Your Encouraging 5 Minute Podcast
A weekly dose of encouragement to start your week off right! Join your favorite WPER hosts every week for uplifting thoughts to keep your eyes focused on Christ and His promises.
Your Encouraging 5 Minute Podcast
Finding Real Joy
Have you ever felt like you've forgotten what real joy feels like? When the cold seasons of life stretch on, it can leave your soul feeling like an endless winter!
The world constantly tells us that joy depends on circumstances—success, comfort, and everything going our way. But there’s a deeper truth: authentic joy isn't determined by what's happening around us but by who lives within us. Jesus promised, "I've told you these things so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete."
Real, authentic joy isn't fleeting or circumstantial; it's whole and enduring.
For anyone feeling stuck in a winter season right now, this message offers the hope that spring is coming—not just in nature but in your soul.
Joy isn't something you have to desperately chase. It's being held out to you.
Share this message with someone who might need to hear that joy is possible again, because through Jesus, all things become new.
This is your encouraging five-minute podcast. Over the next five minutes here to encourage you, to inspire you to hopefully lift your day. If you need more encouragement at the end of it, oh, you can always listen again. Yes you can or you can tune in to WPER that's Virginia's home for encouragement, if you need to. You can download the app and listen anytime. Oh, absolutely, wperorg, you can start there.
Speaker 2:Can you feel that the air is shifting, the sun is shining a little longer and the earth is waking up again? It's springtime. You got to love it, yes, and there is something about spring that makes it I don't know just feels joyful, right. I mean, after months of cold and snow and bare trees and gray skies, like suddenly life returns. The flowers and trees are in bloom, the birds are singing, the world just feels new again. Maybe, just maybe, your soul is longing for that kind of newness also.
Speaker 1:Maybe you've been in a long winter, not just in the weather, but in your soul also. Maybe you've been in a long winter not just in the weather, but in your soul.
Speaker 1:Maybe joy feels distant, like something meant for other people but not for you. Well, if that's where you are today, we want to remind you of something beautiful Joy is not lost. And more than that joy is found in Jesus. So our friend Denise went through one of the hardest seasons of her life. This was last year. She called it her winter, the winter season, long season of loss, discouragement and just going through the motions. One day she said I don't even remember what real joy feels like.
Speaker 2:That's so hard. I know, eric, and I have felt that way. Have you ever felt that way?
Speaker 1:So one afternoon she's walking through her neighborhood, still carrying the weight of everything she'd been through in that hard winter season. And that's when she saw it, A tiny bud pushing up through the frozen ground. Love it. Something about that moment stopped her in her tracks. It would me too right, Because if a flower could push through winter's harsh cold and bloom again, then maybe she could too.
Speaker 2:You know, honestly, that's the thing about joy. It's not always big and loud like fireworks, right? Sometimes it starts as a whisper, a small sign of life pushing through. It's a reminder that winter does not last forever, and neither does sorrow.
Speaker 1:Psalm 30, verse 5, says weeping may last for a night, but joy comes in the morning. Spring is proof of that promise. The world goes through seasons of cold, of complete barrenness, but new life always appears.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's what Jesus does in our hearts too, because the world tells us that joy is found in success, right In these perfect looking circumstances and everything going our way. But the truth, real joy, isn't about what's happening around us, it's about who is in us, and Jesus said in John 15, 11, I've told you these things so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
Speaker 1:Complete, that's whole, not dependent on other circumstances or our circumstances.
Speaker 2:If your heart has been in a long winter, can we encourage you? Spring is coming.
Speaker 1:Not just in the world around you, but deep in your soul.
Speaker 2:Because Jesus makes all things new, just like he's promised us.
Speaker 1:When we look for our joy in him not in what we have, not in what we've lost, but in him we find a joy that nothing in this world can take away.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so today. Take a deep breath, step outside, feel the sun on your skin, look for those little, tiny signs of new life popping up out of the ground and, most of all, remind your heart of this. Joy isn't something you have to chase. Joy is something Jesus freely gives. Let's pray about it.
Speaker 1:Jesus, thank you for the gift of joy, for the promise that no season lasts forever and that you're always working, even in the waiting. For the promise that no season lasts forever and that you're always working even in the waiting For the one who feels stuck in winter. We pray that you breathe new life into their heart today, fill them with your joy, the kind that lasts, the kind that's only found in you, In Jesus's name amen.
Speaker 2:Friend, you are seen, you are loved, and no matter what season you're in in this moment joy is coming.
Speaker 1:Thank you for letting us spend a little time with you today. If this encouraged you, would you share it with a friend who might need a reminder that joy is coming Because Jesus is already holding it out to us.
Speaker 2:And if this encouraged you and you'd like to hear more, you can always listen to WPER, Virginia's home for encouragement. But if you're not in the listening area, you can download the WPER app at WPERorg or just tell your smart speaker to play WPER radio.
