I Choose Joy: Change Your Perspective, Change Your Life: Ingram, Chip

Joy--our lifeline and strength through life's suffering.

C.S. Lewis said, "Joy is the serious business of Heaven." Too often, however, joy is missing from our lives. When we look to Scripture, we see examples of early Christians thriving even amid hardship and persecution. How do we recapture that deep and stubborn joy?

Pastor and author Chip Ingram takes us to God's Word, helping us shift away from self-centered happiness and toward lasting joy found in God's goodness.

"Choosing joy in the midst of difficulties goes against all our instincts. When you look at life through the lens of your circumstances, what happens? You're happy when circumstances are good and sad or angry when they aren't, right? But if you look at your circumstances through the lens of God's goodness--his power and promises--that's a higher perspective. You can experience joy because you know a good God is going to take even the worst and most difficult things in life and use them for your good. Living above our circumstances occurs when our perspective interprets our circumstances rather than our circumstances determining our perspective."

You cannot choose your life's circumstances, but you can choose how to respond. Join esteemed Bible teacher, Chip Ingram, on this journey to restore the essential Christian virtue of JOY!

CHIP INGRAM is the teaching pastor and CEO of Living on the Edge, an internationalteaching and discipleship ministry. A pastor for more than thirty years, Chip is the author of many books, including Holy Ambition and The Invisible War. Chip and his wife, Theresa, have four grown children and twelve grandchildren and live in California.