I was having a very hard time with the phrase “Just choose joy.” What does that even mean??? Do I need to ignore all the not so joyous emotions that arise and skip around with a smile on my face instead? Because I have tears pouring down my face does that mean I am carrying less joy inside me?
I realized the reason these questions were arising within me was because I have grown up believing that joy is synonym for happy. The word happy is rooted in the word happenings, meaning that we are happy based on the circumstances that surround us. So when we “choose joy” we do have a choice to make that is based on the circumstances around us, but does it look the same as being happy? I read something a few years ago that used joy as an acronym. It listed J as Jesus, O as Others, and Y as yourself. At the time this was just filed away for later use.
On a particular day this month I was having a very emotional day and praying for God to pour joy over me. He asked me what that looked like and how did I know I wasn’t feeling joy at that moment. It hit me then that “choosing joy” does not mean “choosing happiness”. Instead it means to choose Jesus, Others, and Yourself. That changed my entire view of my emotions. When I am crying does that mean I am choosing Jesus any less??? NO! Most of the time those are moments I am pouring all of me into Jesus and choosing Him with all of me. So from this I realized that “choosing joy” is not choosing an outward appearance, its choosing to go after Jesus with everything you have, to choose others over yourself, and to choose change for yourself in order to look more like Jesus.
