e192 When You Just Need a Joy Boost (David, Peter, Jesus to elevate your attitude)

This is Faith to Witness 99, motivating us to hear God and share the Shepherd. 

Season 3 Episode 192 When You Just Need a Joy Boost (David, Peter, Jesus to elevate your attitude)

Here’s the gist, human. Sometimes we just need to jumpstart some joy. The kind of elation and inspiration that only comes from our Creator. So if you are feeling, depressed, discouraged, distraught, disengaged, and maybe just plain low, join us for a little joy boost. 

I had other insights in mind for today, powerful verses, and scenes I just traveled in my Bible trek, I just finished living through 39 kings and one ruling queen in the divided kingdom… but God handed me a mighty mandate. 

To talk about the power of his Joy today.

And remember, human, that his Word is God-breathed. When you hear his Word picture God filling your spirit with a crazy, enduring energy, an affirmation deep within your heart that defies all the crusty defeats your earthly life is throwing at you. 

1 Peter 1:8-9

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.

Today, joy boost 1, 2, and 3. Take it in and pass it along to someone who needs it BAD right now.

E192

When my youngest son was preschool age, he had several favorite books from the classic  Sweet Pickle series by Richard Hefter. One was Lion is Down in the Dumps. It was about Loving Lion who was conflicted about sharing his roller skates. With good intentions he came up with a scheme that backfired on him, and he became depressed. Lion’s friends coaxed him out of it. As friends should.

It’s such a simple lesson. It is also a cycle. Best intentions. Schemes. And then the let down. Depression, frustration, isolation, discouragement. I am not making light of it, I am noting that it starts at an early age. We get really good at this cycle. 

Not that we are always scheming, but truth be told, our human nature is. We even scheme ways to chase joy. Even when we know the source of joy doesn’t come from us.

Being depressed doesn’t mean we are weak. It means we are human. But it doesn’t give us a free pass to stay in this frame of mind. Because God has provided the way, the truth, and the life that breaks out of it, and lives above it. Sound familiar?

I’m sharing a few scripture passages from David, Peter and Jesus today that are a divine prescription for joy direct from our Creator. The Bible is filled with encouragement. I plead you to find your own, when you want to share your roller skates, but you went about it wrong, and now you are depressed. And all the stuff in earthly life beyond the roller skates. It’s all still about sharing. Because joy is a fruit of the spirit. If we are abiding in Jesus, we will have joy.

Galatians 5:22-23

22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23 gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Fill Me With Joy in Your Presence

Joy Boost #1 Fill Me With Joy in Your Presence

If you are someone who struggles deeply with depression and a discouraged perspective consistently, spend time in David’s life and his psalms. He lays it all out for God. His witness, his open-hearted praises and laments to God will encourage you. 

I am getting our joy juices flowing with one of my go-to Psalms. David floods his lament to God with affirmations of God’s sovereign nature. Affirmations that leave no doubt, that are definitive because of who God is. So that’s my WHY here. I read Psalm 16 a lot.

Psalm 16

A miktam of David.

1 Keep me safe, my God,

    for in you I take refuge.

2 I say to the Lord, “You are my Lord;

    apart from you I have no good thing.”

3 I say of the holy people who are in the land,

    “They are the noble ones in whom is all my delight.”

4 Those who run after other gods will suffer more and more.

    I will not pour out libations of blood to such gods

    or take up their names on my lips.

5 Lord, you alone are my portion and my cup;

    you make my lot secure.

6 The boundary lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;

    surely I have a delightful inheritance.

7 I will praise the Lord, who counsels me;

    even at night my heart instructs me.

8 I keep my eyes always on the Lord.

    With him at my right hand, I will not be shaken.

9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices;

    my body also will rest secure,

10 because you will not abandon me to the realm of the dead,

    nor will you let your faithful one see decay.

11 You make known to me the path of life;

    you will fill me with joy in your presence,

    with eternal pleasures at your right hand.

Be Filled With an Inexpressible and Glorious Joy

Joy Boost #2 Be Filled With an Inexpressible and Glorious Joy

Peter, who was one of the first four disciples, Peter who is at this point a mature follower of Christ several decades down the dusty AD road. In his first epistle, he gives the exiles scattered throughout the provinces of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia, and all believers since then such a powerful WHY for our joy. Consider this.

1 Peter 1:3-9

Praise to God for a Living Hope

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.

Peter continues in verse 17,

17 Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear. 18 For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect. 20 He was chosen before the creation of the world, but was revealed in these last times for your sake. 21 Through him you believe in God, who raised him from the dead and glorified him, and so your faith and hope are in God.

22 Now that you have purified yourselves by obeying the truth so that you have sincere love for each other, love one another deeply, from the heart. 23 For you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable, through the living and enduring word of God. 24 For,

“All people are like grass,

    and all their glory is like the flowers of the field;

the grass withers and the flowers fall,

25     but the word of the Lord endures forever.”

Peter ended echoing Isaiah the prophet (Isaiah 40:6-8). 

God’s Word, his Son, will outlast whatever has a grip on our well-being, no matter the scale of the struggle. Because our redeemed souls are not grass, not flowers. Our souls are eternal. He gives us inexpressible and glorious joy.

Jesus Completes Your Joy

Joy Boost #3 Jesus Completes Your Joy

Why do we turn to God’s Word in our depressed state? Because his Word, which is Jesus Christ, breathes his eternal spirit into every vein, every muscle, every bone, every part of our being. 

Jesus tells us how.

John 15: 1-11

The Vine and the Branches

15 “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. 2 He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. 3 You are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

5 “I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. 6 If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away and withers; such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire and burned. 7 If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 This is to my Father’s glory, that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 

Why did Jesus tell you he is the vine and we are the branches? Why did he command to remain in his love, keep his commandments? In his words, so that his joy may be in you. When this happens, your joy is complete. 

Share today’s episode with someone who is living within a defeated outlook, with someone who always looks downcast, with someone who may not be saying anything but you see the struggle in their eyes and the downturn of their expression. 

Look hard, human. 

And if someone shared this episode with you, pass it on.

We all get depressed, discouraged, distraught, disengaged.

Trust that God’s breath will lift someone up toward the truth. We cannot forget that we are each made in God’s image. He created and he speaks our eternal language.

We are branches on the same vine. 

And joy is a fruit of the spirit.