Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:17] Speaker B: Okay. Hey, y', all, this is Shanna Williams, and you are listening to Grace and Grit Mindset podcast. And you know what? I'm a day late and a dollar short here, so please forgive me if you've been anxiously awaiting my this episode on Pins and Needles. You've just been waiting and it didn't drop this morning because I had not made it, so please forgive me.
You know, life can go crazy sometimes when you're. You're working a full time entrepreneurial job like I have, and then you've got a couple of podcasts and then you did some traveling and you're tired and you have grandkids and all of this stuff, you know what I mean?
So I'm running just a little bit behind. That's what I'm trying to say.
Hopefully you will forgive me.
And I just. I just pray that this podcast episode finds you exactly when it needed to find you, or whatever the case may be. When, where, how. You know, God has a way of timing things just right, you know, like sometimes it's one of those situations, kind of like where something seems like it gets in your way and prevents you from doing the activity you thought you were supposed to do at a certain time. You know what I mean? And then you find yourself looks like so inconvenience, and you're like, frustrated and mad, you know, but sometimes that's exactly what God's trying to do.
Yeah. I mean, sometimes God prevents us from doing something not in our timeline, you know, because he has a greater purpose. So it could be that even in this situation, someone needed to hear this. And so I got prevented from making it when I thought I should have made it and making it now. Does that make sense? Yeah. So anytime you feel like you get inconvenienced, it might be because God has something else in mind or has a different timetable in mind.
So that's where you just have to surrender to Providence, surrender to his hand and what he wants to do. But today is one of those episodes. And I talk about this all the time. I think I say this every week. And I'm going to say it again. There. There are things that God has been teaching me for the past, I don't know, 20 years, but it feels like in the last few months, these. All of these mindset shifts that I've been talking about with you, they have become so real to me, and. And they have become the lifeline, and they have helped me turn a corner in some ways, and it's made me realize that all this Time, all this time I wasted thinking I was waiting on God, but He was really waiting on me to get the memo. Like to actually get the memo and do what I was supposed to do.
And so all of the ones before this, all of the episodes prior, prior to this, there were probably like eight or so of them where we talked about, you know, learning how to think like God, how to think like Jesus, how to shift our mind out of this very fleshly mindset that's set on death, to shifting it to the spirit and how he thinks.
Because the spirit, the way he thinks, he brings life wherever he is, and he brings freedom. Wherever the Spirit of Lord is, there is freedom, right? And so God wants to bring freedom into our mindset so that he can take us into our promised land. He's got to get your mind free before he can take you where he wants to take you to what he's promised you. He can't take you into your promised land with a broken, messed up mindset, right? Because it's going to pollute everything and you wouldn't steward well the things he wants to give you. So I hope you want to jump on board with me and tell your other negative friends to jump on this train because we are leaving that negative place behind and we are moving on to bigger and better things.
So today we're going to talk about shifting our mind from a place of despair to a place of joy. So this shift of joy over despair, now this is something I've walked through. And, and I used to be a person that I think if you were to ask me, like, what's your natural personality state? I would have said melancholy. I'm a melancholy person, you know, like.
And I took that on as a personality trait. But what I realized over the past few months especially is it's not. Not who I really am.
That was happening because I had. I was hopeless.
And I was hopeless because I didn't have faith in God. And I didn't have faith that he would do what he said he would do.
And because of that, it was. It was trickling into, you know, what looked like a personality trait. But really I'm not.
I'm actually not a person who likes to be sad or be in despair. I want to be. I want to be joyful. I want to be known. And I've told the Lord this. You know, I've said Lord all my life. I think people have known me as the sad girl.
And I don't want to be that anymore. I want people to remember me and Say she had so much joy, despite what she went through, despite the constant challenges and adversity that she faced, she was full of joy.
Because I had this mentor.
Her name was Imogene Thompson. She was amazing. And I wrote about her in my Providence book. And you can get that on Amazon or I'll put a link in here. But there's a whole chapter where I write about worship and I write about what it really is and what it really isn't and how I got to watch her. And she was a true saint. And the epitome of what I think joy is.
She didn't have a lot.
She had a real small house. And I remember that the church I was going to, the pastor, he was so good to her and he. He helped her. And I remember he got a house for her and he went in because he was a carpenter, and he did a lot of work in that house and got it ready for her. And she lived there. She was older, of course, and she. Her husband had passed away a long, long time ago, and. But she had a prophetic gift. And I've never. I've never met anyone else like her.
And she was so full of love and joy. And she would laugh and just laugh and laugh, belly laugh almost. And it was contagious because she didn't. She didn't have a lot of earthly possessions, but she was so rich in the spirit and so full of love.
And I just remember, you know, she had a lot of health challenges, but, like, you would have not known that because she didn't complain about it. And when you would see her or when you would. Because I would go to her house, she was still so full of joy. She was still so hopeful.
And she would say things to me like, I mean, some of these things she said to me, I still remember she would say, things are always subject to change.
And so I hung onto those kind of like one liners she said to me, because she mentored me for a few years before she passed away. And I count that subject, such a privilege and honor.
But one of the things she taught me was just this, that you could have joy in any, any season of your life. Like, you can have joy in the worst possible, what looks like the worst possible situation you've ever been through. You could be walking through a cancer diagnosis and have joy.
You can be walking through a divorce and have joy.
You can be dealing with dire situations, maybe financially and have joy. You can be going through something really hard with your children and still have joy, because joy is not Attached to a situation or a person.
Well, technically not a person, but in a way it is. It's attached to God.
When you look at what Galatians 5 is it 22, 23. I'm trying to find it real quick.
The fruit of the Spirit passage in Galatians.
Here it is 5, 22 and 23. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. Against such things there is no law.
But the key phrase here, the fruit of the Spirit is. And then it has all these things. It's not like they're all separate. They're not separate things. It's all, the spirit being in your life is what brings this beautiful fruit. And you're not going to have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self control. You're not going to have those detached from him. Detached from the vine is a good way to say it. Here's what happens with us.
We are like, okay, I need to be more patient, or I need to be more peaceful. So then we set out trying to be this thing, or, okay, let's use joy. I need to be happier. I need to have more joy. Which joy is not exactly happiness, and we know that, right?
Joy is an internal thing, but it stems from knowing God and His presence in your life, not from you trying harder to be happier.
That's not how we get joy. And I think that's what so many people beat themselves up about because they're like, I'm a Christian.
Why am I not full of joy?
Why do I look at this circumstance I'm going through and it's just destroying me? Or maybe it's been going on for years and, you know, kind of those situations that it's. It's an endurance, perseverance type thing where you've been doing this for 15 years and you're tired. And I get that. I really do.
I really do. But there's no situation that's excluded from the joy of God.
There's no situation that's bigger than he is. And we have to remind ourselves of that, you know?
So, I mean, I just. I have this question for you. Have you. Have you ever felt like despair was just setting up camp in your soul?
Like, joy's not. Not just missing, it's left without a trace. Because I can totally understand that, where you feel like it didn't just go missing, it packed up and left.
And I can tell you guys, you all know, if you've listened to my story, the awful things I've been through in the last five years of my life.
And there have been days where I had no joy, absolutely.
There were days where grief was just overtaking me. And there are moments in our life where we have to grieve.
But at some point we will find, if we continue to press into the Lord, we continue to let him heal us, that we will come back to a place of joy.
So let's talk about.
Let's define despair honestly, and then let's define joy.
So despair is real, but it doesn't have to be your last word. And you can find yourself in a situation like I was just talking about that I was in, where you are in despair, you know, so it's more than sadness. It's the absence of hope.
And it feels permanent, heavy and silent. You know, I think that's one of the giveaways that some someone is in despair is the deep sadness. But it's also silent because you feel like.
Like no one would understand what this feels like or what I'm going through. And. And I think they're all tired of me complaining about it anyway. So I'm just going to be quiet.
And that's a lot of the enemy. He just wants to silence you. But you've. It's this detachment from hope.
So really what's missing is the hope. You. You have no more.
And you know, it can come from grief, betrayal, struggles, just in any of that stuff. But I love what Psalm 42, 11. Well, just Psalm 42 says in general, because he's kind of like man. He's like, okay, things have been rough. You know, Some of the things he says in this passage, I'm just gonna read a little bit for. He's talking about, I'm pouring out my heart, you know.
As the deer longs for flowing streams, so I long for you, God, at thirst for God, the living God.
When can I come and appear before God? My tears have been my food day and night, While all day long people say to me, where is your God?
I remember this as I pour out my heart How I walked with many leading the festive procession to the house of God with joyful and thankful shouts. He's remembering those days that were good. And you tend to do that when you're in these seasons of grief or betrayal.
You remember and you long for those days. And then he says, why my soul are you so dejected? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God. I am deeply depressed. Therefore I remember you from the land of Jordan and the peaks of Hermon From Mount Miser deep, deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls all your breakers and your billows have swept over me the Lord will send his faithful, faithful love by day his song will be with me in the night A prayer to the God of my life I will say to God, my rock, why have you forgotten me? Why am I stuck about in sorrow? Because of the enemy's oppression? My adverse adversaries taunt me as if crushing my bones While all day long they say to me, where is your God?
Why my soul are you dejected? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God.
It's so hard when you find your place, find yourself in that season or that place where everything's falling apart, everything's hard. You've been betrayed, you've been whatever that's rejected.
And the moment that you lose hope is the moment that despair sets in.
So how do you keep hope in these seasons?
And we're going to cover some of these scriptures that I think living in the Word is one thing, because faith has to come by hearing, and it has to come of hearing the Word of God.
The Word of God brings more faith. Faith brings more hope.
So you have to hear what God is saying.
Otherwise all that you're hearing is what Satan is saying, what demonic principalities are saying to you, what anyone in your life who's negative might be saying to you. You're bombarded day and night with airwaves that are negative, that are doing their best to bring you, bring you down. He knows the enemy knows. If he can separate you from hope, from hoping, then he can pull you into despair, and you'll just suffer silently, miserably.
So I do really like what Lamentations 3:22 23 says. Before he goes into it, though, I encourage you, if you can take it. Go back and read some of this stuff that he's saying before in the first part of chapter three. Obviously, Lamentations comes from the word to lament. To lament is to, like, you know, really whine and show forth your misery and complain. And I'm lamenting. This is so horrible. So this whole book in the Bible is about just being miserable and telling the Lord, I'm miserable. This is hard. Here's all the horrible things that have happened.
I'll just start right here, just a little bit before 20. He ground my teeth with gravel. He made me cower in the dust. I have been deprived of peace. I have forgotten what prosperity is. Oh man, I can.
That right there I can relate to. Then I thought my future is lost as well as my hope from the Lord.
So he's lost his hope. Remember my affliction and my homelessness, the wormwood and the poison. I continually remember them and have become depressed. Yet here it is. Yet I call this to mind, and therefore I have hope.
Because of the Lord's faithful love, we do not perish. For his mercies never end.
They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness, I say, the Lord is my portion, therefore I will put my hope in him. The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the person who seeks him. It is good to wait quietly for salvation from the Lord.
Man, I can so relate to everything that he just said. I mean that that's how I felt so many moments in my life.
But when I would get reconnected to hope like he just did, he says, I will continually remember them.
Yet I call this to mind. And because I can remember, he's saying, I have hope. What is he remembering? He's remembering all the times that God's come through for him.
He's rehearsing it in his mind.
He's like, you know what, it's really bad right now. But I remember that time when God did this.
I have a lot of remember wins.
I've had so many times where God came in at the last minute and. And Satan had it planned, man. It was like an Esther Haman thing where like, you know, the decree goes out because of what Haman had done behind the king's back, and he was trying to kill all the Jews. And so the decree is set out that on this date, it was so many months, I think it was a year from that day, the Jews were going to be slaughtered.
And so everybody's living in fear. And God brings Esther into the picture and she's able to thwart the plan with the help of Mordecai. And they expose Haman and what he's done. And the king is furious. But the king cannot take this edict back that he's already proclaimed. It's already gone out, it's law.
So what he does instead is he says, on this day the Jews have the right to defend themselves.
And so what Satan was going to do was destroy and annihilate God's people. But God made a way and he turned it for their good. This is our whole story as Christians. This is what God continually does for us. And we always have hope. I can only imagine in that story, when the Jews are thinking, this is how hopeless.
This is hopeless. And who would have ever thought God would raise up a woman to save them?
How unheard of was that in that day and time, he used her and her willingness and her. Her obedience. And it brought hope and it brought salvation to the entire Jewish community, and the whole nation was saved.
And how many times has God done that over and over for them? But personalize it. How many times has he done it over and over for you?
And I think that is something that is paramount when you find yourself in a place of despair.
Is. I'm going to remember.
I will call this to mind.
I will remember that time, those times, because there's a lot of them.
There's a lot of them. And if you can't remember mentally, like, just, you know, through your head right now, start writing it down. Instead of writing a journal of all your complaints and all the things that you hate, write all the things that you remember. God's done. You're. You're thankful for this. My gratitude, you know, it's a gratitude journal. Flip it and go. But he's never forsaken me. He's never abandoned me. Even when it looked like he has. He had. He did not.
So because of that, when you start to remember, you start to shift back into hope, right? You start to shift back into hope and despair. Despair will actually just fall away and roll off of you when you start to come back to that place of hoping and getting reconnected to the Lord and His Word and what he says. Because he is hope and he is joy.
So.
But I want to talk about, like, what joy really is, because I think we think sometimes a lot of people maybe think that it is just that I'm always smiling or that I have this external.
I don't know, everything. My. My circumstances are great. I'll be happy when xyz.
Well, don't waste your life waiting on XYZ to happen.
Because more than likely, XYZ will not happen the way you think it. It will, or at all.
You may not have what you. You think you're gonna get. You know, you may not. And are you gonna let that steal your joy? Because as a child of God, wanting your birthright is joy.
The kingdom of God is peace, love and joy in the Holy Ghost or righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. So that's part of our birthright to have joy. It isn't. It is because he's within us. It's because he is joy. So what is the biblical definition of joy? And I would say, say it's. We're going to look at it in the Greek a little bit. But I would say it's like a deep rooted confidence in the goodness of God.
A deep rooted confidence in the goodness of God. No matter what.
No matter what.
And that's, I think, the key phrase, no matter what.
Okay. I still believe he's good no matter what. My life just fell apart. He's still good.
I don't know how I'm going to make it this month. He's still good no matter what.
He's gonna make this work. He's gonna help me. He's not gonna leave me.
Let's look at, I want to look at the Greek of. It's Tchara is how you say it. And of course it means joy, gladness and delight.
One of the words is cheerfulness and calm delight.
Calm delight. I really like that.
Like this calmness. So it's not like somebody yelling and just being super extroverted about it, which they could be, but it's just this calm delight that if someone were in your presence, they would probably not even know that you had this major catastrophe in your life because you had this confidence in God.
I love it. I think that's such a great way to look at this. There was something else I wanted to read that it was from the lexicon, the topical lexicon. I just want to read a little bit of what they say.
Joy in the New Testament is more than emotion.
It is the settled spirit given delight that arises from the redemptive acts and abiding presence of God. It is rooted in divine initiative experienced in the believer and express stress both now and in the ages to come.
So I love this spirit given delight that arises from the redemptive acts and abiding presence of God.
It's the abiding presence of God that gives you joy.
Where else could it come from? Like, right, because he's the only one that knows the outcome. He knows he's always going to win.
He knows that nothing is bigger than Him. And we have his spirit. He's inside of us. So greater is he is in us that he that's in the world. So why wouldn't we have joy? Why wouldn't we be cheerful? Why wouldn't we have this calm delight that in the face of adversity we know that we still win.
See? So the problem is we get detached from hope. We get. Our faith gets weak and we get, we get caught up in this lie that.
That there's no hope, that something is hopeless. And that's really, honestly the easy to get caught up in right now in the world because of the darkness that's all around us, which is not.
It's not going to go away. Right? But this joy is not fleeting. It's not attached to what's going on around me.
It's. It's not denial, but it's a. It's a. Joy is not a denial. It's defiance. But it says, I see the storm, but I'm anchoring my soul in something deeper. Like, yes, I know it's there. I'm not denying there's a problem and there's some issue I'm gonna deal with, but anchoring my soul in something stronger and something deeper. And that is God.
So how do you get from despair to joy?
Well, I do love Isaiah 60:1 says, he will give you a garment of praise instead of the spirit of heaviness.
And I remember one time, side note here, I was playing. I think I was playing at the intercession and prayer room that I was serving at down the road here. And one of the songs that I started hearing prophetically was this from Isaiah 60:1. He would give us a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair or heaviness.
And it was just such a sweet little song.
I think I said something about, we'll dance, we'll dance in the garment of praise. Your yoke is easy, your burden is light. And I'll dance, I'll dance in the garment of praise. And, man, it just kind of took off and it was like, oh, my gosh, you know, the Lord brought together what Jesus said.
And then in Matthew, and then this garment of praise idea in Isaiah 63, 61:3. And when we take on the yoke of Jesus, all of a sudden we have joy. We have this garment of praise. And no longer am I crushed in spirit so that. What am I trying to say? Sometimes you've got to reach for your garment of praise. Even when your hands are shaky or even when you feel like you. You're tired and you're weak, man, that yoke, that's the one you want, the one with Jesus. And. And all of a sudden everything gets lighter and you have this hope again. And you're thinking, there isn't anything you can't do, is there, Lord? There isn't anything you can't do.
And you have this joy that rises like, I'm getting so excited about it now. You have this joy that rises up in you, that you know that no matter what you go through, he's with you and it's going to be okay. And there's hope.
It won't always be like this. It won't always be like this. There will come a day where things will make sense, and you won't just be living in survival anymore. But even while you're living in survival, you can still have joy.
Well, I didn't mean to cry, but it's just near and dear to me, you know, this. This whole concept of joy.
Joy is not a feeling. It's a fruit.
Joy is not a feeling. It's a fruit. And if you think about it being a fruit, it's got to have soil to grow in.
The soil is our life.
It's the hard things that we go through, right?
And that's how we know it's real.
We let him plant that in us. We let him abide in us. And when we do, that fruit grows through, things show up, and people are like, oh, my God, she just went through the most horrific thing. But she is joyful. And it's not because she's on medication or. Or she's, you know, I don't know, chewing CBD gummies.
No, like, she is truly joyful because she.
She's allowed the Lord to just carry her through this. And he. His presence is just.
You can see it on them. You know, when a person is walking through that and they're allowing the Lord to help them, and they're leaning on him and they still have the hope. There's like this beautiful glow. There's this glow.
And I remember just a thought. I just had. One of my aunts used to tell me when I was little, she would tell me all the time, she would say, you just glow. Every time I see you, you glow. You glow. And as I got older, I think I lost that.
And it's because I let the world come in and I started believing lies. And I didn't have hope.
But I was that little girl who was.
I was glowing. I was hopeful. I did have just, like, this sweetness and this glow about me because he was with me and I believed him.
And I can have that back. And I do have that back. And you can have that.
You can be a witness for him even in the worst season of your life. And I know that if you're listening to this, that's probably your heart.
That's probably your heart.
So I just want to encourage you. I know that you might be going through something hard And I get it.
Boy, do I get it.
But let's talk about some practical ways to build your joy.
Sabbath rest.
I talked about this a couple episodes back Sabbath over striving. Go back and listen to it. As a matter of fact, I was so touched in my spirit with that episode that I'm like, okay, I'm about to write a book about this because this is so. Good Lord, for me, it was.
So how about you step away from Hustle and you rest in delight.
Like, what if you just took a day and you just rested and you just.
You just thought about.
There are scriptures that talk about, his delight is in me, where he delights in us, and. Which is crazy, isn't it, when you think about it.
But just resting in this place of delight, of knowing he loves you, that he is so delighted by your presence, that there's a joy that he has when he sees you. Can you imagine that the Creator of the universe has a joy when we come near him? He's excited. I think probably the way that I get really excited about seeing my grandkids. And when they run up to me and they say shabby, and they're running as fast as they can and they just bulldoze me, oh, it makes my heart just.
Just leap. And I have so much joy and I laugh and they laugh. I think that's how he feels. It's like.
I think he's, like saying, don't run from me in these moments. Run to me. There's so much joy here available for you.
Another way is scripture soaking. You can pick one verse and let it preach to your soul for a week. What if you just take one of these verses and. I didn't even get into them. I had a whole list of verses, man, that I was going to cover.
I didn't even get to them. But how about you Google it, look it up, find some scriptures about joy. And you just. You just pick that one verse. That's it. And for the whole week, you meditate on it. You reread it every day, you pray it.
Let it preach to you, let it encourage you. Let it build up your faith.
How about worship?
Worship on repeat.
If you feel like you don't have the strength to worship, why don't you play some worship music instead of listening to junk?
What about listening to worship on repeat and just see what changes in the atmosphere?
How about honest journaling?
You know, like, remember, like I was saying a minute ago, you know? Yeah. You can pour out your heart, your pain. Yeah, but what if you Say, you know what? Today I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna write down the things I'm thankful for, like a gratitude thing.
And community. I really want to harp on this one a minute. Community. Do not isolate. Let someone hold hope for you. If you're too tired to carry it, sometimes you gotta have someone come along and really hold your arms up for you because you've been carrying something for way too long. And. And you know what? You're not a burden to someone else when you need that. That is. That is a joy and an honor for the body of Christ to be able to do that for one another. I've had people tell me that in this season I've been in. I had a couple friends and I would be like. I just. I felt like I was driving them crazy, but they would be like, don't you dare apologize.
This is our honor to be able to pray with you like this and to help you walk through this.
And I can't tell you how much that meant to me, because I think you feel so alone when you're going through hard things like that and you feel like nobody can understand. And there are moments when you.
You can't.
You just can't find hope anymore.
You need someone to help you, and that's okay. And I'm. Yes, I'm crying almost because I remember what it felt like. I remember not having any. Having any hope, but having people who would just pray with me and hold my hand and they would speak life into me because I was so.
I was so gre. I was just so grief stricken that I couldn't even hear the Lord. So I get it. But I just want to say don't. Don't isolate. Don't isolate. If you have a couple friends, reach out to them.
Oh, yeah. So joy isn't a feeling, it's a fruit.
And I just pray, you know. Romans 15:13. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him.
So joy isn't the absence of pain, it's the presence of Jesus.
And if he's with you, then joy is possible even in this moment that you.
I just want to say that again. Joy isn't the absence of pain, it's the presence of Jesus.
Wow. Thank you, Lord. I hope that this encouraged you this week. Make sure you.
If you are not already subscribed to my show, make sure you do love for you to leave me a rating. I hope this helps you. I. I just. And the reason I say that I'm not trying to get famous here. My. My days of trying to be famous are over. I gave that up a lot time ago. I'm just doing this out of obedience. And if there are people who I feel called to, people who struggle with depression and hopelessness and the stuff that we talked about today, you know, I get it, man. My heart is with you. I know. I know where you are, God. I know how you feel.
And I just want to encourage you and give you hope that there's on the other side of this. There is a life. There really is life.
[00:35:41] Speaker A: So.
[00:35:42] Speaker B: So when people give me reviews and ratings and share this podcast with somebody going through something hard, it really helps get the word out.
And I just want to help people.
So, hey, if you feel like, yeah, I want to help you help people, go ahead and share this or subscribe or rate the podcast for me. You can always go to shannastrange.net and I have some resources there, blogs and music and things like that.
If you want to reach out to me by email and tell me your story, I'd love to pray with you. It's shannashannastrange.net and until next week, I pray you guys are blessed and that you have a joy filled week.
[00:36:33] Speaker A: On the cloud. He's shifting, he's bringing new life and no hate his fire is burning right his leg is breaking through.
