Choose Joy! (1 of 6)
Series: Joy Ride
Joe Alain
Philippians 1:3-6
Outline:
1. The Search for Joy
2. The Source of Joy
3. The Secret of Joy
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:3-6
If you didn't know better, you might think that Paul wrote this thank you letter to the Philippians from some exotic location in the S. Pacific. The letter is filled with joy, but Paul is writing from prison, not paradise. But even in prison God has brought paradise to Paul. But Paul did not have joy because of his circumstances but because he had Christ who gave him joy in spite of his circumstances.
The Search for Joy
While we may slightly different ideas of joy, we all are in pursuit of it to some extent. Joy is having a sense of inner peace, contentment, satisfaction and who doesn't want that! The problem comes when we confuse joy with happiness. Happiness is often tied to our circumstances, the ''happenings'' of our life. Happiness means experiencing favorable events. If everything is going well at work, I'm happy. If my marriage or relationships are going well, I'm happy. If I'm not going through any serious difficulties in life, I'm happy. Happiness is often tied to our feelings of success, or our prosperity, or how good we feel about ourselves.
The problem with all that is that our feelings never stay the same and they are not accurate indicators of reality. If our happiness is based on how we feel, the search for true joy will always elude us, it will be just out of reach. You can only ''buy,'' ''try,'' and ''see'' so many new things, then what? True joy must be different, it must be more than how I feel or what I have or the way I look or how my life is going at any one point.
...
Series: Joy Ride
Joe Alain
Philippians 1:3-6
Outline:
1. The Search for Joy
2. The Source of Joy
3. The Secret of Joy
3 I thank my God every time I remember you. 4 In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy 5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, 6 being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:3-6
If you didn't know better, you might think that Paul wrote this thank you letter to the Philippians from some exotic location in the S. Pacific. The letter is filled with joy, but Paul is writing from prison, not paradise. But even in prison God has brought paradise to Paul. But Paul did not have joy because of his circumstances but because he had Christ who gave him joy in spite of his circumstances.
The Search for Joy
While we may slightly different ideas of joy, we all are in pursuit of it to some extent. Joy is having a sense of inner peace, contentment, satisfaction and who doesn't want that! The problem comes when we confuse joy with happiness. Happiness is often tied to our circumstances, the ''happenings'' of our life. Happiness means experiencing favorable events. If everything is going well at work, I'm happy. If my marriage or relationships are going well, I'm happy. If I'm not going through any serious difficulties in life, I'm happy. Happiness is often tied to our feelings of success, or our prosperity, or how good we feel about ourselves.
The problem with all that is that our feelings never stay the same and they are not accurate indicators of reality. If our happiness is based on how we feel, the search for true joy will always elude us, it will be just out of reach. You can only ''buy,'' ''try,'' and ''see'' so many new things, then what? True joy must be different, it must be more than how I feel or what I have or the way I look or how my life is going at any one point.
...
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