Where to Look to Find Joy

Joy. We don’t really know how to define it, but we know that we like it and many of us spend most of our lives trying to find it. We look for joy in our jobs, in relationships, in temporary pleasure. But at the end of the day, all these things will fall short. They will leave us empty and unfulfilled and we start looking somewhere new the find our joy. But as believers, as Pastor Steven reminds us in this clip from our series “The Joy Genome,” we have never-ending access to the most powerful source of true joy.

http://www.stevenfurtick.com/sermon-clips/where-to-look-to-find-your-joy/

Hold on tight to what you can’t get back

A dilemma we all face is trying to determine how tight of a grip we should maintain on different things in our lives. A question I have started asking myself to help sort my priorities and determine the strength of my grip is what can’t I get back?

Not everything is replaceable. There are some things you simply can’t get back if you lose them. And these are the things I want to hold onto the tightest.

You can’t get back hours you missed out playing with your kids because you didn’t leave work at work.

You can’t get back your marriage if your actions and behaviors cause it to completely disintegrate.

You can’t get back the integrity you spent years building because you wanted to cut a corner for momentary pleasure or gain.

No paycheck or promotion is worth your family. No stubborn habit is worth your marriage. No compromise is worth your character. Prioritize what is most important in your life and hold onto it with everything you’ve got. Ruthlessly fight anything that threatens to loosen your grip.

We often hold too tightly onto the things we could replace or do away with all too easily. Let them go. Hold on tight to what matters most.

Or you might not get it back.