Lauren Sparks

The Sparks Notes

Joy – Let’s Break it Down

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break it downLast week I told you that I was nothing if not current.  So today I’m exploring Grace and Truth’s own Lisa Burgess’ exercise on finding the twins and opposites of my word for the year.  If you are new around here (yay! and welcome), I chose JOY as my one word for 2023.  After an extremely tough few years I am ready to lighten up.  And so many of you responded and resonated with my feelings and my word.  So I continue to share what God is showing me in case you could use some joy in your life.  Let’s break it down.

 

Definition

 

Joy noun – 1.  a feeling of great pleasure and happiness.  2.  the emotion evoked by well-being, success or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.  3.  a state of happiness or felicity  4.  a source or cause of delight.  verb – 1.  to experience great pleasure or delight.

 

Synonyms (or Twins)

delight, gaity, bliss, rejoice, gladden, enjoy, jubilation, triumph, exaltation, glee, exhilaration, ebullience, exuberance, elation, euphoria, ecstacy, rapture, radiance, enjoyment, gratification, pleasure, treat, thrill, jocundity, celebrate, cheer, revel, make merry.

 

Antonyms (or Opposites)

sadness, sorry, anguish, misery, calamity, agony, unhappiness, wretchedness, woe, melancholy, desolation, gloom, depression, blues, despondency, doldrums, disheartenment, dispiritedness, gloominess, purgatory, Gehenna, hell, mournfulness, downheartedness, regret, lament, weep, grieve, bemoan.

 

Breaking it Down

Before that last list puts us all firmly in the doldrums, let’s move onto my insights.  First I want to point out the second definition of “joy”, “the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.”  That’s a worldy definition of a biblical concept if I’ve ever seen one.  And one of the twins of “joy” I found is “triumph”.  When I saw this I immediately thought of the DJ Kaled (featuring several other artists) lyrics, “All I do is win, win, win no matter what.”

As followers of Jesus, we have to dispel the myth that joy is only for those on top of the world.  It has been well documented that the more we have, the more we want.  So does anybody really possess what they desire?  For the long haul?  Come on.  No one can always win.  On the opposite spectrum, hell is listed as an antonym of joy.  Now that is telling.  As believers in Jesus we are as far from hell as it gets.  And joy is also as far from hell as it gets.  Joy can be ours because hell never will be.`

The Nitty Gritty

So how do we have joy in the midst of the calamity, sorrow and misery me all experience?  First of all, let me say that it is good and healthy to mourn, grieve and lament.  It is those who believe Christians should never be sad that are headed for emotional turmoil.  When we constantly suppress negative feelings, we become a time bomb that will eventually explode.  God made all emotions for us to experience and process.  He cares about them all and wants us to bring them all to Him.  We must deal with our hard things to ever experience true joy.  Refusing to deal means not letting ourselves heal.

One of my verses for the year is Romans 15:13.  “May the God of hope fill you will all joy and peace as you trust him, so that you may overflow with hope and by the power of the Holy Spirit.”  The more of our stuff – good and bad – that we entrust to God, the more joyful and peace-filled we will be.  Easy to say, often hard to do.  That’s why it takes practice.  Discipline is a key component of our faith.  Not just the discipline to pray, read our bible, go to church and fast.  But also the discipline to submit our stuff to God over and over and over again.

 

The Last Question

If I had to use one of the synonyms of joy as a backup word, I would choose “delight”.  It immediately made me think of Psalm 37:4.  “Delight yourself in the Lord; And He will give you the desires of your heart.”  Sounds like joy!

 

And now for this week’s featured post from the link up!

 

Unfortunately, Michelle Bengtson’s Adult Children:  How to Parent When They Choose a Different Path hits me in my current need.  Maybe it will be helpful to you too.

 

The Link Up

1. Share 1 or 2 of your most recent CHRISTIAN LIVING posts. (No DIY, crafts, recipes, or inappropriate articles.) All links are randomly sorted.

2. Comment on 1 or 2 other links. Grace & Truth linkup encourages community.

3. Every host features one entry from the previous week. To be featured, include this button or link back here on your post (mandatory to be featured, but not to participate).

Grace and Truth_Meet Hosts

We encourage you to follow our hosts on their blogs or social media.

MAREE DEE – Embracing the Unexpected
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

LAUREN SPARKS
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

LISA BURGESS – Lisa notes
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

TAMMY KENNINGTON – Restoring hope. Pursuing peace.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

 Now Let’s Link Up!

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If you liked this post, do me the huge honor of using the buttons below to share it to your favorite social media accounts. And if you want to get these essays emailed to you once a week, subscribe!  Lastly, my posts may contain affiliate links and I earn from qualifying purchases. If you buy anything from one of these links, I will receive a few pennies to help offset the cost of this website at no additional charge to you. Thank you in advance for your help.

What Are the Rumble Strips in Your Life?

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Have you ever dozed off at the wheel?  During college it happened to me with much more frequency than I like to admit, and it terrified me.  Not enough to miss a party and get more sleep (don’t get crazy), but enough to wake me up in the moment.  Sometimes rumble strips were my saving grace.  I tried to look up whether or not every state in the US employs rumble strips but had trouble nailing that down.  What I did find?  As of 2009, 35 states had installed them.  Hey, I am nothing if not current.

 

In case you don’t have rumble strips where you are, they are a series of raised strips running along the outside lanes on a road or highway that change the sound a vehicle’s tires make.  The noise alerts the driver if they drift off of the road and hopefully prevents accidents.  Whether one falls asleep or is simply not paying close attention, those rumble strips wake up a driver quickly.

 

What rumble strips to you have in your life?  Those people or things that help you stay on the right path and alert you to impending danger?

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It can be easy for me to fall asleep to God’s good plans and design – especially during times I let myself get too busy.  For parents of school-aged kids, May is a killer month.  I’m running to keep up with a hectic pace, so I’m so thankful for my rumble strips.  Here’s what keeps me between the lines:

 

1.  God’s Word

The holy scriptures are the plumb line I measure everything else by.  Maintaining the discipline of daily time in God’s guide book for us is definitely the number one way I stave off the drift.  Reading the bible, studying commentary and original language, praying the verses and listening to our church’s Sunday morning teaching are all ways I immerse myself in the way, the truth and the life (John 14:6).   I still mess up daily, but I cannot imagine where I would be without God speaking to me through His Word.

 

2.  Accountability

Being accountable to another person – be it a spouse, friends, bible study group, a counselor or minister, or all of these – keeps me honest.  Sharing what I struggle with not only takes the power out of my secrets, but strengthens and deepens my community.  And knowing that someone I love and respect could check in with me on my “thing” at any time definitely plays into how I choose to engage or not engage that “thing”.

 

3.  Leaving Room for the Holy Spirit

John 14:26 tells us, “But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.”  But how can the Spirit remind us of what we have learned in the scriptures if we aren’t listening?  As difficult as it may be in our culture, I have to slow down enough and have some quiet space to hear from God’s Holy Spirit.  Filling every minute with noise and activity will drown out His voice.  Our triune God is a gentleman and won’t force Himself on us.  We must intentionally invite Him with a hospitable heart and mind.

 

In addition, I shouldn’t grieve or quench the Holy Spirit.  Ephesians 4 gives us a list of things that do just that, including but not limited to, living like unbelievers, lying, stealing, unforgiveness and sexual immorality.  We all mess up.  It’s inevitable, but its living self-focused instead of God focused that steers us off course.  Continuing in unconfessed sin will muffle the guidance of the Holy Spirit more and more the longer it goes on.

 

Your Turn

 

The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is to thank God for the rumble strips in your life.  And if you can’t think of any, establish some.  Borrow mine or pray and listen for the Holy Spirit’s guidance on what you should do to keep yourself on the right road.

 

By the way, after I started writing this I thought of how the newer makes and models of cars actually have built in alarms for when we veer out of our lane.  So rumble strips could become obsolete.  As I said earlier, I’m nothing if not current.  But we can choose to disable those alarms if we want.  That could be dangerous.  As it would be for me to drive through life without God’s Word, accountability and the Holy Spirit.

 

And now for this week’s featured post from the link up!

 

I thoroughly enjoyed Learning to Develop Regular Rhythms of Fasting by Sarah J. Callen.  I had never thought about fasting as a discipline that could be practiced in community, but now I can’t stop thinking about it!

 

The Link Up

1. Share 1 or 2 of your most recent CHRISTIAN LIVING posts. (No DIY, crafts, recipes, or inappropriate articles.) All links are randomly sorted.

2. Comment on 1 or 2 other links. Grace & Truth linkup encourages community.

3. Every host features one entry from the previous week. To be featured, include this button or link back here on your post (mandatory to be featured, but not to participate).

Grace and Truth_Meet Hosts

We encourage you to follow our hosts on their blogs or social media.

MAREE DEE – Embracing the Unexpected
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

LAUREN SPARKS
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

LISA BURGESS – Lisa notes
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

TAMMY KENNINGTON – Restoring hope. Pursuing peace.
Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Pinterest

 Now Let’s Link Up!

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

If you liked this post, do me the huge honor of using the buttons below to share it to your favorite social media accounts. And if you want to get these essays emailed to you once a week, subscribe!  Lastly, my posts may contain affiliate links and I earn from qualifying purchases. If you buy anything from one of these links, I will receive a few pennies to help offset the cost of this website at no additional charge to you. Thank you in advance for your help.

 

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