When your mind is filled with sound doctrine and you believe it with all your heart,

it takes over control of your emotions.

You are a rational being and your feelings must be controlled by your reason, by your mind,

and your mind when filled with the truth of God will control your emotion.

Welcome to Grace to You, featuring the Bible teaching of John MacArthur.

I'm Phil Johnson, your host.

Does God want you to be happy?

Ever asked that question? Maybe when you're ridiculed for your faith in Christ, or when a loved one dies, or when the fight against temptation and sin just drags on

with no break in sight. Bottom line, when you hear people talk about the joyful life in Christ,

do you wonder what that sort of life really looks like and how you can experience it? Consider that today as John MacArthur

looks at the Christian attitude of joy. John's current study is titled The Pillars of Christian Character.

And here now is John with a lesson.

In 1st Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 16, we read this very short verse.

Rejoice always. That's it. In fact, in the original language, the adverb comes first,

and so it goes like this, always, and the command is in the present tense,

so the latter part would be always continue to rejoice. Always be rejoicing. Now, that is

the command of verse 16, and the attitude I want to talk about is joy. Joy.

There's plenty of reason in the world in which we live to be sad, distressed, disturbed,

upset, concerned, anxious, stressed out, full of fear, doubt, but not for the Christian. I'm going to make a statement now that might seem

a little bit hard, if not impossible to believe, but I mean what I say and I'm going to try

to show you why. Here's the statement. There is no event and there are no circumstances

in life that should diminish the Christian's joy.

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