Joy vs. Happiness

Psalm 28:7 “The Lord is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.”

This is the third day with the same scripture verse. This is not something I would usually do, I just felt there were three very important lessons in this one scripture verse. What I would like to talk about today is the part that says, “My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.” This mentions two of my favorite things and two things that I think can really be life changing if you can incorporate them into your everyday life.

The first is joy. The first thing I thought of was the bible story about the first thing Mary did when she found out she was going to be pregnant with Jesus. She also found out her cousin Elizabeth we pregnant with child and she went to visit her cousin Elizabeth. In Luke 1:41 it says, “When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.” It does not say that the baby leaped with joy, however, I think that is what happened. Even the little tiny baby in his mother’s tummy could feel the presence of the Holy Spirit and was filled with joy. Then Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. When you are filled with the Holy Spirit you can’t help but be filled with joy. There is so much to be joyful about.

Some people think that in order to have joy, we need to be in a good circumstance. We think when we are happy, then we are joyful. Sometimes we think we will be happy when we get the right job, finally get married or have children, make a certain amount of money, you fill in the blank. What are you telling yourself you need to have to be happy? There is a difference between joy and happiness. Sometimes we use words interchangeably without realizing that they actually mean different things. You can have joy, even when you are not happy. One definition of happiness that I think we mostly think of is: Happiness is that feeling that comes over you when you know life is good and you can’t help but smile. This is a great definition. In this definition it ties happiness to the events in your life. You are happy when things are going well. This is most of us. When things are going well, we feel happy.

Joy is different than happiness. When I looked online I found a similar definition to happiness. However, I believe joy is so much more than a reaction to our circumstances. Theopedia describes joy as “a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. It is a settled state of contentment, confidence, and hope.” I love this definition. It is much more in line with what I’ve discovered over the years. You can have joy even when things aren’t going well. Joy is a choice, or as the definition states, a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. Why does it matter if we know the difference between joy and happiness? I think it matters because if you know that joy is a state of mind and an orientation of the heart, you can work to achieve it more often.

It seems like there are so many things throughout life that are not in our control. Isn’t it nice to know that joy is not one of them? One of my favorite mentors always uses an analogy when talking about joy. He says that a power plant doesn’t just have energy, it creates energy. He said we are the same. We don’t have just have joy, we create joy. We can create the joy in any circumstance if we choose too. Now, you may be asking yourself, how do I create joy? I think there are two great ways to create joy.

The first one sort of leads into the second one. The first one is mentioned in this verse of the day, “my heart leaps for joy and my song praises Him.” Praise is an excellent way to create joy. I am not sure you can be anything other than joyful when you are praising God. You could start out in some other mood, maybe angry, sad, frustrated, you name it, but once you start praising God, it is hard to stay in that mood. Actually I think it may be impossible. When you are praising God you are telling Him how wonderful He is and/or thanking Him for all that He has done. I can’t see how you can stay angry, sad, frustrated or depressed when you are thinking about how amazing God is and all the things that God has done.

Usually when we are praising Him we turn more to gratitude. Which is the second way to create joy. I am not sure if I have mentioned gratitude in a previous episode or not, but you will hear me talk about it often. There are just some things that I think are so important that we need to keep mentioning them over and over again until everyone in the world hears them. Gratitude is one of them. If you are prone to negative feelings like anger or depression, gratitude can help bring you out of this. If you just want more joy in your life gratitude can help you with this as well. Gratitude can change your life. I am not just saying this. There are countless examples of people who have turned their whole life around by just starting a practice of gratitude.

Starting a gratitude practice does not have to be something that is time consuming. I can already tell that some of you stopped listening because you do not need one more thing to do. I get it, life is busy, crazy busy for some. Starting a gratitude practice could be as simple as you taking one minute before you get out of bed to say thank you to the Lord for the gift of another day of life. It could be you noticing throughout the day different things to be grateful for. Writing down a couple of things in a gratitude journal/empty notebook is a great practice to get into. One reason that writing them down is so helpful is because then you can go back and reread them, especially if you are having a bad day. It also reminds you at the end of the year, that no matter how bad the year was, you were able to find at least one thing each day that you were grateful for.

This is also a great way to remember what you did throughout the year. I know people that take one gratitude photo each day and then they have 365 photos at the end of the year of happy moments throughout the year. Let's be honest, our brains tend to remember the negative times more than the good times. I am not sure why this is. I am sure there is a science explanation for it, but I don’t have it for you. I do know that when I go back and reread my gratitude journal I am reminded of a lot of things that I had forgotten about. I always feel joyful rereading my gratitude journal.

If you want more joy in your life try being grateful more intentionally. Gratitude is something that I think we all have. What I am talking about is going through your day trying to intentionally find things to be grateful for. I think at any given time we could probably all come up with at least a few things we are grateful for. However, if you are writing down a few things each day, you are not going to write down the same thing every day. So, this puts your brain on the lookout for new things you can be grateful for. You will be surprised how many new things start to bring you joy when you are intentionally looking for gratitude.

I mentioned praising God leads to gratitude. However, some of you may be thinking that you are not sure how to praise God. There are several ways, you could just have a conversation with Him about how thankful you are for all that He has done or you. You could listen to praise and worship music as they have done a great job creating lyrics that praise God. You could just start listing all the names for God and how great He is just for being God. However, you want to praise God is great. There is no right or wrong way to do it. I think if you try to add more praising or more gratitude into your life, you will be surprised how much more joy you have in your life. The bible says “seek and you will find,” this is true for joy as well. If you are looking for more joy in your life, you will find it. Let me leave you with this question, “What’s one thing you could do to bring more joy into your day today?”

Dear Heavenly Father I ask that you bless everyone listening to this episode today. Lord we ask that you fill our hearts with joy. We thank you for all that you do and we praise you Almighty father you are the king of kings and you are the Lord of lords. You are the Alpha and the Omega and we're so very thankful for you. God we ask that you help us to be more grateful throughout the day. We ask that you show us how to do this. Lord we want to fill our days with joy and we to praise you with our songs as the verse said. Lord God we love you so very much and we ask all of us in accordance with your will and in Jesus is holy name, Amen.