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Have you wondered if there is a secret to the joy filled life? Can a joy filled life even be possible? Everyone wants to be happy. But can we really be filled with joy overflowing? So much of our joy level is determined by our thought life, and to be able to have a thought life that not only is pleasing to God, but one that is edifying and uplifting, we have to do some renewing in our gray matter, our brain!!! Romans 12:2 tells us to change the way we think. We are not to think like the world does, copying its behavior and customs, but we are to transform our minds to what the Word says about us. The message Bible says it this way, don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit in without thinking. Instead fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what He wants from you and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, developing well formed maturity in you. God is the lifter, he wants us to see beyond our own noses and really accomplish something for His kingdom. It sounds like the best way to do this is to obey the Word!!! Let’s fix our attention on God. Let’s raise our thought life to a higher level. We can begin then to live the joy filled life God wants for us.

What kind of evidence is there in your life that you intimately know the Father? One great big indicator is that we live in His joy. John 15:11 gives us a pattern for living that way, and it begins with obeying His command to remain in His love, and have His words remain in us. It says, I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be full, complete, filled to the brim and overflowing. When we do two simple things, live in His Word, and live out His love, His joy is completely ours! What a fabulous benefit from loving and serving God! The prayer that Jesus prayed for his disciples in John 17:13 can be restated this way. “Father, let my followers be filled to the brim with the joy I possess. I will be in them pouring my own joy into their own hearts!” Think of it, He gave it all for us to live completely content and satisfied, with His joy springing up from the inner man. Our spring of joy is from God. Psalms 87:7. Joy springing up on the inside, filling us up completely, and then running out over the top! We are His joy spring! By us getting to know God deeper, learning His ways, through His Word and spending time in His presence, we get the tremendous blessing of living life, filled up and overflowing with the joy of the Lord.

We are going to continue our joy filled summer, and resume talking about all the ways our joy level can brighten not only our day, but those around us as well. We want to live in the overflow or out of the abundance of our heart. Lots of people we know are running on empty, living totally without joy. Life isn’t just a struggle, it is overwhelming to them. As encouragers, we get to be the ones to lift them up, with a kind word, and smile on our face. I hope you can find someone to encourage today. Here is your dailyeword.

As we consider the journey to a full bucket of joy, I hope you have realized that as much as we want to be joy filled, God wants us to experience His joy more than we do. He wants our joy to be full and running over. God’s desire was fulfilled in sending His son to earth to pave the way for a relationship with us. My prayer during this joy journey is that you come to a place of wholeness, and experience life in with a whole heart . When our hearts are whole, then we can begin to live out of the overflow. John 7:37-38 says that streams of living water will flow from us, so our life becomes a conduit for God’s Spirit. The Bible talks about a river of life when we are filled with the Holy Spirit. Sounds like there is more than enough water to go around! No joy drought for the Christian, ever! What is so fabulous about water is that it cleanses, purifies and satisfied. So along with being essential for life, it effects can powerfully change our lives for the better. We are washed with the water of the Word, and we drink from the water of Life as we daily commune with God. There is more than enough joy flowing to us, that we have more than enough to flow through us. That is called living life in the overflow! It sounds like the joy filled life we desire with God is available in abundance.

Happy 4th of July! What a big party this weekend is for all Americans! So much of our nation’s history is founded by godly men and women, longing for freedom to worship God. From the original voyages across the ocean looking for a new world, the explorers were on a mission, to tell the new world about God. When the puritans came from England, they wanted freedom of worship. Not only was the new world a land of opportunity, it was a place where God could be worshipped freely. America’s founders were Godly men and women. America was founded on godly principles. We have strayed from that foundation, but thankfully, we still live in a country where we can worship God freely. 2 Cor 3:17 says that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. We use that verse in our churches all the time. We can apply that to our country too. Where and when we let the Spirit of God reign, we will experience freedom. Let’s not forget the foundations and our humble beginnings. Let us not forget those who gave their lives for our freedom. Let us not forget to thank God, for men and women of courage, who bravely fought for our freedoms. Thank God we are free.

This weekend we celebrate the 4th of July, and how much we love our home land. Freedom is a wonderful privilege and living the good life we have available to us in America is a blessing indeed. Hi, this is Dorette Schaal with your dailyeword. This weekend, I want to encourage you to think of not only your patriotic freedom, but your spiritual freedom as well. We are free, that God almighty we are free! Here is your dailyeword.

One of the greatest joys in my life is worshipping God through music. I love to sing and play before the Lord and worship God in totally freedom. I can remember back so well at the time in my life when I was just beginning to walk into the understanding of living the Spirit-led, Spirit-controlled life. I can recall having the urge to lift my hands to the Lord but feeling very self-conscious about it. I was sitting next to a friend in a worship service and she must have known from the outside the struggle I had going on in the inside. She whispered in my ear…. “it really won’t hurt to lift your hands, and it will probably bring you more freedom than you’ve ever known.” She was right. I went from being totally self-conscious about worshipping God to total freedom and a greater consciousness of God than ever before. Simply breaking through something in the natural realm, moved me into a greater depth of freedom than I had ever experienced before. Now I love the freedom I have to worship God with all my might – and with my mind, soul and strength.

If you feel like your joy bucket level is set on low, it is good to remember that in God’s presence is where we find more of the joy of the Lord. Our joy level is a pretty obvious gauge of how much time we are spending in God’s presence. That may sound harsh, but if our joy is depleted, the best place for our joy to be renewed is worshipping God, being renewed in the Word and spending time in His presence. If your joy bucket is empty and you are grumpy and frustrated, take some time to do all of those things. If a joyful attitude is natural for you and you wake up happy, and stay joyful all throughout the day, your joy can rub off on people around you. If that is not you, and you are more like my husband, who needs a morning warm up and some happy juice, choosing joy can be a real testimony to the power of the Word dwelling inside of you, even when you naturally don’t feel like it. We can find real joy and contentment in Christ, and by hanging around with people who have experienced the joy of the Lord. Our desire should be to only want more of God and His presence, because we know that in His presence is fullness of joy. I want all the joy that God has for me. I know where I can find it. I want all the joy that God has for you. We find it in the presence of God, that’s where your joy cup can be full and overflowing.
Here is Psalms 23:1-3
The Lord is my shepherd;
 I shall not want.
He makes me to lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside the still waters.
He restores my soul;
 He leads me in the paths of righteousness
 For His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For You are with me;
Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Do you think your life is more joy filled today than it was when I started this series on joy? Even the most joyful person we know can experience more of the joy of the Lord, day after day. And for sure the most discouraged joyless person we know can begin to have joy that can continue to increase. I encourage you to memorize Phil 4:8. Think on these things, the thing that are lovely and are of a good report. Make it such a natural part of who you are that you begin to think differently and then speak and act differently as well. More joy is around the corner for you. Your fresh start can take place today. In God we can have a redo, because He is the God of second chances, and He wants you to succeed. Your set back may have just been your set up for your come back! If you feel like it is too hard, it isn’t. You have it in you. The God of the universe has taken up residence in your heart, and he is cheering you on. He is your cheerleader, your coach, your physician, your lawyer and your very present help in times of trouble. You can depend on Him, He will see you through, and on the other side is more joy filled living! Keep thinking on the things that lead to joy.

What you think about is who you become. As a person thinks, so is he or she. (Proverbs 23:7) What you concentrate on in your thought life will determine your path in life. Persistent thoughts lead to action. Paul encourages us in II Corinthians 10:4-6, to take every thought captive. Lock it up, corral it, rope it and tie it down. Make your thought life obedient to Christ. We are the ones who have to do that. We can’t ask God to renew our minds or to control our thought life. That is what He told us to do. The encouraging thing about that scripture is that if God tells us to do it, we have the ability to make it happen. He wouldn’t tell us to do something that only He could do. It is up to us. Tommy Newberry says this…. “thinking, talking and worrying about what you don’t want can never bring you what you do want”. James tells us the same thing a different way. A double minded man will never receive anything from God. WOW! You can’t think something over and over and have the opposite thing come to pass. Flip flopping from the good to the bad in your thought life doesn’t produce good results. That’s where there hard word discipline comes in. Amazing that the word disciple and discipline are so similar. Let’s be Christ’s disciplined disciples!

Are you easily distracted? I know with me, it takes very little to lose focus. Sometimes just having someone else talking in another conversation near to where I am can totally be distracting. I have to consciously focus on the conversation I am involved in. What is the best way to keep focused? Sometimes it means putting your focus directly on what you need to concentrate on. When it comes to focusing on God, the Bible tells us to look at Him, to listen to Him, and pay attention to His Word. When we do that we can keep our focus right. You can try that as an experiment and see how it really works. Put something on the table, about the size of a domino, and then focus just on it. In a short period of time, everything else around will get blurry, but you will see the object perfectly. When we keep our eyes on Jesus, things around us don’t get blurry, but they don’t have the hold on us that they used to. That is a good thing. We don’t have to let circumstances or situations keep us from focusing on God and his good plan for our lives. In the midst of any situation, we can keep our heart centered on God, and operate in the joy of the Lord, and praise Him through any storm or situation that comes against us. So keep your focus! Don’t lose sight of Jesus.

Your thought life is something that you can control, and it has a dramatic affect on every other area of your life. God’s desire is that your thought life becomes intentional and focused. We re going to delve into the topic of renewing your mind to think the way God wants us to think. We know that God sees and knows all, and we don’t, but we can begin to imitate the way God does things, and make it a part of our life. That is right out of Eph 5:1 where it says for us to be imitators of God as His dear children. We can think like God thinks, and act like He acts. We are called to be his hands and feet in this world, and we should be a good representative of Him. We should only do what we see our Father do, and say what we hear our Father say, but we should think like our Father would think. Consider this key thought, that every areas of your life is touched by your thoughts. What you think about is what you talk about, and what you talk about is what you do, and what you do comes right around to reveal what you are thinking about. It can be a vicious circle, or it can be a circle of blessing. Let’s start moving toward blessing! We do that as we begin thinking like God thinks, talking like God would talk, and doing what God would do. Be encouraged today! Positive change is in your future!