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Today, we're going to take a posture of peace by letting joy take up space in our lives.

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Hi, I'm Lindsay Van Zale. Posture is a podcast that serves as a short audible fist bump to remind

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you that God is in everything. Together, we're going to be emboldened to take a daily posture

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of perfect peace. Psalm chapter 16 verse 11 says,

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You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there is fullness of joy.

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At your right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. David writes this Psalm about the

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Lord and I love this truth. He says, In the Lord's presence, there is fullness of joy.

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And as we've talked about before, God is always present with us. So that means that joy

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is always present. God wants joy and gladness for you. He wants joy and gladness for you.

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So much so that he placed his empowering presence in you so that you could have full access to all

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he is, including his joy. A question that I've been asking myself in this season is,

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if that ever-present joy is always full, like this Psalm talks about and like Jesus promised

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in John 15 11, then what is there not room for anymore? You know, joy takes up space in our

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hearts and in our minds. It expands our capacity in the midst of hardship or conflict or suffering.

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It gives us the eyes of heaven to see from God's perspective and then empowers us to act according

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to his perspective and his plan. So things like discouragement, fear, offense, bitterness,

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rage, there's no room for that anymore because as joy expands in us, it pushes those things out.

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Joy equips us to walk in our authority. You can't be joyful and feel inferior at the same time.

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And your enemy, Satan, knows this, which is why our joy, much like our peace, is often under attack.

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He can't touch our joy because he can't empty any fullness of Christ. He can't undo any work of

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Jesus. So what he tries to do instead is diminish the power of joy in our eyes so that we don't

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give it priority. And there's many ways he does this. There's two that I'm seeing constantly

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right now and I'm going to talk about one today and I'll talk about the other tomorrow. But one

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way that the enemy tries to diminish the power of joy in our eyes so that we see it as a lesser

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thing is he makes joy to feel like an indulgence that belongs to the world and not an inheritance

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that belongs to those who are in Christ. He tries to make us feel guilty for experiencing and

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expressing joy, especially in the midst of hard times when I believe joy can actually be the most

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transformative. I have experienced this guilt myself. I see it in others. Right now I'm actually

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seeing it a lot on my social media news feed. People are almost apologetic for having joy

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or having moments of gladness in the midst of this pandemic because it's been such a hard

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season for people and people don't want to seem unsympathetic to others' pain.

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But let me tell you something. When I have been discouraged, I have never been encouraged

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by somebody else's discouragement. In my own hard times, what reconnected me with my courage was

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seeing other people experience the fullness of Christ. Their joy, their peace, their kindness,

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their hope. That became an invitation for me to believe again that there was more for me than

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where I was just currently stuck. Joy does not bypass pain. It doesn't ignore it. It brings us

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through it. Hebrews 12.2 says that Jesus, who is the founder and perfecter of our faith,

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it says, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross. Jesus endured through the worst

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pain because of joy. This joy that we have been given, it doesn't come and go. It's not finicky.

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It's not fragile. It is always present because God is always present and we need to allow it

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to take up its rightful space in our hearts and our minds. The joy of the Lord is a powerful

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force that strengthens us and I have had to make the decision many times over, especially in hard

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times, that I will not put off the very thing that strengthens me.

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of perfect peace is found in Isaiah 26 3 and in Hebrew it is shalom shalom

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meaning complete wholeness nothing missing nothing broken this is who you

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are in Jesus let's declare this together today I am kept in perfect peace with my

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whole heart I trust the Lord I am strong I am victorious I am whole

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remember friend you are a living testimony of Jesus's ultimate win not

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because of anything you did but because of what he did for you with every step

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you take today you're putting Jesus's victory on display and Satan's defeat on

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replay