The world would often associate increasing joy in your heart with increasing the money in your wallet, things in your house or relationships around you. While all those things can increase your happiness, they will all fall short of making your heart joyful.
Joy is the overflow of THE WORD from your human spirit (heart) to external circumstances. It can increase regardless of the circumstances because it’s not based on the circumstances like happiness. This means it’s so much more powerful in the face of a difficult situation.
In today’s post I want to look at what it really means to increase your joy. I want to look at what true joy is and how it can affect your happiness.
Action Step: Increase your confession of God’s Word over yourself to increase the joy in your heart.
My pastor would always say,
“When your bucket gets bumped, what you’re full of will come splashing out.”
Pastor Jerry Zirkle
This can be a good thing or a bad thing.
Have you ever stubbed your toe? I’ll move on.
25 Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad.
Proverbs 12:25 KJV
The confession that we make over ourselves matters. What we fill ourselves with also matters.
In previous posts I mentioned how important it is to protect your heart.
The Human Spirit must be Protected
The thing is that if we want our hearts to be overflowing with joy then we have to start by filling it with God’s Word.
If we want to operate by faith, live in health and financial prosperity, then the first step is hearing (Romans 10:17 NKJV – So then faith comes by hearing, and). What better way to hear than from your own mouth?
When you confess with your mouth, it forces your mind and heart to start paying attention.
Joy is a fruit of our human spirit and comes from the inside out.
Joy is the overflow of Biblical words coming out of our spirit into our situation. This comes by meditating on the word day and night.
Joy is a fruit of your human spirit by the Holy Spirit who dwells in you.
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
Galatians 5:22-23 KJV
Your own recreated spirit produces these when you are born again. Now there are a lot of ways to actually increase the fruit that your spirit is producing, but that is a post for another time.
The point is that joy is a spiritual fruit that comes from your spirit and not your soul (mind, will and emotions).
Joy focuses on what’s inside of you. It comes out of you not into you. Its roots are in THE WORD and that word that is IN YOU.
Happiness is an emotion and is outside-in minded.
When you are unhappy it’s because something on the outside has disrupted your feelings. You no longer feel good and therefore you aren’t happy. Happiness relies on external things and when those things are removed so is the happiness.
12 And of thy mercy cut off mine enemies, and destroy all them that afflict my soul: for I am thy servant.
Psalm 143:12 KJV
This is what the psalmist is talking about. Notice his soul (mind) is afflicted. Why? Because of the external enemies that are coming against him.
If you are looking for something that makes you happy, you are looking for a donut or ice cream or something that makes you feel good. You want to have a positive emotional response based upon your flesh.
The problem is that happiness is always temporary, and happiness is always weak.
How do we increase joy in our lives?
Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop: but a good word maketh it glad.
Proverbs 12:25
This word “glad” is the Hebrew word “samach”. It literally means to “make joyful” or rejoice. It’s saying that “a good word” is what causes joy.
“Glad” (samach)
literally means to “make joyful”
Strong’s Hebrew: 8055
The words that we speak matter. We’ve all heard the saying…
Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me. WRONG.
I talk about this a lot on this blog and that’s because I truly believe that most of our problems are self induced. They come from filling ourselves with and talking about negative things.
Napoleon Hill had a hold on this when he said,
“What the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”
Napoleon Hill
We have a tendency to end up achieving what we think about the most, and we think about what we want the most. If you then change what you say, you force your brain and heart to come inline with one another and you’ll start to see a change in your life.
This works for healing, finances, relationships, and anything else.
“I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is that I can’t find anybody who can tell me what they want.”
Mark Twain
God wrote a whole book about all the things that HE wants for you and me. They’re GOOD things (Jeremiah 29:11).
It’s EASY to understand, but HARD to execute
Here’s a rough truth but it is the truth. Jesus has done all He is going to do. YOU have to take the next step. It’s in your hands.
Everyone is looking for the “next thing”, and just like Naaman (2 Kings 5) who went to ask what he needed to do, many people look for the answers to their health, finances or anything else. When they hear that the things they are or aren’t saying are what’s hurting them, they dismiss it.
I would say this to you. Just as Naaman’s servant said if it was hard wouldn’t you have done it? So the same is here. If I said something hard, would you have done it.
This is not hard to understand or to execute. It simply takes discipline.
Are you depressed? Take the medicine of THE WORD. Depression is common, but it isn’t natural.
The Human Spirit can Overflow to Health
This is THE MOST IMPORTANT thing that you can do. This single action step will change your life.
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