Devotional
Can I Watch Joy?
Emily (our 3 year old) doesn't ask to watch Inside Out. She asks to watch Joy.
Or Anxiety. Or Sadness. Depending on her mood, I guess. She's named the movie after the characters, and honestly, that's probably more accurate than the actual title.
If you haven't seen it, the film takes you inside the mind of a girl named Riley. In the first movie, Joy tries to suppress Sadness. Keep her contained. Control the narrative. And it backfires spectacularly. The whole point of the story is that you can't manufacture joy by eliminating the negative emotions. They're part of the package.
We do this in real life too. We think joy is the absence of sadness, anxiety, fear, frustration. So we try to suppress those things. Push them down. Perform happiness until it becomes real.
It doesn't work.
True joy isn't found in perfect circumstances. It's found in God's presence in the middle of imperfect ones. It's that thing inside you that doesn't make sense when everything around you says you should be falling apart.
Paul wrote about this from prison. Not a metaphorical prison. An actual one. Chains. Guards. Uncertainty about whether he'd live or die. And from that cell, he wrote, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice."
That's not toxic positivity. That's a man who found something deeper than circumstance.
Jesus told his disciples that they were greater than John the Baptist because the kingdom was within them. Not around them. Not dependent on external conditions. Within. If you lean into that, if you really believe God is working from the inside out, then the outside stuff loses its grip.
Joy isn't about what's happening around you. It's about who is living in you.
I'm not saying sadness doesn't matter. I'm not saying anxiety is fake. I'm saying joy can exist alongside them. It's not either/or. It's both/and. The presence of struggle doesn't disqualify you from joy. It might be the very place you find it.
What if you stopped trying to suppress the hard emotions and started inviting God into them instead?
Justin Franich
Justin Franich is a Teen Challenge graduate who overcame a meth addiction and has been clean since 2005. He spent over a decade leading Christ‑centered recovery programs and now serves as Executive Director of Shenandoah Valley Adult Teen Challenge, helping families find the right path forward and supporting people as they rebuild life after addiction.
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