Joy Stealers; What Is That All About?

by Olga Hermans

 

 

  In our previous post we talked about the fact that joy is not the same as happiness. Thank you so much for all your emails and comments. I really do appreciate them! A few months ago I watched a service online where Dr. Don Colbert talked about joy stealers.

Just like those happiness traps that we get stuck in, there are also joy stealers. There are attitudes, that when you have them, you will not be able to enter into joy. I always appreciate Dr. Colbert and I follow a lot of his advice, especially this one on joy stealers. That’s why I like to share these with you today.

1. A critical, complaining attitude. If you have a critical, complaining attitude, you can never sow seeds of joy and reap a harvest of joy. You can NEVER do that! Philippians 2:14 says: Do all things without grumbling and faultfinding and complaining [against God] and questioning and doubting [among yourselves] Not some things, ALL things!

You have to identify this. If you have it or your spouse has it, repent and resist this attitude. We all know how the Israelites grumbled in the desert; they are a great example to us. They had a grumbling, faultfinding and complaining attitude.

They hated the manna that God gave them from heaven every day that had every bit of nourishment in it they needed to live free of disease for years and years. Numbers tells us that there were fiery serpents among them, they bit the people and many of them died. So, the people asked Moses to pray for the Lord to take the serpents out of their midst.

Did the Lord take the serpents away? NO! Here is why: If you are murmuring and complaining, faultfinding; guess what? You are going to be in trial after trial after trial, represented by the many, many snakes. God is not taking the snakes away; you have to deal with it with an attitude of gratitude.

God hates a murmuring, faultfinding, complaining attitude and if you have that attitude; repent, because you will never have joy with that attitude; ever. Here is the 2nd joy-stealer attitude

2. Offense. If you get offended easily, you will never have joy: impossible!

You might think that your situation is much different from any other because nobody can understand what has been done to you. Listen to what Paul said in Acts 24:16 … I exercise myself, to have always a conscience void of offence toward God, and toward men.

He exercised to be free of offense, In other words, he worked at it and kept working at it. Every single day! A lot of people keep offense towards God when a loved one died because of a car accident. Do you know what unforgiveness does in the body? It causes the stress response in the body to become stuck.

Just like an accelerator on a car can become stuck, you can get stuck. You stir in your own stress juices and these stress juices were meant to save your life in the short run but they also will destroy your life in the long run when they are stimulated continuously! A chronic stress response is deadly and causes tremendous disease. It is at the root of most diseases.

The main thing that gets people stuck in that stress response is: offense, unforgiveness, bitterness and resentment. Forgiveness is that important! Get rid of all bitterness, rage, anger, harsh words, and slander, as well as all types of evil behavior. Eph 4:31 It says ALL bitterness and ALL anger, ALL rage.

The word ALL is very important. And it says to be kind to one another, tender-hearted and forgiving one another, just as Jesus has forgiven you. You might think that this is not fair. It is not about being fair, it is about being obedient to God’s Word.

God knows that if you don’t do this, it is going to eventually effect your health and it will eventually poison every relationship you are in and it is going to eventually affect your health and destroy your health; mentally, emotionally and it will also affect your relationship with God.

Many people cannot simply feel the presence of God; their prayers are not being answered and that is because they have a spirit of offense. They carry bitterness and they do not release the hurt. Let me tell you, if you don’t forgive them; you are going to pay the price.

Jesus said: If you forgive those who sin against you, your heavenly Father will forgive you. But if you refuse to forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins. Matthew 6:14-15 That’s why proverbs says: above all else, guard your heart because out of it flow the issue of life.

We have to guard our heart, we cannot let bitterness in, and we cannot let offense in because it will destroy our joy and we will never be able to plant seeds of joy and have a harvest of joy. You will always wonder, why that other person is so happy and why can I never sense the presence of God? That is because of that poisonous root of bitterness that will always destroy and prevent happiness form taking root.

3. The person with stinking thinking. If you want to discover the life you were born to live, you have to learn how we can clean our thinking up.

Mark Twain said: I have been through some terrible things in my life, some of which actually happened.

The majority of bad things we think are going to happen to us, never happen. Phil.2:5 says: “allow this mind to be in you”, which means that we can have the mind of Christ or allow this mind that was in Jesus to be in us, which means we can have the mind of Christ, but we need to get the word of God inside of us and we have to get the trash out.

We sometimes carry too many deadly emotions inside us and “somebody has done me wrong songs”. We have to allow God to change the way we think. Rom.12:2 Dr. Colbert also taught that we have a joy center in the brain, did you know that?

He came up with research after research, very interesting! He is writing a book about it, which will be released sometime soon. He said that when this joycenter is developed, it has executive control just like the president; it has executive control over the entire emotional system. Also, when it is developed, it regulates emotion, pain and immunity.

The joycenter, if it is developed, is able to override the main drive centers of food, sexual impulses, temper and rage. So, if you can effectively develop this joycenter, guess what? You’ll be able to resist giving into any cravings for food (even chocolate), sexual impulse cravings, affairs and pornography and sexual addictions. You can resist terror, and you can overcome it.

You can resist giving into rage; you can resist giving into blind rage or fury. You can control it. Because when you develop that joy center it is literally to exert executive control over every emotional center in your mind. That means it overcomes depression, fear, anxiety, guilt, shame, blame, etc.

Every single emotion has to bow before the chief executive which is the joy center. Well, I thought this was worth writing a post about, what do you think? I value your comments! You can subscribe to

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