Joy

It's clear that everyone wants to be happy. Every advertisement around you is trying to sell you joy. But they will only bring you a momentary joy. None of it fulfills your need for joy. We can all say that we are in bondage to the pursuit of happiness. Now to feel happy and to feel joy are entirely different. Happy is a moment of pleasure but joy is a pure state of happiness.

I would like to ask you to look at everything around you and what is taking up your thoughts. Everything has a tendency to lure you into a chase after joy. Advertisements are the biggest. "Buy now and save!", "Personalize your own..", "Now only for a limited time", "Roll up the Rim and Win!". The desire for entertainment, the desire to accumulate (cars, clothing, gadgets, money), I am sure you can name some more. But all these people or disaster can be taken away.


Nothing can give you joy except Jesus. That is joy inside you that no one and no catastrophe nor disaster nor illness can take away.

Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit. - Psalm 51:12

Satan Hunts Among the Hurting

Article by Marshall Segal

Mountain lions detect vulnerabilities in their prey and attack the weakest — the young, the sick, the injured. Studies have confirmed this instinctive cruelty. It’s how the mountain lion lives, following the scent of suffering and feasting on whatever he finds.

The enemy of your hope and happiness hunts with that same instinct, with a cold-hearted and ruthless hunger for the weak or hurting. Satan prowls like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour (1 Peter 5:8). And because he’s clever, he spends a lot of his time among the suffering. He lies in wait with lies, wanting to consume the fragile and vulnerable.

Why Did/Does God Allow Evil?

By Tim Callaway
DayBreak Community Church

Preferably, in 25 words or less, right? Every question, including this one, reflects certain assumptions made by the questioner. Assuming, for brevity’s sake, that your assumptions are accurate, let me try to be as succinct as possible on this “huge” matter.

How to Have Intimacy with God

Article by Jon Bloom

Intimacy with God is available to you. It is as accessible to you as God’s promises. And God’s invitation to you to enjoy intimate fellowship with him is that thing that is putting your faith to the test more than anything else (James 1:2–4).
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When am I Ready to Become a Christian?

By John Piper

We open the week with an email from Karla, who writes in with a very short question, to the point: “Pastor John, how does a person know when he or she is ready to take the jump and become a Christian?” What would you say to Karla?

Affluence and Discontentment

by Tim Challies

“Even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these,” Jesus said as He recalled the beauty of a common lily (Luke 12:27). And I suspect that even Solomon in all his splendor could not have imagined the sheer affluence that you and I enjoy today. The lily is here today and gone tomorrow, so eeting and commonplace that we overlook its intricate beauty and fail to acknowledge the glory of the God who made and sustains it. Is it possible that we have grown so accustomed to our affluence that we have lost the wonder of it, too? Is it possible that our affluence harms us even as it blesses us?

Did Ancient Extraterrestrials Visit Earth?

By Robert Velarde

In the beginning, ancient aliens visited planet Earth, significantly influenced human history, and possibly even engineered human life to evolve. Furthermore, as a result of ancient alien visitations, history is replete with clues regarding these alien astronauts.

Flying saucers and little green men may seem the stuff of 1950s B-movies, yet ideas like the ones just described are gaining momentum not only in popular culture but also in some scientific circles. In the 2012 motion picture Prometheus, director Ridley Scott touted the concept that aliens visited Earth and seeded human life on it.1 The more lighthearted adventure, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008), also gave direct nods to alien involvement on Earth, while the older film, Stargate (1994), made a direct connection between Egypt and ancient aliens, and the seminal film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) involved aliens in the development of human intelligence.

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