I got the Joy - Joy - Joy - Joy....

Church was about Joy today - well actually it's about joy all summer - based on Philippians. Specifically joy that overcomes: circumstances, adversaries, and personal agendas (whoa whoa whoa...what?). It stemmed from Philippians 1:12-26. And our pastor made an interesting comment about spontaneous incontrollable laughter that generally occurs when we shouldn't be laughing (ie a wedding, church, interview, meeting, class, prayer, family gathering....and I have experienced that in all of those places except a wedding) but that we're really wired for that type of overcoming joy that cannot be stopped.

He said Paul would have been on an 18 inch chain with a guard at all times - the same guard for 6 hours at a time and there would have been no privacy for either man (ew?!). Paul decided that since the guard could always see what he was doing, that he would write and preach God's grace and wound up converting the guards - but the verse says something a long the lines of "it was no secret among the guard that I am in chains for Christ" - really? No kidding, they must have thought he was nuts. But he was joyful - cool.

Joy is in the perspective - so if that's the case then it is, in theory, always possible to be joyful. I know I'm not so what's up with my perspective then? The thought being "How is God working in this" or "To live is___ and to die is ___" ..... that is going to take some more thought I think.

Fill in those blanks - I spent some time making a list and it looks something like this:
to live is:
love, success, happiness, companions, coffee, random good times, photos of good times, good music, long chats, good worship
to die then is: loneliness, disappointment, hunger, boredom, no communication, not enough sleep, poor sound quality, songs I don't know

Well look at that! Right there is part of my issue - the joy is in the small things which is ok but it's temporary and short lived joy. Paul said - and actually in the Greek there was no "is" as if he was so pumped he had word vomit, but he said "to live is Christ and to die is Gain" - yeah that's not on my immediate list today...ouch. But even the list he read from Chuck Swindoll was different. What would that look like?

joy is a cool word - better than happy and seems to connote, for me, an emotion that is not superficial or invisible but that takes over - makes you beam, jump, yell, cheer, laugh - without inhibition and sometimes uncontrollably. Pretty cool - but how often do we experience TRUE joy?