#36 Let Your Life Be Filled With Joy(03/08/02)

By Dr. Robert A. Schuller

In order for us to fill our lives with joy, we have to make room for it. If you have a cup that's already full with, let's say, cold coffee, but you want to fill it with water, what do you have to do? You have to pour out the old and clean out the cup before you fill it with fresh water.

Like Jesus who twice entered the city of Jerusalem to cleanse the temple, we need to cleanse our temples, our bodies, our minds, our souls, our spirits. And, in the process, we must prepare ourselves to receive the gift of joy that God has for us.

Let me use this story to illustrate my point. My grandmother (my mother's mother) bought a brand new Chevy back in 1956. It was a two-tone blue and white '56 Chevy.Some of you may remember exactly what those cars looked like. I remember that car well, I saw it every time I went to visit my grandmother. It was parked in her garage, and I even remember the smell of that garage as if I was there right now. It was the unique smell of a neat and orderly place, where there was a place for everything and everything was in its place.

My grandmother had that car in her garage until she sold it in 1996. She had kept it for 40 years! And that car looked as good the day she sold it in 1996, as it did the day she brought it home in 1956. It still had the original paint, upholstery and everything else. She kept that car in her garage and took very good care of it.

On the other hand, in the community of commuters where we live in California every home has at least one garage connected to it, some with three! Yet, when you look in the garages, there are no cars inside. Most families use them as storage space.

Today, I?m going to encourage you to clean out your spiritual garage to make room for joy by following these five steps.

1.First, you must cleanse your religion and your beliefs.

Many people have been raised with toxic religious beliefs. These beliefs destroy and tear down instead of build and lift up. Any religion that requires us to earn our way into heaven is a toxic religion, because there is no way possible to earn our way into heaven.

No one is perfect, and if you meet someone who tells you they are, you already know their imperfection.

Some of us may say, "I have committed some sins, so I have to confess my sins. I'll be really good for a whole week and I'll earn my way back." Well, the only logic probable with that theory is that we are supposed to be really good anyway, right?

So it isn't possible to earn our way into heaven. The only way we can make up for our failures is by accepting the grace of Jesus Christ and saying yes to Him. What we believe and understand about God will help bring us joy and directly impact on the next step:

2.Cleanse your mind.

First, we have to get positive, healthy religious beliefs, we can proceed to cleanse our minds. To cleanse the mind, we first have to rid it of negative thoughts. We have a way of talking in negative thoughts, and I know because I do it all the time.

When I am faced with challenges and I struggle, I say, "God, I can't do that." My wife says my two favorite lines are "What good would it do anyway?" or "Isn't it terrible?" When I say these words, I feel myself shrinking.

We have to eliminate negative thoughts and negative words. We need to fill them with the positive joy-filled words God gave us, which are, "With God all things are possible."

We can say to a mountain, "Get up and move," and it will move. So many people have the impression that when they say these words, a mountain is simply going to suddenly lift itself and float away to another place. Jesus never said it would happen instantaneously.

Jesus said, "Say to the mountain move? and it will get up and move. "What He meant was that to move the mountain, we have to take a shovel and a wheelbarrow and start filling it up and moving it. Inch by inch anything is a cinch. Our beliefs and our religion impacts upon our thoughts and our words.

3.Speak positive words.

Having the ability to think positive thoughts and speak positive words is the only way we can participate in constructive actions.

God so loved the world that He gave us His only Son, and declared that whoever believed in Him will not perish but will have everlasting life. It is with that belief that we build our thoughts and our words.

When we ask ourselves, "What would I do if I knew I could do this?" The answer always comes, "All things are possible if you believe."

I believe in Jesus Christ and I believe that I have everlasting life. I believe I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. The power of the word is overwhelming. If you think it, you can do it. If you believe it, you can do it. If you speak it, it will happen. God spoke and everything we see came into existence. That is the power of the word.

We have to cleanse our minds and our thoughts of negative religious beliefs, and replace them with positive and healthy religious beliefs. We need to start speaking with positive words. It will fill us with joy to do so. Then we must:

4.Practice Positive Habits.

We need to start practicing positive habits, and cleanse ourselves of actions that don?t lead us to glorify the kingdom of God. These habits and actions keep us from achieving the goals and following the directions that He has for our lives.

We can open any telephone directory in America today and find support groups to help people break through those negative habits. The list begins with Alcoholic Anonymous, to Gamblers Anonymous, to Narcotics Anonymous, and on and on. We can literally go through the alphabet and find the support group we need.

Some of us may be in a state of denial about the problems that cause bad habits. We may get drunk often, but we say that we only drink at parties. We may even say, "I have a couple of DUI?s, but I?m not an alcoholic."

Some of us may use other substances, yet we say it?s just something recreational. Then there are those who lose their jobs, only to shrug it off as just one of those things.

Smoking? There are those who say, what harm can a couple of packs a day do? And the list of bad habits goes on and on. That is called denial, and denial is the belief that we don?t have a problem, or that we have bad habits that we can control if we want to.

When we have a religious foundation and we believe that God loves us and cares for us, we build thoughts that with God anything is possible. With God we can break through those habits and have the ability to act in the ways that we know God wants us to.

We can set aside all the habits that drive us away from His joy for our lives, and strive towards the goals that God has given us, and become all that He has called us to be. Then we must:

5. Resolve Problem Relationships.

We have two ways of having relationships with people. There are parent and child relationships or adult to adult relationships.

A parent and child relationship is very good when the child is young. Young children need that relationship because they need guidance and parenting. No doubt, this relationship changes once the child becomes an adolescent.

Most parents encounter challenges in their relationship with their children once they become teenagers. This happens because the adolescent child is becoming an adult and wants to be treated like an adult, but half the time she or he behaves like a child.

Sometimes parents want to treat the adolescent as an adult, and other times they want to treat them as a child. It?s very confusing. Is that young person a child or an adult? They really can change daily and the parent has to figure out how to treat them on a day-by-day basis. We all go through that transition as we grow from child to adult.

Sometimes we go through stages in life when we may be in a relationship with someone who treats us like a child. Or it may be reversed and we may be the ones to treat the other person as a child. When this happens between adults, it's time to examine not only you, but them too.

A relationship should start with yourself and not with others. Only you can and should determine the way you will be treated by others. Maintaining relationships that are important to us can be very difficult and painful, but it can be done.

Why? Why can it be done? Because we have already established some very important ground rules.

First, we know that God loves us and He cares about us. We have a healthy religion and beliefs system. That we can do all things with Christ who strengthens us. Our healthy cleansed mind knows that all things are possible when we believe.

As we break through those habits, which have hindered us and kept us from acting like an adult. Now we are ready to have adult relationships.

If we have relationships with others that are still parent/child relationships, that is are not healthy. So we look at the core of the problem, and healthy relationships soon follow.

Now we have talked about cleaning the garage to receive the gift of God with religion, with thoughts, with habits, and with relationships. When the garage is cleaned out, nature forms a vacuum, so we have to fill it with something right away.

Start following these steps today and fill that garage with joy. Read the book of joy which was written by the Apostle Paul in the church in Philippi 2,000 years ago.It is found in the New Testament in the Bible and it?s called the Book of Joy because 16 times through the book it talks about joy.

Do it, fill your garage with joy. The most precious gift that God has given to you. Take it, receive it and believe it.

We thank you, God, for your gift of joy today that fills our hearts, because we have the truth of Your knowledge that You love us. That You care for us. So go with us and be with us. We pray in Your Son?s name. Amen.