June 25, 2020 www.PositiveChristianity.org presents Positive Daily Inspiration DECIDE TO LIVE A MORE JOYOUS LIFE June 25, 2020 www.PositiveChristianity.org now in our 21st year presents Positive Daily Inspiration DECIDE TO LIVE A MORE JOYOUS LIFE "Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy." Psalm 47:1 Practice daily joy make the commitment to spend this day being glad to be alive. Each of us goes through experiences, and some are horribly difficult. But still, in the end it is how we live our days on our journey, not just our destinations. Our lives are a sum total of our days. Kevin Aucoin said, "Today I choose life. Every morning when I wake up, I can choose joy, happiness, negativity, pain... To feel the freedom that comes from being able to continue to make mistakes and choices - today I choose to feel life, not to deny my humanity but embrace it." For a lot of people, joy is a far-off memory. I am suggesting to you, that joy can be a daily, hourly, moment-by-moment experience. You can experience the joy of being alive again. Some people put it off until vacation time, or even retirement. Realizing too late, that they missed the whole game of life. There is not one of us that does not have stuff that they are dealing with, but do not allow that stuff to become your God. We can live in hell or we can live in heaven, we determine our residency in either place. Both places are experienced here and now. I pray that you live in the kingdom of heaven – on earth. As far as I am concerned, Jesus was the best teacher of joy around. “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full” John 15:11 People realized that Jesus knew about joy. They knew that whenever they heard Jesus speaking, they would experience joy; that He would share techniques, strategies, and methods they could use to experience the joy of being alive. Those people realized that Jesus would share with them simple, clear, understandable, easy ideas as to how they could experience more joy in their lives. They were just like us today—they wanted to experience the total joy of being alive. They knew that not only would He share techniques and strategies they could use that would be simple and easy to understand, but He would be interesting and entertaining. For our scripture, we will look at a situation that takes place in the ministry of Jesus where He was sharing ideas, they could use to experience the joy of being alive. The beauty of it is that He was sharing it in an interesting and entertaining way. He would put the information in story form. If you want to get people’s attention and hold it, He knew, story form is probably the best form you could possibly use. In Luke 15:11-13*, Then Jesus said, “There was a man who had two sons. The younger of them said to his father, ‘Father, give me the share of the property that will belong to me.’ So, he divided his property between them. A few days later, the younger son gathered all he had and traveled to a distant country.” The story speaks to us out of the past with many levels of truth. The first level truth of the complete story is that you can search everywhere for joy but it is found right where you are in your own backyard. *Read to verse 32 for the complete story. The first idea that comes out in this story is: Look at your rules. For a lot of us, very simply and easily put, if we are not experiencing very much joy in our lives if we are not experiencing the joy of being alive, it is probably because of our rules. Look at your rules: What are the rules? What needs to happen in order for you to allow yourself to experience the joy of being alive? One man admitted, honestly, “There was a time in my life when I had to be wearing a $1,000 suit, have $500 dollars in my pocket, live in an expensive home, drive an expensive car—and the list went on and on—for me to be happy. Needless to say, I had set it up, so it was difficult for me to experience joy on a regular basis. Not only was it difficult—if I am honest—it was probably impossible.” Another person, a woman, an admitted workaholic, said that she could only experience joy when all of her work was done. The problem was the work was NEVER done. A married couple admitted that they could only experience joy when they were away from home; the only problem with that rule, with two people working, they could barely ever get away and it started to affect their relationship. One man had a rule of looking to retirement for his joy, in an imaginary future, instead of living in the joy of the moment. He put it off until some future time. The problem with this is—joy is a learned response to life: unless it is practiced, it is lost. Blessed is practiced it is missed – even when it is staring you in the face. Maybe you or someone you know are doing that. Maybe you have life’s self-imposed rules set up in such a way that you have made it difficult, if not impossible, for you to experience joy on a regular basis. I suggest that you have the power to change all of that for yourself. If you do wish to experience the joy of being alive on a regular basis, not just on rare occasions—you can change the rules. One woman who had health challenges gave up on joy. Really, she was giving up on life. But what is life except for laughter and enjoyment of this profound gift of God. She said with the pain she was feeling, she stopped ever feeling joy. She prayed for the strength to enjoy life again. She started to prescribe herself the medicine of joy. At first in small doses, increasing the dose daily, until it became habit. It changed her life. This woman laughed saying: “I have only one rule now: Any day above ground is a good day.” Spiritual people find joy in the ordinary and even in the mundane. I suggest to you that this is, indeed, a great joyous day. This is a great day filled with a great opportunity for you to experience the joy of being alive. POSITIVE DAILY PRAYER: IMMERSED IN GOD’S PRESENCE Dear God, in this moment, I am immersed in You. Your presence lives with me; Your presence is in me as peace; Your presence is in me as wisdom; Your presence is in me as health and abundance. With every breath, I have a renewed sense of oneness with You. And so, it is. In the name and through the power of Jesus Christ, Amen (from Positive Christianity's Encyclopedia of Prayer – free, on our homepage) POSITIVE DAILY AFFIRMATION: I am a God created child of joy. POSITIVE DAILY QUOTE: “I never lose sight of the fact that just being is fun.” Katharine Hepburn _____ THANK YOU for your giving. 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