Dieting is important, but we must make sure our emotional and spiritual condition is healthy if we want to shed extra pounds. ( lusi/rgbstock.com )

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Key 1: Experience God. Jesus was sharing with His disciples the nature of the believer's relationship with God the Father and with Himself, God the Son, in the analogy of the vine and the branches found in John 15:1, 5, 9-11. The verses reveal to us the first key to having godly joy: that we believe in Christ.

Jesus spoke these words the night before His death, giving the promise of His joy to His disciples. He was speaking to all of His disciples except for Judas, the betrayer, who had left the group earlier that evening to arrange for Jesus' arrest. So the disciples who remained were believers; they had faith in Christ.

To receive the promise of "complete joy," we must enter into a faith-based relationship with Jesus, accepting Him as our Savior.

Without this relationship--without first becoming branches of the vine--we can never know what it means to experience His "complete joy."

Key 2: Exalt God. The second key to experiencing complete joy is found in Psalm 100. This psalm opens with the appeal to "shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth." This is joy made manifest, an exuberance that is outwardly expressed.

For some, it may seem difficult to give themselves to such candid expression. Yet God has power enough to free us from our inhibitions. One solution for our reticence is found in verse 3 of Psalm 100: "Know that the Lord is God."

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As we realize who God is, our response will be to exalt Him in praise and worship. The depth and magnitude of our joy depend on how fully we understand the wonder of who God is and His love toward us.

Key 3: Hope in God. The psalmist cried out: "Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?" (Ps. 42:5, NIV).

His response to that question offers another key to experiencing joy: "Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God" (v. 5). Our hope that is yet unfulfilled rests in our knowledge that we as believers will spend eternity with our Lord.

When we experience adversity on earth, hope reminds us that trouble is nothing more than a temporal challenge. It pales in importance as we anticipate an eternity spent with God.

He has provided His love and joy in every challenge of life we face. As we focus on this spiritual reality, hope will begin to fill our hearts and minds, and release the joy of the Lord to work in our lives.

Kara Davis, M.D. is a doctor of internal medicine and was an assistant professor of clinical medicine at the University of Illinois for 10 years. She is the author of The Spiritual Secrets to Weight Loss (Charisma House), from which this article was adapted.

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