Hello. My name is Lindsi Gross with Imagine Doula Services. I want to welcome you to God Today. Open your Bible to Galatians chapter five. We’re going to talk about the fruits of the Spirit. One of the fruits of the Spirit that I just love is, joy. Don’t you just love laughing with a friend, or just that feeling of being so filled up and it makes your heart just come alive? Well, that is called joy and joy is a fruit of the Spirit.
So it says in Galatians 5:22, “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now listen to this: It says, “against such things there is no law.” And also Jesus talks about how He wanted our joy to be full and to be overflowing. So joy is for us. And guess what? You can never have too much. It’s not like dessert where you have to say, “Oh no, I’ve had enough. I’ve had enough. I don’t need any more.” Joy is meant to fill you so that you spill over onto other people, and other people who are discouraged or sad or whatever it is that they are like, “Wow, what is this joy?” It can be so contagious.
And so I want you to just really allow yourself to spend time with the Holy Spirit and ask Him to fill you up with joy. We often look at the fruits of the Spirit, like patience and goodness and faithfulness, and we want to get all serious about all these good things that we can do for God. And that’s okay, but we need to be joyful, because God is not meaning to send out grumpy Christians into the world. We need to be filled up with joy because Jesus, it says in the Bible that “For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.” And so everyone that you encounter, everyone that you meet, Jesus died for them, and it was His joy to do so, and He wants to fill you and fill everyone with so much joy that we just are smiling, and we’re sharing the Gospel with people. And when our children are like, “Mom or dad, you know, why are you so happy?” we can just tell them about the good things that Jesus is doing. He’s so good. So get filled up with joy today. It’s okay to be really happy. It’s okay to just laugh, no matter your situation. I want to just challenge you today: If you’ve got something frustrating going on in your life today, try laughing and see what happens.
I’m going to pray for you. Jesus, thank you for your joy. Thank you that you fill us up with joy and, God, I just receive your joy today. I receive more joy today, so that I can just spill over on other people. I pray that everyone who’s watching today would have just a refilling of your joy in Jesus’ Name, Amen.