Joy for the Journey

I have a few minutes so I thought I would give a brief synopsis of the women's retreat I went on this past weekend. Our pastor's wife and the wife of a Search Ministries church member were our speakers. They did a wonderful job!

Friday night, we talked about the needs of women (and people, but mostly for women!) and how those needs are "met" by the world and by God. The needs were Security(being loved and accepted), Significance (identity/worth) and Satisfaction (competence/fulfillment). The world tell us to find our security in people, significance in possessions and satisfaction in position. God provides for us Security in the father as He adopted us, Significance in His Son, as we are co-heirs with him and are priceless and Satisfaction in the Holy Spirit through the gifts of the Spirit. It's all about service to others.

Probably my favorite quote from that evening was from Albert Sweitzer, who said, "If you own something that you cannot give away, you don't own it, it owns you!"

The basic idea was that where you fall on that chart, under God or the world, determines how joyful or joyless you are in life. Our small group discussion was great - talking about joy robbers in our life and sources of joy. We also spent some time talking about how self-absorption can rob us of the opportunity to find joy in serving others, something our pastor has touched on recently.

The Saturday sessions focused on Forgiveness as being a key to unlock joy in our lives - forgiving God for things we blame on Him, forgiving ourselves for things we regret and forgiving others of things they have committed against us. The idea here - we, and we alone, hold the key to our own joy. It's a choice for us and we cannot expect someone else to be responsible for our joylessness. Our pastor's wife shared a devastating situation where her loss was a result of someone else's wrongful decision. A friend of hers gave her a plaque that read, "God is too good to be unkind and too wise to make mistakes."

Later that night, the session was on the freedom found in joy, and finding joy in relationships and circumstances. Two ideas from this session: 1) we do not have the key to someone else's joy, we can only be responsible to people, not for people, and 2) at any point in life our two options are a) An attitude of gratitude, and posture of grace and a commitment to joy OR b) gloom. If we view our situations as tools that God uses to strip us of our trust in ourselves and to turn our trust towards Him, we will see our circumstance from His perspective.

That evening, in our small group session, we read James 1:2 about when various trials come your way. I have read this verse so many times, but one woman there had brought The New Living Bible and her verse read like this: "Whenever troubles come your way, let it be an opportunity for joy." I think that stopped us dead in our tracks - just a new way to think about that verse. The other tool we talked about was SWAP - or Stop Worrying and Pray. My friend preferred to call it SWAPS - stop worrying and pray stupid! We had a little laugh about that one.

Our final day, we focused on where our focus should be in order to attain this joy that we all desire. The first focus was Philippians 4:8 - Three Pale Wasps (I'm not sure this was all that useful to me, I prefer to recall this verse with the Steve Green Hide 'em In Your Heart song!). We should focus on whatever is true, honorable, right, pure, admirable, lovely, excellent, and worthy of praise. The second focus is heaven, which gives us new perspectives on money and aging! Lastly, our focus needs to be on People Who Need the Lord. The eternal condition of other people is more important that..... fill in the blank.

It really was a great weekend. I think the session on forgiveness really hit home for me more than any other. Forgiveness is a huge issue for me because I don't know that I ever really learned how to do it or accept it. I think it takes a great amount of humility to ask for forgiveness and I don't think we see enough of it these days. I do think that it is key to experiencing joy. It is also not easy!!

Wishing you all a large dose of joy for your day!