It’s possible to experience joy no matter what circumstance you find yourself in. Being joyful isn’t the same as being happy. It’s a deeper, quiet, confidence that says, “I know I can experience joy even in the most difficult of situations.”

That can be your reality!

Resources Mentioned:

The Mindset Reset: https://ashleyvarner.com/mindset
Truth Journaling: https://ashleyvarner.com/free
Power of Prayer Workbook: https://ashleyvarner.com/prayer

Highlights from the Episode:

I don’t know about you, but there have been plenty of times in my life when I was in not so joyful circumstances, and I had to choose to experience joy in my life, and this is something that I wanna share with you today.

Hey there and welcome back to “The Renewed Mind,” I am your host, Ashley Varner, and I just wanna say thank you for being here. If you enjoy videos about mindset from a Christian perspective, make sure to subscribe, make sure to like so that YouTube knows to pass along these videos to other people.

I want to talk to you today about joy. It seems like we’ve gone through the last couple of years with very little joy, right?

It seems like the circumstances around us have just been not conducive to a joyful heart. And one thing that I keep thinking about as a Christian is we’re called to have joy.

It’s one of the fruits of the Spirit. It talks about having joy in the middle of our circumstances and really just experiencing joy on a regular basis. And so oftentimes we think that if we’re not experiencing joy, then there must be something wrong in our faith, and our Christian life.

I want to give you some tips today on how you can experience joy at any time. This is including times whenever you find yourself in a difficult circumstance or maybe even in a circumstance that seems beyond your control, because I want you to know that your circumstances do not have to dictate your feelings, right?

Your circumstances can be completely neutral in your processes, in the way that you think and the way that you feel. And so today I wanna share four tips on how you can experience more joy and how you can really live a joy-filled life.

The truth is that life is hard and joy isn’t always an automatic emotion. Now, there are times whenever we have joy, right? We just experienced the holidays, and if you’ve seen a child open up a gift that you’ve purchased them, you know, that joy comes up in your life.

But joy, isn’t always an automatic response to the circumstances in our lives. And just because we accept the Lord or because we’re Christian, it doesn’t mean that that joy becomes automatic for us. It’s something that we have to work on. This is something that I really try to teach my clients whenever we’re working on mindset and shifting our emotions is that you can experience any kind of emotion that you want because they’re dictated by your thoughts.

First Tip: Look to the Lord

The first tip that I have for you is to look to the Lord. So often whenever we are experiencing feelings that are not joy, you know, we’re experiencing sorrow or pain, or just feeling this sense of uneasiness in our life. A lot of times the thought that is leading to that emotion is something like nobody understands what I’m going through or I’m all alone, or nobody understands how I feel.

And whenever we look to the Lord, we can remember that he came here as a man and experienced everything that we experienced, and he did that on purpose. It wasn’t just something that he felt like he had to do. it’s something that he wanted to do. He wanted to experience humanity so that he could be there for you.

I believe that whenever we use our negative emotions to lead us back to the Lord, that’s when we start using negative emotions to our advantage. Because we can see a negative emotion and just think that there is nothing else that we can do about it. And our brain just starts to shut down whenever we’re experiencing a negative emotion. But if we can take that emotion and take it to the cross and say, “Lord, I don’t feel joyful right now, “this circumstance feels impossible to feel joy.” And we go to him and we let him comfort us, we let him give us his joy, right?

That verse that talks about how the joy of the Lord is our strength doesn’t mean that we automatically are happy all the time and that we’re happy-go-lucky and never have any problems. But what it does mean is whenever we take our pain, any negative emotion that we feel to the Lord, we can exchange that emotion for his joy. And the more that we look to him, the more that we focus on him, the more we’re going to see joy filling our lives and filling our hearts.

Second Tip: Pay attention to what you’re allowing in your mind

The second tip that I have for you, if you want to live a joy-filled life is to pay attention to what you’re allowing into your mind. Like I said, our thoughts fuel our emotions, and if you are constantly filling your mind with the news or Facebook posts or Facebook rants or anything like that, if you are constantly filling your mind with that, your thoughts are gonna follow. And then those emotions are naturally going to be emotions that aren’t joy-filled, right? You’re going to naturally have emotions of worry and anxiousness. If you’re constantly filling your mind with those kinds of ideas and those kinds of topics.

Now, it’s important to know what’s going on in the world, I’m not saying that, but what I am saying is if you really want to have a joy-filled life, start filling your mind with uplifting and positive things, start filling it with God’s Word, start going to his Word and finding verses that are going to help you. Because he is there for you, his word is there, it’s strong, it’s everlasting, it will never fail.

Whenever you find yourself in a place where yes, you are experiencing some pain, maybe it’s sorrow that is legitimate sorrow. Maybe you had a death in the family, maybe you are experiencing a job loss or something like that. What I want you to see is that you can take that pain to the Lord. And it won’t automatically fix the pain, but what it does is it helps you to know that he is with you, that he is comforting you.

A way that you can do that is by going to his Word, by speaking to other women that you know are going to uplift you. If you are very intentional about the things that you allow into your mind, you’re going to be able to take your thoughts captive in an easier way, and that will naturally lead to a more joy-filled life.

One thing that you can do to fill your mind with God’s Word is to write it down and memorize it. I love the idea of scripture coloring books, where it’s a way to unwind and destress, but at the same time, you’re filling your mind with God’s Word. Listening to Christian music is another way that you can be uplifted. Whenever you start to pay attention to what’s coming into your mind, then you can start to decide, is this something that I want to influence my emotions or not?

Third Tip: Ask for help

The third tip I have for you is to not be hesitant about reaching for help and asking for help. So I know that this is probably the most difficult for us because we want to do things our way, we want to just be self-sufficient. And it’s hard for us to be vulnerable with other people, right? But whenever you’re struggling, reach out to someone, talk to someone.

That’s why I love the community that is going to be built around a 180Confidence because it is all about women who are struggling in a certain area of their life, but they’re coming together, they’re putting the truth of God’s Word together to build their confidence, to strengthen their mindset. If you’re interested in being part of a community like that, there is group coaching calls and there are lessons and teaching and email support. If you are interested in that, make sure to go to ashleyvarner.com/180 to find out all about that program.

The truth is that we need each other, we are a body of Christ for a reason. The Lord could have used any kind of illustration to explain his people, his church. And he chose to inspire Paul to teach about the church being a body. I love this because it says that we should not and cannot be like an island unto ourselves. We need other people. It can be difficult to be vulnerable and share, but anything that is brought to the light.

So say you have some anxiousness or some worry and you bring that to light and you share it with other people, other Christians that can encourage you, what happens is they can come alongside you, they can guide you, give you direction and likely they have experienced something very similar in their lives as well.

Remember that what you’re dealing with is not unique, and I hope that that’s comforting to you to say that you’re not the only one who has dealt with this type of situation.

So seek out people that you know have maybe dealt with this, or if like say you’ve had a death in the family, seek out someone who has experienced that same kind of loss and allow them to walk alongside you and help you in your struggles. Because then even just that comradery and that fellowship with other believers is going to bring joy into your life.

Fourth Tip: Stay consistent

The fourth and last tip that I have for you, if you want to have a joy-filled life is to stay consistent in all these other areas. Because sometimes we go to someone for help and maybe it doesn’t work out, maybe they can’t help us the way that we thought that they could, or we read a verse and it helps us for a little bit, and then we are feeling the same way, or maybe we look to Jesus for a time and we just kind of get distracted.

I want you to stay consistent. I want you to abide in Christ because of that’s where we continue to receive the help and the comfort that we need. So I know that if you are experiencing a time in your life where joy feels impossible, stay consistent, stay in his Word, stay in your mindset work, and the things that I teach on this channel to help you to continue taking your thoughts captive, because that is where it all starts my friends. If you’re struggling with negative emotions, realize that this is a process, that it takes time to take your thoughts captive and learn how to control your emotions.

Be consistent with that. Make sure to stay the course, you can do this, with the Lord’s help you can start to have a joy-filled life. I hope that this helped you and encouraged you.

Like I said, make sure to subscribe so that I know that these are the kinds of videos that you wanna see because I’m here to serve you. I hope that you have a great week and I will talk to you soon.

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