Why Teaching Joy Matters

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It is amazing. When you teach your child to be joyful and to kind of access the power of joy, it reframes everything.

I'm John Fuller, along with Dr. Danny Huerta and Danny Joy.

It can carry us through the hardest of seasons.

It's really a posture towards it. It's not a feeling.

I remember the first time that I learned this was probably in the garden with my grandpa.

Him whistling and singing no matter what the adversity was, he loved to sing praises to Jesus.

I've learned throughout the years to smile when there's a difficulty in front of me because it creates a posture of the soul.

I picture God's smile behind that. His strength with that smile.

You've got this, Lord. I know it. You smile knowing that God's got my back here in this difficulty.

That's where you find joy. It's going to be all right. God is with me.

Maybe you didn't have someone like Danny had a grandfather who demonstrated that.

Maybe you grew up in a home of adversity or people that weren't wired that way.

This conversation is for you. Focus President Jim Daly spoke with Chris Corsi and Marcus Warner.

Let's listen in.

Let me ask you, you write Chris specifically in the book about your wife, Jen, who comes from what you called a low joy family.

What is he talking about? What is a low joy family?

How are they equipped uniquely to provide joy to their family?

When the joy levels start to drop, what happens is fear increases.

If you don't tend to garden, weeds are going to grow.

One of the things that, as Jen learned this science and really started to read her Bible with the lens of joy,

she realized that in her family there wasn't a lot of glad to be together joy.

They all loved each other deeply, but there wasn't a lot of this high energy glad to see you when you walk into the room.

Another thing that happened is joy's counterpart was rest. They didn't really know how to rest.

When we don't know how to quiet, it's hard to hold on to joy because fear will grow inevitably when joy starts to drop.

Marcus, let me turn this one to you. How are joy and maturity tied together?

I'd be interested. This wasn't specifically in the book, but like extroversion and introversion.

Extroverts can show joy more easily maybe than an introvert, but how is all that connected?

Maturity and joy, extroversion and introversion?

Those are great questions. The first one is that joy and maturity are actually directly related.

What connects them is emotional capacity. That is, maturity can be defined as my emotional capacity.

It's my capacity to handle hard things and still act like myself and remain relational.

You look at who the most mature person is in any room and they're the one who can handle weight.

That weight doesn't overwhelm them. They can still live with joy in spite of all of the weight.

If I've got all the weight of running an organization and I've got all the stresses in my life of other things,

but I can still be relational with you and we can still share joy together, that's maturity.

In introvert extrovert, the introvert feels just as deeply joy with people as extroverts.

They just don't share it with as many people at once.

Are you slapping down the extroverts?

No, I'm just kidding.

Extroverts tend to love sharing joy with as many people as possible.

They leave that full up with energy and introverts tend to like to be with just one or two really good friends

that they have a lot of joy with those people and they get more energy that way.

I'm thinking about something Jim was asking about regarding low joy.

Chris, back to your wife's circumstances growing up in a low joy family.

Does that kind of handicap a person to be low joy going into raising their own family?

Certainly. One of the amazing things now is I watched my wife down low joy to our sons

and just watching her face light up and they hear it in her voice tone.

They just feel it when they interact with her.

Jen was very purposeful about growing joy.

This is what my brain needs and I'm going to go after it and basically it's a relational exchange.

We're glad to be together and we have to take a moment to catch our breath and we're glad to be together.

Again, you're the sparkle in someone's eyes.

So for Jen, just to feel like with her friends, even with her family over time,

just to be very purposeful about, hey, this joy stuff is really important.

A little bit will go a long way.

So how could I use my stories, my words, my presence to grow some joy?

That's so good.

So, Danny, I'm kind of naturally pessimistic.

Are you telling me that I just need to fake joy that I need to plaster myself

with this artificial, joyful thing, even though deep down, I'm not feeling it?

Yeah, just plastered on, John.

Yeah, rhetorical question, obviously.

Yeah.

Again, the pessimistic side, and we talked about this in a different show in an earlier episode,

and pessimism is about self-protection.

And generally, when we go towards a negativity, we're trying to protect ourselves

from having to deal with the slide of disappointment or sadness or sorrow and all those things.

And so, what you want to do is when you look for joy,

it's, how do you want to experience what's in front of you?

You have to ask that question.

It's going to be there anyway.

It's a level of acceptance.

The situation's there.

You get to determine the experience with the situation.

The situation's challenging.

If you accept that, then you make a commitment.

That's actually a type of therapy.

It's called act therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy.

What is reality, and you commit something to it?

I commit to stepping towards it, and then finding joy in it.

And that means, again, not feeling these emotions that are happy,

but feeling emotions that are peaceful.

We're going to get through this.

Are you saying that I can determine the emotions or I can influence them?

You can influence them through your thoughts.

And by saying, there's an attitude that you're entering with.

And I can't avoid this.

There's a posture of it.

And as you do that, you're committing to grow from it.

You're committing to seek other people's counsel while you're in it.

You're committing to allowing yourself to feel the wider range of emotions

that you'll feel, but you're not wishing the situation away.

I mean, maybe you want it to be a way, but you're accepting that this is where I'm at today.

And it won't always be like this.

And that's part of the joy of it.

And I love the sign that the joy of the Lord is my strength.

In joy, we find strength.

It doesn't say you're going to be strong automatically.

You find strength in it because you're able to look at it.

And so we're going to step into this.

And it's going to be tough.

But I'm going to be able to make it through.

I appreciate that.

That's truly an optimistic perspective for joy.

But it really is something that you can pursue, especially as you ask God for joy.

He'll deliver. He'll show you.

It might not come the way you want it to, but he'll show you.

And we want to encourage you to get the little book written by Marcus and Chris.

It's fun to read.

It's going to inspire you to cultivate joy in your home, to pursue it personally,

and to spread it in the home.

It's called Before Habits of Raising Joy-Filled Kids.

And we've got details about the book and how you can get a copy through donating today.

Just check the show notes for those opportunities and for that resource.

We're on another resource.

Speaking of habits, it's really this Easter package we have available for parents.

That's through the family reading of scripture.

It'll be in the show notes if you want to know more about it.

But this one, you get to go through the full Holy Week with your family.

You can do this anytime of the year as well.

Talk about the Holy Week, but especially around Easter time.

What were all the things that were happening at that moment?

And you get to go through the history of Rome all the way through these conversations

you can have with your kids about what happened that week leading up to Good Friday and then Easter.

And so as a family, be sure to check that out.

In our section of you version, we have a devotional for families to go through together.

And within all of that, there's a download for you as parents, and all this is free.

Easy to follow as a family.

It takes you into an intentional dive into the Holy Week experience.

Yes.

And of course, there's a song and a saying about joy came in the morning.

You know, then came joy on Easter morning.

So check that out.

We've got details in the show notes.

Next time, Josh and Christy Straub are going to help us learn how to teach our kids more about Easter.

And for now, on behalf of Dr. Danny Wehrte and the entire team,

thanks for joining us.

I'm John Fuller, and this has been the Focus on the Family Equipping Parents Podcast.

Live your truth.

A lot of people say that, don't they?

But truth isn't something we decide.

God has decided it for us.

And it's our job as believers to share his truth with a world in need.

I'll encourage you to do that through my podcast, ReFocus with Jim Daily.

I visit with fascinating guests about important topics like gender confusion,

cancel culture, and more, while helping you share God's love with others.

Listen at ReFocus with JimDaily.com.