Good morning…
Today I begin a new semester of learning with women, at home and at the church.
From 12:30 to 2:00 pm, I welcome women into our home to discuss Kay Warren’s Choose Joy: Because Happiness Isn’t Enough. A book that significantly shaped my life when I taught it ten years ago this fall, I am excited to teach from the newly reprinted version with fresh introductory words. I’ll teach it with another small group tomorrow morning at 10:00 am as well.
“Most of us will not face anything as devastating as the loss of a child to suicide, but every single day you will face something that threatens your attempts to live with joy,” writes Kay on page 12. “Health problems, financial worries, marriage issues, loneliness, unresolved relational conflicts, anxiety about our nation or our world, stress over how your kids are turning out – the devil is at work nonstop to interfere with or interrupt your plans and dreams. Your primary task is to get to know God intimately and to send your spiritual roots deep into the soil of his love; to develop convictions and certainties about him that will become the source of your strength when happiness isn’t enough.”
With every book we study together, week by week, semester after semester, we get to know God more intimately. We send our spiritual roots deep into the soil of his love. Empowering. Exuberant. Eternal. Joyful strength is the byproduct of our ongoing oneness with God.
Later, I’ll head over to Northside Church for our “Creative Card Making Session” from 3:30 to 5:00 pm. Supportive strength will rise up from our souls as we collage cards for ourselves, for our loved ones, or for people on our church’s private prayer list. (This weekly workshop is open to all who like to cut, paste, and creatively process the something we face each day.)
Afterwards, I look forward to facilitating rich discussion with young moms while their kids are in children’s choir, from 5:00 to 6:00 pm. Tonight we will dive into another book I have loved for years, Margaret Silf’s The Other Side of Chaos: Breaking Through When Life is Breaking Down.
Together, we will “…take the journey in faith – not the kind of faith that knows all the answers and has mapped out the right and proper paths, but the faith that simply says, ‘I don’t know, but I trust.'” (p.9)
Trusting God with the semester ahead, might we all live into Kay’s definition of joy?
Joy is…
…the settled assurance
that God is in control
of all the details of my life,
…the quiet confidence
that ultimately everything
is going to be alright,
…and the determined choice
to praise God
in all things.
Don’t run from tests and hardships, brothers and sisters. As difficult as they are, you will ultimately find joy in them; if you embrace them, your faith will blossom under pressure and teach you true patience as you endure. And true patience brought on by endurance will equip you to complete the long journey and cross the finish line—mature, complete, and wanting nothing (James 1:2-4, VOICE).
…Sue…
P.S. That final phrase “wanting nothing” reminds me of Audrey Assad’s moving song, I Shall Not Want. I return to the gift again, sensing the blossoming of joy within, slowly, quietly, beyond my own doing.
