In the book of Proverbs, which we won't be in today, but in the book of Proverbs, in the section of the woman at the end of Proverbs 31, it says, I'm at 31 21, she, this is the woman in Proverbs, she is not afraid of snow. She is not afraid of snow for her household, for all her household are clothed in scarlet," or she has extra clothing, in other words. She is not afraid of snow for her household. In the mountains of certain parts of Israel, they occasionally get snow. And hence that comment. I thought that was interesting as I read that in the middle of the snowstorm in Charlotte a couple of days ago. So maybe that should be, we are not afraid of snow. Was the snow that bad in Columbia today, or is it pretty much all melted? It's all melted. I have no idea if you're teasing me or not. OK. Notice how I titled our three days. And if you know my personality, and most of you don't, but I have a few former students in here, this is not Kara kind of talk, happy spouse, happy house. This is not my kind of lecturing professor style at all. So, I'm going out on a limb to have a little, you know, catchy phrase here, happy spouse, happy house. Now, where in the world did I come up with that title? I mean, maybe as a boy, I knew the phrase, if the wife's not happy, nobody's happy. And I assume that's a fairly common phrase. But that was too pejorative to women. I couldn't use that. You know, wife is not happy, nobody's happy. Interestingly, on the wife's not happy, nobody's happy, I go to Ukraine often to teach some classes over there, probably been there, I don't know, 18, 20 times in Ukraine, and a standard joke there among the translators I don't know if they got this from Americans, I don't know where they got it, but one of the standard jokes is, if the translator's not happy, nobody's happy. And there's a big kernel of truth in that, when you're trying to be excited teaching and the guy's blah, blah, blah, you know. Then I do notice that the translators, when they're sort of sinfully making fun of other translators, they'll tell you that their personality's not very good. And as you know, Dr. Kara, if the translator's not happy, nobody's happy. So, I don't know, anyway, that expression got over to Ukraine somehow. I heard one of our, just a couple months ago, one of our female seminary students, who's single and didn't realize I was standing near her, she was talking to another female seminary student, said, happy wife, happy life. Now is that one more common? No? seeing no okay well it was off of that happy wife happy life and then I David called me about doing this conference that's that okay again that's a little pejorative toward women don't want to do that so I came up with on my own and maybe other people have come up with this on their own too but happy spouse happy house And as we're going to see, there's a proverbial truth that at some level, we're going to nuance this to death, but there's a proverbial truth that at some level, your happiness affects your spouse's happiness, which then affects the whole house's happiness. And we'll nuance that out. Your happiness affects your spouse's happiness, which then affects the whole house's happiness. But again, we're going to have a bunch of nuances and qualifications to that. Now, if you look at the three lectures, talks, discussions from the Bible, whatever we want to call them, that I have there. I have joy in marriage, forgiveness in marriage, and proverbs for marriage, or wisdom for marriage. And in my mind, you know, there's a thousand ways you can go in this, like we could do, let's talk about how to do date nights or something like that. But again, if you know my personality, I'm not into that kind of stuff. I'm into date nights, but not telling you about how we do it and the five better ways to do it. Um... My idea in my head was just look at some standard biblical traits that all Christians have, and by grace, and ought to improve by the Holy Spirit, some Christian traits, and then make the obvious connection to how that works in marriage, how that aids your marriage. So one is going to be joy. We'll sort of theologize about joy. How that affects you, how that affects others, why should you be joyous, these kind of things. We'll look at forgiveness, not just forgiveness of your spouse, but forgiveness of others, and how that affects you, and then how that affects interacting with your spouse, and then Proverbs, or being wise. So hopefully, by God's grace, you will be more joyful because of what the Bible says, you'll be more forgiving, and you'll be more wise. these will affect your marriage and other things. So that's where I'm going. Why don't we start off with prayer. Heavenly Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, use the Scripture texts that we're going to look at in the next day and a half. Use them to change us by the Holy Spirit so that we'll be more joyful, more forgiving, more wise to your glory and to the benefit of our wonderful spouses. I pray this in Christ's name. Amen. Okay, if you have your Bible or electronic device, please turn to the book of Philippians, but let me give a few minutes of introduction before we get there. And our discussion's gonna be on joy. When I was a rookie professor 21 years ago, I met another one of the professors at our RTS Charlotte, and he was about 75 at the time, and he was kind of a real energetic 75, Dr. Norton, if a few of you have ever heard of him, and he sticks out his hand, he hasn't even introduced, we haven't known each other's names yet, sticks out his hand, and he says, Kara, you got the joy? And I'm usually pretty good at comebacks, but I didn't know what to do. And I'm a Greek professor, so I'm half Spanish, half Dutch. So my name's Spanish, but that's related to a Greek word. And then I'm thinking, maybe he thinks, see, in Greek, the word for joy is chara. which is very close to kara, as you would say it. And I'm thinking, well, maybe he made a technical error and thought that my name was this Greek word for joy. And a lot of people do make that little, people in the Greek world make this little technical error. But I'm thinking, I met the guy 10 seconds, I don't want to correct him on his technical Greek and show off that I'm Mr. Greek professor kind of thing. So I was like, Yeah, there was my response. I didn't know what to say. Well, I was like, kept thinking about this, but then I started to notice he said this to everybody. He got to joy. Okay, then that meant, okay, this has nothing to do with my last name. Okay, I'm off. It's not about me. It's some odd thing he's doing here. Well, that got me thinking about my theology of joy as I was walking back to my office. What does the Bible say about joy? I had to admit, I'm a seminary professor, but it's just not all flooding into my head like a whole bunch of other topics would be theologically. So just sort of on my own, because of this goofy thing that Dr. Norton said to me, I started being really interested in what the Bible said about joy. And that's what we're going to go on a little journey here for a few minutes, looking how the Bible talks about joy. Now, joy happens to be a noun. Rejoice is the verb form in English, and there's an analogy in Greek, and there's technically an adjective, joyful. So if I say joy, rejoice, joyful, it's all the same concept as we go through our discussion. And just preliminarily, sometimes the Bible writers use the word joy as basically a definition of a Christian. Again, you'd think I should know this, I was a New Testament professor. But Dr. Norton just got me going down this aisle. Listen to a couple of these verses, Romans 14, 17. For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking. So what is the kingdom of God? He's gonna give three things the kingdom of God is. Righteousness, peace, and joy. in the Holy Spirit. Righteousness, peace, and joy. He could have said a hundred things about what the Christian life is. He got it down to three. Righteousness, peace, joy. 2 Corinthians 1.24, Paul talking to the Corinthian church, not that we lord it over your faith, but we work with you for your joy. He got it down to one thing. My job as a minister is to work for your joy. A hundred other things too, but in that verse, got it down to one thing, your joy. In the book of Philippians, which we'll look at in a few seconds here, there's several summary verses. If you're in Philippians, if you run over to 3.1, He says, finally, and he's summing up here, my brothers, it's like he's talking about all these great things about Christ and summarizing, okay, and we're gonna now go to practical application. Okay, here's the start of practical application. Finally, here it is, big picture, rejoice in the Lord. That's a summary of, okay, that's the practical Christian life. Now again, he says it 100 other ways and 100 other situations. But many times in the Scriptures, joy is almost used as a definition of a Christian. He's a joyous one. Joy is the subjective or emotional side of being a Christian, and we'll nuance this out later. The Bible has it. It's something that all Christians have. At some level, if you have the Holy Spirit, you have joy. but the Bible also encourages you to have more of it. It says if you're a Christian, you have it, but also you are encouraged by grace to have more and more joy. So we're going to pound away on joy, and you can see the obvious connection coming to your marriage. Joyous and personally, that's going to make sense related to your marriage. Let's look at Philippians 4, 4 through 7. And the Philippian Christians did have adversaries, and that's sort of in the background, as we'll see in a minute, before I read the text. Statistically speaking, the word joy and rejoice are quite prominent in Philippians, if you've heard that. It's a joyous book, and that's statistically speaking true. And at this point in the book, Paul has already gone through all these great things that Christ has done. He's now in the practical application section of the book. So I'm at Philippians 4, and I'm going to read 4 through 7. Listen to the written Word of God. Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness or big heartedness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Now, that was a sort of a little longer text. It included three sort of imperatives, commands. Rejoice in the Lord. And then the second one was be big-hearted, sort of something to that effect. Be big-hearted and then do not be anxious. And they all flow really out of the joy. First one, rejoice in the Lord. And then because that's true, you should be big-hearted or kind and gentle toward others. And because all that's true, you should not be anxious, but pray. Okay, let's look at verse four. Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say, rejoice. So why, what's the core to why they're rejoicing? And it's the obvious language, in the Lord. There's joy in the Lord. Being connected to the Lord and all his benefits, spiritual and material, emphasis on spiritual but partly material, causes us to have an inner joy no matter the outward circumstances. We'll talk about outward circumstances later, how they affect us, but at the moment we're not on that. The core of joy, according to the Bible, is being connected to the Lord. You're in the Lord. Christ has redeemed you. Christ is changing you. Christ will get you to the new heavens and new earth with perfect bodies, perfect souls, remade world. He's given meaning to your life now. Rejoice because you're in the Lord. He has given meaning to your marriage. Rejoice because you're in the Lord. When we say the expression, have faith in Christ, have you ever thought about, well, what do I mean by in Christ? Do I mean, is it faith in who he is? Or is it faith in his work that he's done for me? Well, you run around the Bible and when you know it, both are used. Sometimes Paul says faith, talks about Jesus' person. Sometimes he talks about Jesus' work. So when you think of in the Lord, think of both who Jesus is, and what he has done. Who Jesus is, he was a God from eternity past and became man, and so hence, fully God, fully man. He's still fully God, fully man, will be fully God, fully man forever and ever, and he did that for us. who Jesus is, fully God, fully man, technical terms, two natures, one person, for us forever. What did he do? Planned in eternity past this great salvation with the Father and the Holy Spirit, came to become man, to represent us, lived a perfect life, died for us, rose for us, through the power of the Holy Spirit, guides us now, and then we'll come back, second coming, to set up the new heavens and the new earth. So when we say faith in Christ, we're putting faith in a person. and the work. And of course, ultimately, those two are interconnected. To do his work, he had to be fully God, fully man. So, at the core of many of these Bible verses, not every single one, but most of them, at the core of joy is joy in the Lord. I'm a Christian. Look what Christ has done for me. Look who Christ is, and that's my Savior. I'm connected to him. Now, let's theologize a little more about joy. Now, joy is some kind of emotion or subjective thing. And we have a little parentheses. Remember, emotions aren't bad. Bad emotions are bad. Right? Emotions aren't bad. It's bad emotions that are bad. Now, sometimes we say, he's emotional. With no context, so what? What you usually mean is he's acting badly. But right, emotions aren't bad. Bad emotions are bad. and put a little more nuance on it, emotions unconnected to our thinking about God, or correct thinking, those are ones that are bad. Your thinking about God, your acting in God, and your emotions related to God should all be matching together. But we are to have, we are made to have the emotion of joy being connected to Christ. Okay, end of that little parenthesis. Emotions aren't bad. Bad emotions are bad. Okay, we got that? Okay, moving on. Okay, back to joy. In non-theological terms, we all sort of know what joy is. It's similar to happy, opposite of sad, right? Everybody uses the word joy correctly in non-theological situations. And we should have a similar emotion because we're connected to Christ. Now, it doesn't have to be necessarily outward, silly, happy emotion. As we're going to see a little later, there's joy and sorrow in a unique way. Okay, it doesn't have to be the outward silly happy. It didn't need to be the dating game, or not the dating game, the newlywed game, excuse me, the newlywed game, kind of happy, and that was fun. Okay, it doesn't have to be that. We're not all there. We couldn't all be the MC. However, we don't want to over-define joy, that it loses its sort of positive, happy, emotional element. Let me just read you some Psalms, and here in the Psalms, the translators in the Old Testament, a lot of times will use the word glad as opposed to joy. Psalm 126.3, the Lord has done great things for us, and we are glad. The situation there is they were in exile and they were brought back from exile. They're happy to be back. Psalm 43, 4. Then I'll go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God my God. Psalm 32, 11. Be glad in the Lord and rejoice, O righteous, shout for joy, you with upright in heart. Yes, some people are naturally happier than others. Okay, I'll give you that. But, a Christian should be joyous because he's a Christian. A non-joyous Christian, a whining Christian, is, at some level, a sinning Christian. Again, I'm going to say joy, not to be outward, silly, happy, happy, clappy. Okay, I'm not talking about that. But some kind of reasonable, positive, emotional joy because you're connected to Christ. A non-joyous Christian, a whining Christian, you're not seeing the bigger picture. You're allowing the periphery circumstances affect you too much. You're forgetting what Christ has done for you. You're forgetting who Christ is in the Grand Trinity. How about Galatians 5.22, the fruit of the Spirit? You know, there's nine of them. Guess what number two is? Again, they're not in order of importance, but fruit of the Spirit is, quoting from Galatians 5.22, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, etc. Love joy, fruit of the Spirit, joy. As Dr. Norton said, do you have the joy? Okay, if you're not a joyful person, again, not the happy clappy, okay, why not? Answer that in your own mind, why not? Think about who and what the Lord Jesus Christ is and what he did. Think about the Grand Trinity. Repent, call on the Lord to strengthen this aspect of your Christian life. It's fun to be joyous. Right, we just knew we were, that was fun. A little over the top, but you know, okay, we don't need that. That was good. You don't have to walk around like that all the time, but some kind of inner joy. Okay, let's look at verse 5. We'll continue the connections to joy. Okay, verse 5. So I'm at Philippians 4, verse 5. Let your reasonableness or gentleness, we'll talk about that word in a minute, be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand. Okay, the second sort of imperative, first was rejoice, now let your reasonableness or gentleness, and the Greek word here is this big, gigantic Greek word that you can't get into one English word. You know, it could be helpful, kind, fair, pleasant. I use the word big-hearted. Is that a common expression today or? No, okay. Maybe that's not the most useful word, big-hearted, helping others. Helpful, kind, fair, pleasant. Now, there's two angles of why you should be helpful, kind, fair, pleasant to others. The first one is in the text, the Lord is at hand. Now, that's a little confusing. He's probably referring to the second coming there, that ultimately the second coming is coming. You're gonna die and be with Jesus or the second coming you'll be with Jesus the point being this is not all there is in the life There is something coming in the future. Can't you be fair kind pleasant to others? Using a Ukraine analogy I Started going Ukraine in 95 and And Ukraine was having significant problems in 95. And of course, they're having some right at the moment if you're up on your politics. But as far as the physical, the lights were always going off. Hot water wasn't working most of the time. And I was in a sanatorium around Kiev. I was there about two weeks, once, twice a year. And I would be with 50, 60 students in my class. And every time the lights flickered, or the heat goes off, or they wake up in the morning, and there's zero hot water. And that water is cold. It's not like normal American cold water. It's cold. And I would be there at some cold months. Yeah, I still have my happy face on. In my weird way, I was like, the worse it is, the more funny stories I have when I come back home. Or another way to say it is, no matter how bad this is, it's only two weeks, and I'm back in Charlotte. I can take it. And that wasn't helping the Ukrainian students, but the idea here, you know, can I be helpful, fair, kind, and pleasant for two weeks? Or in other words, the Lord is at hand. This is not all there is to life. Okay, the second argument in context to be helpful, kind, fair, pleasant, or reasonable, or whatever your translation says, is the joy component, that inner joy has an outward component, stating the obvious. Rejoice in the Lord, be fair, kind, pleasant, helpful to people. Now do others? Do you think others perceive you as helpful, fair, kind, pleasant? Now, of course, you can be all these things for the wrong reasons. It's better than beating up people, of course, but, you know, you can have mixed motives for doing this. But with all the best motives, inner joy should produce helpful, kind, fair, pleasant actions by you. You know, wives and husbands, is there joy in your house? How would you answer that? At home, it's a little more difficult to fake the joy thing. Probably a lot harder to fake the joy thing at home. Yes, your spouse and children are not perfect, except for my house. But your joy in the Lord should encourage you to be big-hearted toward all, especially your spouse and the children, your neighbors. It should be a natural Christian reaction. I used to do a few things that annoyed my wife. One was taking out the garbage. This was my job, but for some reason, I could not remember this job. I didn't mind doing it. I just did not remember it. And then she'd take it out. And of course, as soon as she'd start to take it out, I'd go, oh, I'll do it. We've been married 34, right? Coming up on 35. I'll say at about year 20, I finally started to do it regularly. 20 years, she put up with me forgetting to take out the garbage. You know, fair, pleasant, kind, helpful. Okay, I wasn't helpful. And it wasn't like I was saying, oh, there's the garbage. I don't want to take it out. It just didn't think about it. Not very pleasant, not very kind, not very thoughtful. Now, at the moment, I'm on this kick to be fair, kind, pleasant. And I'm actually, it's not my job, but I am actually putting away the dishes from the dishwasher more often. Am I not, honey? Yeah. Makes her happy. Look at that. And really, I'm really on this kick now. Don't crucify me over the next thing. And again, you have to know my personality. I'm very sports oriented. My wife and I grew up in a poor coal mining area in Pennsylvania. I watch, because my wife wants me to with her, Downton Abbey. It was on and during the Super Bowl, right? You knew this? I started downstairs. She probably knows, but it was such a blowout. Right at halftime, I went upstairs and acted like I cared about my wife in the Downton Abbey. I did watch Downton Abbey, and I kept flipping back, and the score was getting worse and worse and worse. Being big-hearted, fair-kind, pleasant, it actually makes me feel good. Makes Jill feel good, I assume. And it's pleasing to God, if done with the right motives. Look at verse five. Let your reasonableness or fair, kind, pleasant, or whatever kind of words you want to stick in there, be known to everyone. Let's go down to six and seven. He's going to bring up kind of a negative here. Do not be anxious about anything. You remember, they had outsiders pounding on them, was a problem they had here. So this is not just the... applies to everything, but they probably had this in the background, the difficulties with the outsiders. Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. So the negative, don't be anxious. Positive, pray. Doing those two things results in verse 7, and the peace of God, or the peace that comes from God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ. Let's look at that anxious. Do not be anxious. Actually, the Greek word there is a pretty neutral word. Sometimes that Greek word is used to be concerned. And if you want to run over to 220, The translator will translate it correctly as a positive word. I'm at 2.20, Philippians 2.20. For I have no one like him. He's talking about Timothy. Timothy, who will be generally concerned for your welfare." Concerned. And that makes sense. In context, the words being used positively, your translator said, concern. Timothy has concern for you. But over here in verse six, the translators were also correct that this was concern that went too far in a sinful direction, controlling you, and it turned into anxiousness. The line was crossed. Over-concern then turned into sort of sinful concern. Do not be anxious about anything because they, at least some of them, were being anxious. There's many pressures in life that can move us from concern to sinful anxiousness. My boy's in ninth grade, so we're not there yet, but college decisions Should he go to college? Is he able to go to college? Can he go to that college? What happens if he doesn't get into Clemson or USC? What about the finances? I mean, all those kind of big questions. Then I got to get those letters. Many of you, I assume, have gone through this. The early decisions in this, oh, I didn't get in. Are we overly anxious about our children? Finances, state the obvious. You could be overly anxious, anxious about that. Or, you know, it's Christmas time. Oh no, I got to deal with my brother. I don't have a brother. You got to deal with my brother at Christmas time. And you start to just obsess about it and it turns into sinfulness. And of course, this anxiousness robs you of your joy, robs you of your peace, and that affects your spouse. Taking things that you should be concerned about, but just going too far about it, and it turns into sinful anxiousness that robs you of your joy, and that affects your spouse negatively. Of course, in context, they had two angles to reduce this anxiousness. One was the prey, and the other one was the joy component, joy in the Lord. He knows about the situation. So here in this text at verse six, the joy angle is in the context of a problem. Now, we're not joyful about the problem per se, I lost my job. We're not joyful about I lost my job, but we're joyful indirectly in the situation because we're connected to Christ and we realize God's providential control. There's a great line in 2 Corinthians 6.10 where Paul says, sorrowful yet rejoicing. In situations that on the surface are pretty negative, It's almost a check on your joy. Can you be properly joyful in those situations? And if you can, that's more angled to connected to the Lord, because you don't have these circumstances to help you out. Sorrowful yet rejoicing. Sorrow makes the Christian joy in the Lord stand out more clearly to you. you're relying on the Lord, we know the future. Think of a Christian funeral. Sometimes, and I think of solemn joy, sometimes Christian funerals can be the best worship services you're ever at. Now, sometimes they're disasters, but sometimes, especially if the person was a true believer, There's a joy in the singing, and it just, what, two weeks ago, honey, we, well, the work is up, been with for 20 years at RTS Charlotte. Her mother died in their late 60s. We just had at the funeral, and I was one of the ministers at the funeral just two weeks ago, so this is in my mind. And that was, she was a wonderful Christian person. This was a great, was a sort of a solemn joy. It was a great worship service. because it was so connected to the Lord. And even all her good works were because she was connected to the Lord. Don't let the difficulties in life rob you of your joy that you have in Christ. I want to go on to one more angle here. Again, sorrowful yet rejoicing. But the Bible does know and the Bible does say that at some level, in a secondary way, in a periphery way, circumstances do affect you. Reading two famous verses, Romans 12, 15, rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep. Let me give another verse and then I'll talk about it. So rejoice with those who rejoice, but weep with those who weep. 1 Thessalonians 4.13, quoted often at funerals, and I read this verse at my friend's funeral, mother's funeral. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep. In other words, about your Christian friends who have physically died. Do not want you to be uninformed about your friends that died. so that you may not grieve as those who have no hope." You grieve, but you don't overly grieve. You don't grieve like those who have no hope. So there it's admitting, grieving by a Christian. So here in these two verses, happen to be both by Paul, Paul is using the more normal use of rejoice in good situations, you weep in difficult. situations. So, the outward circumstances don't affect the core of our joy, because that's connected to Christ, but it does affect us at some level. In fact, the Bible says, weep with those who weep. So, I'm trying to have you understand there's a joy connected to being in Christ, and that shouldn't change. but the Bible realizes the circumstances outside will, at some level, affect your happiness barometer or whatever. Again, I'm a sports guy, and with my son coming up, playing a lot of sports, and, you know, occasionally I was the coach of various teams he was on, I had a saying. I'm gonna try and connect this to joy. Here was my saying. And when they were in like fourth and fifth grade, I would have them repeat it before every game and after every game. Here it was. Fun if we lose, more fun if we win, all to the glory of God. It's fun if we get, even if we get killed, we're here to have fun. So we're gonna have fun if we lose. We're gonna have more fun, can't deny that. More fun if we win, all for the glory of God. Of course, in the analogy, fun is like joy. We're going to have joy even if there's difficulties. Yeah, we'll have more joy, you know, out where things are going very well, but it's all to the glory of God. The Heidelberg Catechism, number 28, talks about the providence of God, and it splits it up into three little sections, the answer. What do we profit from knowing about the providence of God? Answer. that we may be patient in adversity." Okay, there's adversity situations. What do we learn from that? Patience. Thankful in prosperity. There's prosperity situations. We should be thankful. And for the future, so there's, have confidence in our faithful God and Father, that no creature shall separate us from His love, and so forth, and so on. Yes, there's a core to our joy connected to Christ, that's the most important thing. Can't deny, Bible allows it, that outward circumstances affect us to some degree. Shouldn't affect the core, but it does affect us. So hence now to your spouse, happy spouse, happy house. At the periphery, your joy affects your spouse. you're partly an outward circumstance to your spouse. Hopefully, your joy in the Lord positively affects your spouse. I don't know when I stopped saying it, but I was asking my wife, just before, when we were in the room, I used to say, I used to be an engineer in my former life, I was an engineer seven years out of college, we'd go to church and I would, I don't know, I didn't have a theology for this or anything, but I would say to her on Sundays, usually after the worship service, honey, I love you more on Sundays. And it was, like, existentially true at some level. Why was that? That's probably a bunch of reasons, and I could imagine some of them. I love you more on Sunday. Well, I should love her equally all days of the year. It was something about the joy I had after a worship service that made me love my wife more. and hopefully that positively affected her. Your joy shouldn't affect the core of her joy, because that should be connected to Christ, but it is going to affect some of the outward circumstances, which at some level is affecting her. Even a, you know, that'd be a difficult situation, but just, you know, going to the grocery store. The joyous way you react to circumstances in life should positively affect your wife. You know, you got a long line at the, well, whatever, food line. You're grumbling or something. You know, just have a joyous attitude about it. That'll affect, in some minor way, your wife. Make her happy. Make your house happy. There's a proverb that we'll look at tomorrow, Proverbs 15, 15. A cheerful heart, one of a cheerful heart has a continual feast. They didn't have feasts this often. But if you have a cheerful heart, it's like you're having a big meal all the time. Summary. Joy has an internal component that's centered on the Lord and strengthened when we think of who the Lord is and what he's done for us. Joy has an outward component that we're encouraged to be fair, kind, pleasant, helpful to others. In some cases, joy in the Lord is highlighted in sorrowful situations. You really check, do I have joy in the Lord? Or is it just I have a pretty good life? Sorrowful yet always rejoicing. But it is true that outward circumstances in a secondary peripheral way do affect us. We're to weep with those who weep. not to grieve with those who do not have hope. Shouldn't affect our core, but, you know, we're going to be more fun if we win than if we lose. And your level of joy does affect, in a secondary, peripheral way, your spouse. Hence, happy spouse, happy house. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, may it be true of this group here that we rejoice in the Lord. May it be true that we remember the Lord Jesus Christ and fall in love with him. May it be true that we remember the work he has done for us and is doing through the Holy Spirit to us, and by grace, make us more joyful. I pray this in the name of Christ, who loved us so much, he died for us. Amen.