Your lungs need oxygen to thrive, your body needs food to thrive, and your soul needs joy to thrive. How can you tell when someone is joy-deprived? By how they look and what they say.

One Bible teacher says: ‘When I began to understand John 10:10…I realised the enemy had deceived me into thinking that enjoying things was not important…I had come to believe – falsely, of course – that if I was having fun, something was wrong…I must not be working hard enough! I never saw my father enjoy life and it seemed to aggravate him when others did, so I just grew up thinking something must be wrong with it. I can remember being told to be quiet when I laughed out loud…The seventeenth-century…[writer] Madame Guyon said that the highest call for every child of God is to enjoy God. I remember what a heavy load lifted off of me the first time I read that…I was working so hard trying to please God that the thought of simply enjoying Him had not occurred to me at all. I had never heard of such a thing!…I had been a committed church member for over twenty years before I learned that God wanted me to enjoy Him and the life He had given me.’

Can you relate? If so, it’s time to make some changes in your life. Take a break without feeling guilty; you will be much more productive when you’re rested and refreshed. Recreation is not ‘unspiritual’; it’s essential to staying in balance. We live in a driven, stressed-out society, but you can change; you can be joyful if you choose to.