Your lungs need oxygen to thrive, your body needs food to thrive, and your soul needs joy to thrive. How can you tell when someone is joy-deprived? By how they look and what they say. One Bible teacher said: ‘When I began to understand John 10:10…I realised the enemy had deceived me into thinking that enjoying things was not important…I had come to believe – falsely, of course – that if I was having fun, something was wrong…I must not be working hard enough! I never saw my father enjoy life and it seemed to aggravate him when others did, so I just grew up thinking something must be wrong with it. I can remember being told to be quiet when I laughed out loud…The seventeenth-century…[writer] Madame Guyon said that the highest call for every child of God is to enjoy God. I remember what a heavy load lifted off of me the first time I read that…I was working so hard trying to please God that the thought of simply enjoying Him had not occurred to me at all. I had never heard of such a thing!…I had been a committed church member for over twenty years before I learned that God wanted me to enjoy Him and the life He had given me.’ Can you relate to any of that? If so, it’s time to make some changes in your life. Take a break without feeling guilty; you’ll be much more productive when you’re rested and refreshed. Recreation and down time aren’t wrong or ‘unspiritual’; they’re essential for staying in balance. We live in a driven, stressed-out society, but you can change; you can be joyful if you choose to.
