joy vs happiness // and having joy in every moment :)

hey gals (and maybe guys 🤷🏻‍♀️)! today we are changing it up a bit but doing something that i’m ready exited about…some inspiration that i’m super excited to share it’s you! let’s jump in!

Let’s talk about happiness real quick…then joy. In one of my emails , I was kinda talking about what makes me happy, ya know, just dancing around like a crazy person in my room. But sometimes, we don’t always feel happy. That’s why joy is different then happiness. Here’s a great “quote” from Sadie Robertson Huff on joy: “Happiness is a mood, but joy is a fruit”. What she means by that is like anger and excitement, being happy is just a mood, and I know especially as teen girls, those moods change quickly and dramatically sometimes. But why JOY is different, is because it’s a fruit of the spirit. Galatians 5:22-23 says “But the fruit of the spirit is love, JOY, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. But how do we receive that joy? When we find our happiness in the things of this world, like winning a sports game, have a good relationship with our friends, just got a great grade, it will still feel like something is missing. Joy is missing. 

The actual Biblical defintion of joy is “But joy, in its fuller, spiritual meaning of expressing God’s goodness, involves more. It is a deep-rooted, inspired happiness.” Exactly. It is more than just being happy when good things happen: it’s being joyful knowing that God’s got you, and finding your joy in God, and not in the things of this world. Its something that’s I found and prayed for last year in 6th grade because of some heavy friend issues that felt as though they were weighing me down. But, how do you get that joy, you ask? You ask God for it. When we pray, we always seem to ask for things like shoes, clothes, things to happen, but we rarley pray and ask for spiritual things. In the book of John, its says “Ask and you will receive” when we ask for joy, and work to have the mindset of joy, we will receive it from God.

My dogs, Rhett and Cash (well, at least Cash…Rhett gets a little emo sometimes haha) are always so joyful! They jump around and wiggle in there beds and always have there cute little mouths hanging open like a huge smile. Especially in the summer. And it really gets me how they are just happy, when I think, they don’t really understand anything that we do. They were created by God (like us) to make others happy and they just always have this look and this feel about them, which you may know too if you have a dog yourself, that just gives off this contagious happiness, and when we realize that we need more than just happiness, we turn to God, who gives us joy. 

written by yours truly 😉

I really hope that this was encouraging and motivating to you all 🙂 let me know what you thought and if you enjoy these! 

make sure to check out my pinterest @itsmayimblaine for short vacay vlogs! next week i will be posting a full travel post, so stay tuned for that, as well as some potential changes to the blog 🙂 i’ve also been working on potentially moving my blog to wordpress.org so make sure you are subscribed to my blog via email and not just through wordpress accounts. 

🫶🏻 mayim