Hello, welcome to the Feminine Podcast. This is Nancy Wilson. I have been gone in the past

couple of weeks, touring Israel as it turns out, which was amazing. And after recovering

from our trip and getting back into our home time zone, I'm ready to roll. So here

I am. Today I'm going to talk to you about fighting with joy. And to be clear, what

I mean is using your joy as a weapon. And this is a unique aspect of the Christian life.

Unbelievers cannot use this weapon and they can't understand. So what I'm going to do in

this little podcast is try and lay out what I mean by this and how we can use joy as a

defensive weapon. Well, let's say someone is spreading lies about you and they're succeeding

in getting others to believe the lies and say this is someone not just a person on the internet

that you don't know, but someone who was once near and dear to you could even be a family

member. Someone in your congregation or just a close friend from long ago. And if your

response is to weep and grieve about it, you have in a sense given them what they wanted.

And they wanted, I mean, I don't want to attribute motives, but sometimes the purpose of

the lies are to break your heart to get even somehow. They wanted to steal your joy.

They wanted to hurt you. And for some unknown reason, this was the goal. Even if they don't

really see that that's what is motivating them to do this, it's just all too common for things

like this to happen. Sin always blinds and people can just as easily lie to themselves as lie to

others. And if they repeat it often enough, then they can come to believe the lie they're telling

themselves. And this makes no sense. It comes from the father of all lies, the devil and not from

God, obviously. But there can be many things that trigger this choice to misunderstand and misinterpret

and falsely accuse you. It may have started with a guilty conscience of some kind. They may have

sinned and they know it. And they know you know it. And they're deeply ashamed. But instead of

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