Choose Joy

By: Missionary Team

Why can't I find happiness in my life? Why must I be depressed, angry, and anxious? These are questions that come into our minds all the time, but everyone keeps saying "I want happiness, but I can't find it." The thing is happiness is actually a by-product of Joy.

Choose JOY
What is joy? That is always the first question that comes to mind. J.O.Y. Jesus first, Others second, Yourself last.

J - You want Jesus to be first because heck, He created you out of nothing, and died for you out of love! Jesus is always number one in everything you do because you want Him to be at the front of it.
O - When I say others, I literally mean anyone besides you. It could be someone in your family to even someone you hate. You have to put people before you. These people may be those that you look at and see Jesus in. No matter what, these people need to come after Jesus.
Y- And finally yourself comes last. So when I say that Jesus is first etc., I mean that you love Jesus and your neighbor before yourself. If you place yourself above Jesus or your neighbor, you are causing pain for yourself and there will be no happiness. You may hate it, but what always makes you the happiest is when you place yourself last when you are caring for others before you. That always brings the absolute most happiness. That's what Joy does, it gives you that happiness that you so desire.

Let me tell you a little bit about myself, and in a blunt way, I am a very angry and impatient person. I literally beat myself up every day, even if I make the littlest mistake. I say to myself: "Why are you so stupid!? What's wrong with you?! etc." This is something that I have been struggling with for most of my life, and what I have to do every day when I wake up is either choose to be angry and depressed, or choose joy and put a smile on my face no matter how angry I am on the inside. Whenever I choose joy I always end up thanking God for the day because of how great it was, and literally when I wake up most mornings, I am saying to God that I don't want to go through another day. When I went in to work it was always the hardest, because the environment I worked in was really depressing and the people weren't exactly friendly. I worked at a grocery store, and I woke up in the morning of a work day pleading to God that I wouldn't have certain people paired up with me for the day. When I got the people that I couldn’t stand I would be down low in the dumps, and would say, “Welp here goes another LONG day.” To counteract this I would have to force myself to smile. I have a huge obnoxious smile that can get on people’s nerves quite easily, but this was what helped me because I forced myself to smile and thus forced myself to have joy even in the midst of depression.

Get out of your head
Joy is such a beautiful thing, but it's the hardest thing to achieve. It’s something that you honestly don’t want to choose, it's much easier to be angry or depressed and just sit in your head. Well, it's time to “Get out of your head and into your Heart”, which is what Justin Fatica would often say to his team when they were stuck in their heads. Getting into your heart means that you have to stop looking at what is hurting and start looking at what is hurting others. You need to encourage people, bring them up. And the way to do that is by choosing joy. Well, that's my two cents on joy whether you (the reader) find this helpful or encouraging is up to you. Will you choose joy or will you choose to sit in the dark and never come to true