My joy recipe.

There’s a girl and a pot. What’s cooking? Joy. As I share my recipe, I would like you to know that all these have taken surrender to God, openness to learn and consistent reminding. You will notice that most of the things that strangle our joy may be external, but they root from our own minds and how we think. The call is not to change the world, but to actually allow yourself to be changed.(by truth.) Let’s get cooking..

1. We don’t own people.

I am here to demolish the Disney, Hollywood fallacy first. We have grown up to be taught by it that we are to have a person or people, that are ours, and their allegiance is to us and ours to them. This has been harshly countered by the reality of what life is. Our loved ones move, die or we even just drift.

It may seem austere and I hate to break it to you but we don’t own people. In fact, I lied, I don’t hate to break it to you. This is rather a very liberating truth. Its expedient that we realize that we cannot cling to people thus and that people can’t be lifelines. God is wiser than to place us in a situation where we can’t function when a loved one leaves. Fact is, according to Scripture we don’t even own ourselves let alone other people.

KJV 1 Corinthians 6
19 What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?

2. Loving the right way.

We naturally and rightly yearn to be seen, to be heard, to be loved and as well, to love. However, it is dismal that the natural/carnal mind can only give to be given. And this is not giving in its true sense. We love to be loved. This is unquestionably a recipe for disaster.

Our recipe today says, we may only love because we’re already loved. Our love to others is not on a reciprocal basis. And even in romantic relationships and close friendships that require mutuality in effort and vulnerability, we can even there only truly love from a point of wholeness; where we understand we are already loved. If our love is self-seeking, our joy will never be full.

KJV 1 John 4
19 We love him, because he first loved us.
21 And this commandment have we from him, That he who loveth God love his brother also.

3. Sanctification.

In God’s plan to save humanity there are three processes; justification(saved from the penalty of sin), sanctification (saved from the power of sin) and glorification (saved from the presence of sin). Christ has of course paid for the penalty of sin by His death on the cross. The ongoing process in the believer is now being sanctified. This process is not easy. Its not supposed to be. It is declaring war against yourself.

It has been helpful for me to realize that this process first, takes time and second is actually a revelation of God’s willingness to save me. The fire is to consume my sin and not me.

KJV Revelation 3
19 As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten: be zealous therefore, and repent.

KJV 2 Corinthians 12
10 Therefore I take pleasure in infirmities, in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong.

…to be continued.