later that I was saved through what Jesus did on the cross, and that that would be super helpful when I died. But for here on earth, what I really needed to save me were some of these things that were part of my Jesus plus gospel. I really needed Jesus plus a better body, Jesus plus a husband, and then a better husband, Jesus plus motherhood, and then babies that eventually were potty trained, and babies that eventually could walk themselves, and babies that eventually could lock their own car seats, and babies that eventually could go to school all day long. And because it just never comes, because that's how idols work. Idols are a block between us and God. And whenever, however, we believe anything on this earth could be responsible for our joy. Again, I'm not saying happiness, I'm saying joy. Whenever we believe there's something on this earth that we can create, chase, find a tain that will bring us joy that only comes from Jesus. We have created an idol. We are looking to something that is not Jesus to save us, and it's going to be a roadblock every single time. And that's grace. Really, God's not going to let that idole satisfy. God's not going to let that idol bring me joy. And that's what he showed me. I was in my mid thirties and my husband was listening to a sermon by a pastor named Tim Keller, and he was talking about modern day idolatry. And I heard the Lord whisperhither, this is your problem. You've made your body an idle and find that changed everything in my relationship with Jesus. Right. I mean I'd read my bibble before, I pray before, but I was praying and reading my Bible with a block with an idol standing in the way between me and really having faith, trust and belief in Jesus. Oh. I mean I said I had all of those things, but in reality, what I was looking for to bring me joy was not Jesus. It was weight loss, it was body change. It was a certain feeling I was supposed to get from my husband. It was a certain feeling I was supposed to get from being a mom. And that's why idols are so dangerous. Idols are what block our joy. And so right now, I'm just going to ask you to pause, just for a moment. In what ways have you tried to chase joy through arrival? In what ways have you tried to chase joy through getting it? All? Right? Can you name any right now? Run? These could be idols in your life. They are what might be blocking your joy. And the great news is there's a cure for this. Right if this is just like normal girl stuff, like oh, everyone struggles with us, there's no cure. But when we can't recognize the idols that we've constructed in our lives, there is a cure, and the cure's Jesus. For John one nine says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, there is a cure. So think through, how have I tried to chase joy through arrival? How have I tried to chase joy through getting rid? What have I believed would save me here on this earth? And whatever those answers are, those things are your idols, and you have the opportunity today to confess them. And that's a turning point. Our repentance, our confession, the forgiveness we receive from Christ is a turning point that allows us to truly reconnect with Him and experience his joy. You see, going back to the idol of arrival, joy is not a place you arrive. I mean we will arrive there in the next life in heaven. But joy for now is an arrival. It's the way we walk with Jesus. Okay. The third and final lie is joy comes when you get positive. I call this Jedi mind trick joy. But this mean's tricky, right, because there's nothing wrong with being more of an optimist right of thinking things are gonna work out of believing the best right. Some of that's biblical even, But there's a big difference between positive thinking and faith saturated trust. And I think sometimes, especially in our culture where man the New Age movement is exploding, a lot of these New Age mantras sound really close to scripture. They sound good. You could press like on them, and it may have been boasted by a witch. Ugh, just say a true story. Positive thinking is different than faith saturated trust. You see, positive thinking confuses the hope we have in and through Christ only with optimism but just thinking good thoughts. Positive thinking is really about self confidence versus God confidence. Because positive thinking, if that's what's gonna work for me, then I am reliant on myself to train my brain to think good thoughts. And that's not having confidence that God is sovereign and has a good plan and is in charge. That's me having confidence in the fact that maybe I can make things better by thinking good thoughts to get them. Positive thinking minimizes the reality of suffering, right ah Man Jesus said in this world. You will have trouble. There is suffering that we will all have to endure, unfortunately, just as part of living in this broken, fallen world. And to be like, nope, everything he's great, everything's great, everything's great, all through your trials. Man is to deny the pain and the heart and the heart Jesus doesn't ask us to deny them. He asks us to bring it to him. He wants to be our comforter. He wants to walk with us through our suffering. He doesn't want us to deny or minimize it. Positive thinking puts a burden on the believer to sustain their joy just by keeping a certain mindset and friend It's never been our responsibility to sustain our joy. Right, our joy is found in Jesus. He is the only one who can sustain it. And the final thought here is the Bible teaches us that joy is the fruit of the spirit. Joy is not a technique, it's not a Jedi mind trick. It's a fruit that blooms, blossoms, and develops in us as we are rooted and grounded in Him. So joy comes when you get positive. I think that has a theme song too. It's an old song, it goes, you've got to accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative, don't mess with mister in between. Perhaps you've heard that song, and that song is all about just focus on what's good forget about what's bad. And as we've already discussed, I don't think that's what's required of us as believers. True joy doesn't deny pain, It at lasts our pain. So what positive thinking says, change your thoughts and you'll feel better, true joy says you are held even when your thoughts fall apart. I think the biggest struggle we have in chasing just over yonder joy is that we tend to confuse the good gifts of God with God, the good gift giver. In fact, that's what all of our idols are. Our idols are these good gifts of God we put in a wrong place. Right. Our marriages are good. If you're a mom, that's good. If you want to pursue a health goal, there's nothing wrong with that. That could be good. But the problem is when we take these good things, these good gifts from Him, like our bodies, which are good gifts to Steward, and we put them in a place where we believe they will bring us the joy that only he does. That's when we create an idol. Here's an illustration to kind of help drive this point home. There once was a one who really wanted to be engaged. She could not wait to be engaged. It was going to be so fabulous when she was engaged, because she was gonna have the ring and be able to plan the wedding, and it was just, oh, it's gonna be wonderful. So finally the day comes, her lovely, lovely boyfriend buys her a beautiful ring. He proposes just the right way, and she gets that ring. She said yes, and she can't stop staring at the ring. In fact, she doesn't even look up at the boyfriend. She just says, yes, thank you, I'm engaged. I'm so happy, I'm finally engaged. And she starts obsessing over the ring. She sits around her home staring at the ring. She polishes the ring. She's talking to all of her friends about the ring. She can't take calls from her now fiance because she's too busy making sure that her ring is just perfect. She's taking pictures of the ring, taking videos of the ring for Instagram. Boyfriend fiance stops by, Hey can we go do something? Sorry, you don't have time. I need to think more about my ring and focus on my ring. I mean, this is ridiculous, right and yet and yet? Friend? Do we do this with God? When he gives us a good gift? Do we obsess focus on put all of our hopes and dreams and energy into the gift instead of acknowledging the giver? Oh, I've done it? Have you done it too? You see? The truth is true joy. It's not far away, It's as close as the giver is to us. It's just true joy can't be spelled just over beyond her. True joy is found in our closeness to Jesus. And that block to our joy. What blocks our joy is anything we've chased, pursuit or trusted in that isn't Him. And so how do we find true joy? Well, I've got three a's for you. We find true joy through aligning, abiding, and anchoring. True joy comes when you align, abide, and ancher. And if we want to be unblocked from feeling joy, if we want that box of joy that we've been trying to unlock, beginning at all. Right, if we want that to unlock for us, then these are the three things we must focus on. Aligne, abide, and anchor. So let's start with the line. We have to align with the giver. Joy comes when we order our lives rightly, when we're not placing the gift above the giver. And so my question for you today is what has first place in your life? You know, I like to talk about the treasure principle from the Book of Matthew, where Jesus says, you know where your heart is, excuse me, where your money is, your heart will be. Also, where your treasure is, your heart will be also. And I think this supplies to all the different idols we can create in our lives. Right, whatever you make your treasure is where your heart will be. And so if your treasure isn't Jesus, if your treasure is in your relationship, in your role as a mom, and your job at work and your title at work, in your bank account, in your body and the way you look. If these things have become your treasure and you don't feel joy, that's why you've got the wrong treasure. And if you're wondering, well, how do I know if something's become my treasure. I mean, is there a test for that? There is a test for that. I'm so glad you asked. The test is this. Look at your bank account and look at your time. And when I say time, I don't just mean like blocked time on your calendar. I mean what do you spend time thinking about. There's a great quote by Sir Thomas Chalmers. I think it is and it says, what you think about in your solitude is your religion. I'm gonna say it one more time. Well, you think about in your solitude when you're alone, that's your true religion. So fun. If you're spending all your time thinking about your body, if you're spending all your time thinking about the fact that you're wish your marriage was better or that you're not married, spend all your time thinking about your kids and all the problems and what they're doing and how they could be better and how they're accomplished, and start making you feel happy. When these things are not sufficient treasures, right, they will not bring you joy. They'll bring you moments of happiness, but they will not bring you joy. Jesus is the joy. He must be your treasure we want to align. We can look at John fifteen ten through eleven for some more clues about what Jesus means about aligning. It reads like this, if you keep my commandments, which one all of them, friend, not the ones you choose to keep. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. Joy comes from living how God asks us to live, and that means no idols. It also means loving Him, loving others, and a host of other commandments. Is not a long list, friends. In fact, I think most of us make longer lists of what we need for our own joy and happiness than Jesus ever did. But we must keep his commands. We must do and live as He asks us to do and live, and then we will align with Him and find joy. The second way to find joy is abide. We abide with a giver. Psalm sixteen eleven says in your presence there is fullness of joy. Joy comes not from getting the thing, doing the thing, arriving at the thing. Joy comes from closeness to God. Instead of focusing on where you're going, focus on who is with you. That's good news. Going into something hard, going into something great, who is with you, Abide with him. The final a is anchor, anchor yourself to the giver. We rejoice in hope of the glory of God Romans five two. Biblical joy is sustained by an eternal perspective. It's not the power of positivity. How it's knowing that even if everything in this life kind of sucks now or for a long time, Man, this isn't my final hope. This isn't the end game. I have eternity with Jesus. This life is just a blip, and so I don't have to Jedi mind trick my way into finding joy. I can just lean into him and rest in his truth that He's got me. He's never gonna leave me or forsake me, and even if things are hard, he is still there. Friend. We must believe that we cannot find true joy outside of Jesus. It's just not possible. Yep. We can find some happiness, Yep. We can find some personal fulfillment, but those things are always subject to change, and true joy is not. So we talked about spelling joy wrong, that real joy is not spelled joh, why just over yonder? How is true joy spelled? Well, there's a number of options here, Okay. I grew up singing a song in Sunday School called Jesus and others and you what a wonderful way to spell joy? Which is a great way to spell joy? Right, Matthew tells us that like these are the two great commands. Love Lordia God with all your heart, soul, mind, Love your neighbor as yourself. Right, Jesus others you. That's a great way to spell joy. Or Jesus over you. What do I want? Oh? What is Jesus want? That's a great way to spell joy. But I think the best way to spell joy is Jesus. Oh yeah, okay, that one might be a little corny. I get it. But he must increase so I can decrease, is what John three point thirty says. Right. If I make much of him instead of much of his gifts, instead of much of my plans, instead of much of myself, that is the surefire way that I will find joy. Tim Keller puts it like this, If we truly believe in the Trinity. If we believe that God, Jesus all the Spirit, if we believe that they are who they say they are, then here's the result. Your absolute highest purpose, your meaning, and the only way you'll ever be happy is if you are glorifying God above all other things. We live for God's glory. Joy and delight are the natural byproduct. I don't have to live to arrive. I don't have to live to get it all right. I don't have to just be positive. Friend. He is where the joy and delight are found. And that's good news because it takes the pressure off. It's all up to Him and I just have to abide a line and anchor. Friend. I hope this has encouraged you today. I hope if you've struggled like I have to find joy, that you will focus on this three a's today. Pause and think about what might be blocking your joy. In what ways are you chasing pursuing joy that aren't just pursuing Jesus. Confess those to him. He will be faithful to forgive them, and then rest in his word, in his truth that He's faithful, He's got you, and that he is where the joy is found Hey, thanks for listening today. I hope something to has helped you stop comparing and start living. Bye bye. They compared to podcast is proud to be part of the Life Audio Podcast Network. For my great Christian podcast, I hope you go to life audio dot com. Hey, friend, would you check out the date on that episode you just listened to? Yeah, it's been a minute. Listening to old podcast is almost like reading my diary from several years ago. In some cases, it's even a little embarrassing. So instead of listening straight through season by season, can I encourage you to skip ahead? I released brand new episodes every Tuesday and Friday, and if you're not sure where to start, you can go to improvebody Image dot com find the start here button and I've got several episodes listed and categorized so you can find the topics that are of most interest to you. Your time is valuable, so skip straight to the good stuff. I'm glad you're here. Thanks for letting me be a part of your Body Image and Food of Freedom journey.