Maintaining Our Joy Throughout Broken Hopes & Shattered Dreams
By Andrea Hughes
Editor Selectedly Single, Professional Counselor, Relationships Coach & Family Life Minister

Full Lifestyle Article Index

Connecting to the Church in Africa through Catholic Relief Services Maintaining Our Joy Throughout Broken Hopes & Shattered Dreams Reality Check 13 and 14 Year-Old Children Should Not Be Condemned To Adult Prisons With No Opportunity For Parole Or Release Loving, Valuing, Understanding and Changing the Youth We are Loosing to Gangs God's Personal Financial Stimulous Package The Mary Elizabeth Lange Center Discerning a Call to Religious Life Interview with Reverend Christopher Lee Coleman, Ph.D. Shaping Up For Summer NLP Power Of Words ADDICTIONS Excerpts of "My Catholic Journey" by Arlene Edmonds We Are Our Brothers Keepers Called to Give/Be a Witness Rights Of Prisoners Burundi Families Find New Home, New Friends, New Peace Deepen Your Faith! Expand Your Horizons! Face the Facts: Topics to Discuss Now with Your Aging Parents God Bless the Child Who Has No Home Hilton Head Island's Native Islander Gullah Celebration Love & Marriage

Full Lifestyle Article Index

Joy is a great and healthy state to be in but not too many of us Christians seem to have it and after we get it the state doesn't seem to stay for many of us. We know it 's good for us and our Savior talks about us having it. The Jan. 17, 2005 Time Magazine devoted a complete issue to this subject and one of the things their researchers found out is that religious people are less stressed and happier than nonbelievers. Are some of us Christians missing something? Maybe there is more in scriptures about joy than we have gleaned at first glance. If Jesus says in the gospel according to John 16:23-24 "whatsoever you shall ask the Father in my name, He will give it to you….and you shall receive, that your joy may be full." This is something to be joyful about. Why is it that we aren't receiving and joyful all the time? Well, Jesus knew we would face life's ups and downs. Even He was disappointed time and again. What is He talking about then? What indeed is this joyfulness suppose to be that is always with us?

We know that happiness comes and goes but joy endures, something you still have, even in a time of dashed hopes and shattered dreams. Is joy then connected to our perspective, our heart attitude, possibly the relationship with Jesus? Maybe that is what is hinted at in the passage about abiding in Jesus in John 15:7. When we take the time to sit with scripture, linger, hang onto Jesus' words as Mary, Martha's sister, did absorbing and meditating on these words like she, the beloved apostle John, and Jesus' mother Mary did, we will be able to ask according to His will and things will be done unto us that we ask. This should make anyone happy. John tells us in chapter 13 verse 17 that Jesus said to his apostles after modeling service, sacrifice, kind heartedness, and humility washing their feet, that "If you know these things, joyful are you if you do them." Well we can see right off that you not only have to know what Jesus was saying and doing (meaning we have to be reading and meditating on the word of God) but we have to follow in His footsteps. Now this is where it gets tough. How can you do what Jesus did without some strong power, suppression of our will, our flesh? He even says, through the apostle Peter, that when our faith is.

Now you know going through life's ups and downs from hurricanes and fires that wipe out everything you had, to your sweetheart or friend betraying you, and coming out on the other side joyful takes something special. Grace? Relationship? Knowing? Perspective? Heart attitude? Is this why the giants of faith were able to still have joy - from ship wreaked, beaten, imprisoned starved, stoned apostle Paul to Harriet Tubman, the bold ex-slave, to Dr. M. L. King Jr., Mother Teresa of Calcutta and Cesar Chavez taking a brave stand for the poor? Is it because they had purpose and relationship, a deep knowing? Hmm.

If social and behavioral scientists have figured out that religious people have an edge on a happier, less stressed life and pin it to the benefits of their "social and spiritual support, a sense of purpose and meaning and the avoidance of risky and stressful behaviors", (Time 1/17/05 pp.A6-7) what are we less joyful ones doing with these assets? What is your unique purpose on the planet? Are you living it out to God's glory, with joy?

Maybe it would be beneficial to not only take more time out to study these giants' lives but to sit quietly at the feet of Jesus, Ps. 46:10, especially when this exquisite model, perfect leader and teacher who kept His eyes on the finish line, endured for the joy He knew was coming", submitted to the horrors of the cross and yet triumphed to sit at the right hand of the throne of God, seat of all power. Hebrews 12:1-2. We are instructed to "consider Him and what He endured" when our joy seems to be dissipating and we feel weary and faint. Heb. 12:3-6, that He loves us, He promised never to leave us or forsake us, Hebrews 13:5b, that things are working out for our good, Romans 8:28, that "No good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly" Psalms 84:11, that we have the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ, I Corinthians 15:57, and more promises like this which He keeps every one He makes, Proverbs 30:3a.