To Be Happy or To Have Joy?

From today's Company Email sharing:

Most of us suffer from this seemingly insatiable hunger that is an ongoing source of stress and vexation. So how can we escape from this hungry life? Can we live a life where we're constantly fulfilled?

The answer is Yes. The only way to stop hungering for something else the moment our hunger for one thing is satisfied is to be constantly nourished by everything that comes to us at any given time. Instead of pining and waiting for that next big meal or next big prize, we can find meaning and pleasure in what we're doing and feeling right now.

The most important thing you have to do is change your focus. Stop fixating on that date this weekend, that bonus next week, that vacation next month, that loving remark you wish your spouse would give you, that praise for your great idea at the meeting today.

Instead, channel your emphasis towards the present. What are you doing and feeling now that can be cherished and savoured?

If we become more mindful of what we're paying attention to every day, we'll discover that we give our energy to a lot of things that really don't fulfill us on a deeper level. These distractions turn us into hungry ghosts gorging continuously at the buffet table yet can never feel full. Spirit cannot be fulfilled by the material.

To escape the curse of eternal hunger, we need to pay attention to and appreciate the truly wonderful and miraculous things and people in our lives right now.

Sounds really noble to be able to focus what we are doing now and appreciate the things in front of us. It sound so easy doesn't it? But we all know that no matter how much we tried, we will always go back to worrying, looking at 'what if' and 'if only' in life. The problem is always the same. We are sinners looking for some sort of fulfillment in life that gives us joy but we have at the most is happiness, the dependence of circumstances to make us feel good.

As Smith Wigglesworth has said so eloquently through the Holy Spirit, happiness is a 'mixture' that despite the feel good effect of the moment, there is something underneath the happiness that 'downgrade' the feeling of euphoria. So despite the fact that we can try to appreciate the things of life NOW, behind that happiness of the current, there is still a linger sense of inadequacy. So how do we really escape the curse of eternal hunger?

It is to have Godly joy!

Smith Wigglesworth put it as such: that the sense of joy is not dependent on anything to derive a sense of well-being. That the sense of euphoria is not messed up by the things of this world.

Here comes something that is truly remarkable: the arrival of Joy that comes in the form of Jesus Christ, through His Shalom Peace that cannot be understood and cannot be given by this World. Only through His Being, can we have Joy, can we have everlasting water that we shall not thirst.

John 4:13-14

Jesus answered and said unto her, Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life.

Time to drink from Him