Good Morning.  I hope you are having a great day!  In spite of the heat, and in spite of whatever problems you’re facing, I hope you are still rejoicing in the Lord.  Which brings me to the theme I want us to think about this morning.  How are you doing at obeying the command of I Thessalonians 5:16 “Be joyful always.”  Is there much joy showing in your life today?  How’s your sense of humor?  Have you laughed today - even if it’s at yourself?
             I read a story recently about two great expositors of the world James M. Gray and William Houghton.  Dr. Houghton writes of an occasion when he and Dr. Gray were praying together.  Dr. Gray, though getting up in years, was still interested in being an effective witness and expositor.  He concluded his prayer by saying:  “And Lord, keep me cheerful.  Keep me from becoming a cranky, old man!”
             That is a pretty good prayer.  As most of us get older, we do tend to be a little more negative.  Instead of mellowing out we often become increasingly impatient and short-tempered.  We need to pray that the Lord would increase our joy quotient.
             Solomon gives us some wise counsel in the book of Proverbs about the benefits of maintaining a joyful spirit.
             A joyful heart makes a cheerful face, but when the heart is sad, the spirit is broken … All the days of the afflicted are bad, but a cheerful heart has a continual feast….A joyful heart is good medicine [the Hebrew says, “causes good healing”], but a broken spirit dries up the bones. (Proverbs 15:13, 15; 17-22).
             How often do we let minor irritations and insignificant problems rob us of our joy?  I have to confess that on a recent trip to a large city [Baltimore] I allowed traffic, one way streets (usually going the wrong way), time pressure and the inability to find a parking place ruin my day. [If that GPS had said “Recalculating” one more time, it might have gone out the window!]  My joy disappeared and I just about ruined an otherwise perfect day.  Fortunately, Rosemary’s calm spirit and a seven block walk from where we finally did find a parking place allowed my blood pressure to return to normal.  I can laugh about it now, but at that moment Satan had robbed me of ALL my joy.  The question is how can I keep that from happening again?  God (and Rosemary) have forgiven me, but what are some steps I can take to keep  minor irritations from getting the best of me.  I came up with several:

•    #1  Stay out of big city traffic (thankfully we don’t deal with that kind of traffic in the Shenandoah Valley on a regular basis).
•   #2  Plan ahead—if I had brought a map or checked it out on MapQuest ahead of time, I    could have avoided a lot of stress.
•   #3  Listen to Rosemary [it hurts me to say that, but this time she was right].
•   #4  “Don’t sweat the small stuff” … most of the things that upset us are not really that big a deal when you stop to think about it.
•   #5  Instead of getting angry, I should have turned to the Lord in prayer... (the next verse following the command to be joyful in I Thessalonians 5:11 is to “pray continuously”.
•   #6  I need to work at cultivating that inner joy that can only come from the Lord.  In John 15:11 Jesus says, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete”.

             A long time ago I learned a little acoustic using the word JOY.  If you put Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself last, you will be full of joy.
 
                                                      Be Joyful!
                                                      Pastor Barry