Category: Joy + Jesus

As I’m writing, it is Sunday, so that means tomorrow is Monday, which means it’s a good idea to know 5 must-haves for a joyful day. Because Mondays.

To be honest, I’ve never been an overly strategic person, but as I’ve been learning to juggle three part-time jobs plus a family, and desiring to grow one business wider and deeper, it’s essential I learn to strategize. That can flesh itself out to include my thoughts, my calendar, and my choices. And even how I will enter each and every morning.

Thankfully I know this is true:

The faithful love of the Lord never ends!
    His mercies never cease.
Great is his faithfulness;
   his mercies begin afresh each morning. (Lamentations 3:22-23)

Because every morning is a brand new opportunity to seek out the Lord’s mercies. L.M. Montgomery said it best this way through a fiery redhead:

Tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it.

Anne Shirley

5 Must-Haves for a Joyful Day

So here are 5 Must-Haves for a Joyful Day, which you can take with you into each of your tomorrows.

Gratitude

I’ve shared numerous times about gratitude, and sometimes have included one of my favorite quotes:

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It takes what we have and makes it enough and more.

Melody Beattie

In my experience, gratitude is active. It involves intentionally speaking, writing, sharing, showing, and extending thanks to people around you. Voiced into the air, a song of gratitude carries our heart and mind forward on its melody and has the power to lift our head above discouragement. And being thankful on purpose is E-S-S-E-N-T-I-A-L to a joyful day, and I can basically guarantee your gratitude will help someone else have a joyful day, too.

Goals

Long-term dreams can be broken into short-term pieces that move us toward what is to come. Because big dreams don’t just happen when moons line up nicely. They happen from hard work, moving along an intentional trajectory toward a desired result.

And just like our teachers taught us in school, large papers are written more productively and easily when based on an outline. Because a good outline is not haphazard – it is an intentional framework upon which an entire essay will hang. It is where the most essential work lies, because if the framework is weak or off-kilter, so too will the paper be.

• At the top of the year, outline the major dreams (perhaps 2 for family, 2 for work, 2 for professional development… be creative, and dare to dream!)
• Next, brainstorm: What are the big steps that lead to those dreams? Divide up the calendar into 2-3 big steps forward per month, per dream.
• Then, examine how each week will move toward each of the monthly steps.
• Finally, divide up the week into manageable, strategic bite-sized pieces to help lead in the right direction. Each day can be a joyful day.

Perspective

There is a comedian and art critic who hinges everything on this. He says:

I like to turn things upside down, to watch pictures and situations from another perspective.

Ursus Wehrli

Have you done that today? Have you tried to consider a circumstance from another person’s point of view? Or have you examined a micro situation from a macro perspective? Zoom out. Could you take something in from a different angle? Step to the side.

For me, letting JOY loose has partly been a journey in perspective. God called me to Joy Let Loose when I was decidedly joyless. And He has walked with me through some messy parts of finding joy again by calling me to vulnerability in community, and acknowledgement of #reallife stuff. Sometimes it feels just like this:

God gifts us with a glimpse that the actual Kingdom reality doesn’t look quite like what we see in the moment. He uses people to help us ask important questions that narrow things in or turn them around or magnify what matters. It’s often all about perspective, and in the change, we find a joyful day. So be open to a shift!

Perspective is everything when you are experiencing the challenges of life.

Joni Eareckson Tada

Flexibility

A fresh perspective begs for flexibility. We will be far less drained and far more joyful when we can roll with things somewhat. Not that organization, planning, or strategy need to be thrown out the window.

Remember the essay outline I mentioned? Outlines and plans, and strategies are important. But sometimes the clothing that ultimately dresses the outline can shift, or be accessorized differently. Sometimes, throwing an orange scarf in the mix that you happened to find in the bin at Goodwill is just the thing to tie the whole designer outfit together. Get where I’m going with this analogy?

I used to teach piano lessons. Scales, chords, sight-reading, classical music, gospel songs, jazz…all the things that I think are important for budding musicians to learn. But one key component I often included that many other teachers didn’t was a moment for creative music making. I wanted to inspire the songwriters within.

And the best thing I think I infused into these little artists was an appreciation for flexibility. A “mistake” in songwriting is just an opportunity to try going a different direction than you intended. It’s an invitation for beauty you didn’t anticipate.

Be flexible. Find beauty in changing direction today. A joyful day just might live there.

Laughter

A joyful day absolutely MUST hold laughter. I mean, they basically have to go hand-in-hand, I think. Even the hardest days can hold joy, after all. Even grieving days can have levity, and the most stressful days can find a chuckle somewhere. It’s important for our overall wellness.

I doubt I have to champion the benefits of laughter for you. But I may have to provide a reminder for you to seek it out if you want to have a joyful day. Check out that linked article for some great ideas for being strategic about laughter, mm-k?

And I’ll just say this: laughter is generally best when experienced with others. So in my encouragement for you to laugh every day, I’m really saying this: get around other joyful people every day. Joy begets joy. Laughter inspires laughter. If you don’t have it…go get it!

No day is complete without a belly laugh, amirite?

Go Get That Joyful Day!

Gratitude + Goals + Perspective + Flexibility + Laughter = the perfect storm for a joyful day. Let’s be strategic about letting JOY loose.

Tell us in the comments below what you plan to do to find your joyful day!

Elizabeth Joy

How can you ensure you are leading worship with joy (instead of giving up with defeat?)

Ok now. Some of you read that question and are just about to click away. Even if you don’t have a musical bone in your body, this post is for you too. Please stay. 🙂

Some of you would know that my main ministry role is as a worship pastor. I have held numerous roles within this realm, from volunteer, to paid staff, to a professor of worship. All of these roles have stretched me and taught me much about Christian worship. None has really stretched me as much as my current role. And it’s not the role itself, or the church (which I love!). Rather, it was the reality that I was ultimately the one responsible to encourage our congregation to come  joyfully and fully to the Lord in worship, while in the middle of my own season of difficulty over the last eight months or so.

Rewind…

I’ve been through other troublesome seasons before as a worship leader. Like immediately after one of my husband’s best friends hit a moose with his car, dying instantly, and we had to lead worship at his funeral. Or that time five years ago when I had just spent several nights in the hospital learning to navigate a new Type 1 Diabetes reality with our 10-year-old daughter, only to wake up early the next morning (groggy) to an email announcing my fill-in worship leader for that morning’s chapel service had backed out. I remember being angry, yet not wanting to thrust anyone else into a last minute situation, and just crying in the shower. I was so mad at God for all my little girl was going through, exhausted from sleeping on an uncomfortable hospital cot, and overwhelmed by what was now only a 4-day reality for us that literally changed our lives.

But somehow, I was going to need to get up in front of our entire Bible College population and start leading  worship with joy in less than two hours. 

God met me right there in my frustration. He can always handle my anger at Him. And as I cried in the shower, He filled my mind with Truth. Scriptures came back to me. Songs welled up. And before I was even ready to drive to the chapel, I was excited to lead our people to worship. Because I realized again that He had never left us. I remembered His goodness. And I wanted to share that with other people so they could remember too. That morning stands out in my memory as one of the most powerful mornings of worship I have ever experienced in the hundreds, or maybe even thousands, of times I’ve led.

Leading Worship With Joy

(Instead of Giving Up in Defeat)

Who is a worship leader? What does a worship leader do? Most people would answer that question with descriptions including singing, playing an instrument, or leading from a platform into a microphone. And yes, in our church contexts, the vocational worship leader tends to do those things. But I would suggest there is more. There are more people called to lead worship than those of us who are skilled musically.

In fact, I would suggest that  all Christians are called to be worship leaders. Because to lead worship with joy is to point the way for other people to worship Jesus. You don’t have to be musical to do that, now, do you? In fact, here are some of the ways Christians can lead other people to worship God:

• share your story of meeting Jesus
• send an encouraging text that reminds someone of God’s love
• tell someone about God’s provision when you were in need
• add chairs to your table and invite people into your home
• create graphics that highlight truths about God and share them through social media
• change the conversation to one that is uplifting when it wants to drift to negativity
• visit someone who is experiencing difficulty and help them, reminding them of God’s presence
• invite someone to join you in a reading plan
• openly replacing lies with truth as you discover them
• write out 10 reasons you are grateful and post it as your Facebook status
• listen carefully when people talk to you, and tell them where you see God moving in their story

This is only scratching the surface. But I hope you can see that none of these scenarios involve music, yet all point other people to God. This is  worship leading.

So What?

So what’s the big deal? Why am I even writing this post?

Well, because when life is tough, it’s really hard to do any of these things. It’s much easier to simply give up in defeat. It’s very tempting to a) share all the negatives, forgetting anything positive, or b) withdraw from people completely. But worship leading requires other people to be led. And it forces us to see through the negatives to realize the positives are still there, even if they seem to be in some other dimension.

And here’s the other reason. Every Christian is called to spur others on. All of us have the opportunity to be part of someone else’s spiritual formation story. How we choose to lead worship in our own lives will leave a legacy in someone else’s life. I want to leave a legacy of  joy. I want to impact the lives of others by pressing in with faith through the difficulties and the desolate seasons in my own. Faith shows the reality of what we are hoping for even when we can’t see them yet. And I lead worship with joy when I trust and pursue what I believe to be true, and I let others know about it.

Leading worship with joy is incredibly vulnerable. It’s risky. But great faith takes risks on believing God. Because He will never disappoint.

[bctt tweet=”Great faith takes risks on believing God. Because He will never disappoint.” username=”joyletloose”]

This is real life…

I have several Christian friends facing very difficult things: broken marriages, family members in drug rehab, financial distress, foster children in precarious circumstances, health uncertainties. Each one of them can be tempted to despair at every turn. But instead, each of them is called to  lead worship with joy.

 In hospitals and police stations, on the phone and online, in private moments and very public ones, they each have the choice to lead worship with joy. Not to ignore their circumstances, but to lead through them. They have the opportunity to help other people be formed spiritually by how they choose to point to Christ in the everyday-ness of their lives. And the reality is, as they choose to praise God at all times, their own joy will be restored. Their eyes will open to God moving in their own circumstances, they will be strengthened to persevere, and they will radiate faith.

Our worship is our fight song. It is our weapon to defeat the enemy. It is how we engage in lifting our own heads to face the realities of our day head-on. Leading worship with joy is how we win against defeat.

So what about you?

How is God calling you to lead worship with  joy? What tangible steps can you take today to point the way to Christ? What will it require of you? And how do you think you will grow through it?

I love it when people visit  Joy Let Loose to read and then engage with me in the comments. Would you be willing to share a story of how you lead worship with joy in your life? And would you also be willing to share this post with people in your circles who could also learn to lead worship with joy? Let’s let joy loose together!

Elizabeth Joy

We live in a broken world where things seem to have a tendency to go wrong. The trajectory of the corrupted world seems to be toward sadness, brokenness, incompleteness. Because sin. And even when our lives seem to be going fairly well, we don’t have to look far to find hopelessness.

We have find reasons to rejoice.

The blessed narrative for many of us in the Western world is one that rises and falls, often in rapid succession. And the drops tend to yell with louder voices, commanding greater attention. Even as we try to fight the gravitational pull downward toward difficulty, we have reason to  hope.

How do we live in this broken world, and find hope in our everyday lives while the world screams at us that there is none? When so many enormous trials face millions of people, how do we find reasons to rejoice as we face our everyday, mundane disappointments?

We have to look for reasons to REJOICE

So over the last few days, I have been looking….

Monday, October 2nd, 2017

6:00AM – I awoke, like most others, to the tragic news of a senseless act of violence in Las Vegas. I couldn’t even wrap my mind around it, and the disbelief swirled around in my mind as I prepared for the day, the numbers of deceased and wounded steadily climbing. I pray that the joy of the Lord strengthen those facing this tragedy. I have reason to rejoice because I know He is faithful.

7:00-8:00 – I embarked on the familiar morning ritual of repeatedly encouraging a fourteen-year-old girl with fourteen-year-old hormones and blood sugars running high to get ready for school. And I happen to be at the point in parenting my third where I am annoying 93.5% of the time. I remind myself, “Children are a gift from the LORD ; they are a reward from him.” (Ps 127:3) I have reason to rejoice because He has given me the opportunity to shape her life.

8:20AM – I chose to sing my hope as I drove to work. I dropped my daughter at school (miraculously on time), then prayed and sang, and asked God to move in Las Vegas, to move in my daughter, and to move in me.

And then my suburban was hit by a semi… 

                                                                                       And I realized I was okay.

8:39AM – And, as though the Lord Himself were holding me, I was able to move out of traffic, and remain calm while assessing the damage. I had no pain, I didn’t think I was in shock, and I didn’t even feel anger toward the other driver. 

I  just sat there & looked for hope.

There had to be reasons to rejoice even in this moment.

• My son had decided not to come with me that morning, so he was not in the passenger seat, where the majority of the impact was.
• I was literally one minute from my work.
• We were in a roundabout, so our speed had been reduced.
• My husband was almost immediately accessible to drop everything and come.
• One of my Pastors (and friends) was on the scene within minutes.
• My 13-years-faithful suburban had remained so today.
• No one was hurt, and I was not at fault for this collision.

There were so many reasons to  rejoice in these unexpected moments.

10:30 – But after the police report, the tow truck and the rental car, a phone call came from the police officer. He was full of apologies as he revealed I was at fault, according to a new law neither he, nor I, (nor any of the insurance agents I talked to through the day), had known about. 

And I felt myself slipping toward disbelief and almost anger. How quickly I felt my trajectory change! I could not (still cannot!) wrap my mind around this law that allows semi drivers to ignore posted traffic patterns and forces other drivers to go against conventional wisdom. But even in my frustration, I can rejoice.

It just may be a little more difficult

11:30AM – So after attending to obligatory accident details for the rest of the morning, I finally arrived at work, my intended destination. There I met my caring co-workers who were concerned for me, and encouraging to my heart. They helped me continue to look for reasons to rejoice, as I joined our meeting (already in progress) and we celebrated what God had done over the weekend.

2:30 PM – And when we were finally tired of sitting and working through some difficult items, we went out for fresh air. My team looked for reasons to rejoice together. 

And we found them:

• We welcomed the staff of a new bank to the neighborhood,
• We laughed as some of us raced down the sidewalk
• Also, we successfully avoided the doughnut shop (it helped that it was closed…) 
• And we stopped at a playground to swing as high as we possibly could.

The sun, fresh air, and blood pumping through my veins lifted me out of the pit of irritation that wanted to swallow me whole. I just had to choose to be lifted up.

After intentionally looking for reasons to  rejoice that afternoon, it was much easier to return to the tasks of the day. Minute by minute, that one day threw several curveballs that distracted and tempted me to lose sight of hope. But, curveballs or not, it is 100% my choice to rejoice. 

And we all have that choice every minute of every day. So, how can face this world, with all its bad news and disappointments, and find reasons to rejoice? Is it true that we can bless the Lord at all times? (Ps 34:1a).

Bless the Lord at all Times

I believe that in all circumstances, there are three things that can quickly re-focus us to bring hope:

God hears me.

When the righteous cry for help, the Lord hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. (Psalm 34:17)

God turns his ears to his children. He hears the prayer of the son or daughter who calls out to Him. No matter our situation, God is El Roi, the God who sees us.  

God holds me.

For I am the LORD your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you, Do not fear; I will help you. (Isaiah 41:13)

God is like a tender shepherd who gathers his lambs in His arms. He pulls us close to protect us under the shadow of His wing. He will not let go.

God calls me to Himself.

Jesus said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him to life on the last day.” (John 6:44)

God has made a way in Jesus to bring us to Himself. And as we draw near to Him, He continues to draw near to us. Because He has welcomed us as sons and daughters into His own family. 

When all around you the world seems to be falling apart, remember that you have reasons to rejoice.

Download the Printable!

As we face tragic news, parenting struggles, and even wrecked cars, God has given countless reasons to rejoice. So will you join me?

Elizabeth Joy