You're listening to the Allender Center podcast with Dr. Dan Allender.

This week, Dan and Stacey Eldridge continue talking about defiant joy, honest engagement with sorrow, and the unrelenting hope that brokenness is not the end of the story.

We hope this conversation will bring moments of light and life to you, even in the

midst of whatever storms you may be going through.

Well, friends, we've got Stacey Eldridge, my dear, dear friend, with us again to talk about her new book, Defiant Joy, taking hold of hope.

I love that phrase, taking hold of it, taking hold of hope, beauty and life in a hurting world.

Stacey, what we spend a lot of time with is both the complexity of being able to hold

sorrow and joy together.

And in many ways, the fact that even as James talks about pure joy, consider it pure joy, my friends, when you encounter

all sundries of trials. You know, it's disturbing. I think in some sense of the phrase, as much

as I want joy, I'm disturbed by joy. And your word defiant gets us close to, again, what we need to bring into this process

to be held by hope as well as to hold onto the hope of joy. So what I wanted us to begin to do

is to talk a bit about what you've written regarding what steals.

What are the thieves of joy that you've addressed?

Oh, Dan, there's so many is a thing.

And that really is where the defiant stance comes in.

Because when it comes to the things that would steal the goodness of our soul, steal our union with God, steal knowing his love, that requires a defiant stance.

Rather than just being bold over, the defiance comes in saying, is this really true?

And is this what I want to be basing my life on?

So one of the thieves of joy is comparison.

Just, you know, just saying it.

Like comparing our lives from that person's life.

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