Notes from this week's podcast: Your Response to Frustration: Stolen Joy or Guarded Grace

How do you handle frustrating moment or frustrating people that steal your joy? And in the middle of that frustration, you sin. You respond in a way that you know is not honoring to God. 

Three steps to victory over these encounters

1) Intentionally stop and take a deep breath

God is looking at us. He wants us to overcome these moments. He wants us to walk with such joy in our lives that it's an overflowing testimony of the goodness of God. 

Be intentional, when you feel the temptation coming on or in the midst of the struggle, stop what you're doing and take a deep breath. 

2) Acknowledge what's really going on -- what the Holy Spirit is speaking to you at the moment. Call it whatever God calls it. Agree with God. Confess it. 

It may be someone else that started it. It may be something else out of your control. Your response to it -- that's what you want to take responsibility for. That's what you want as the leading of the Holy Spirit. That's what you want to confess.

"God, this is sin. And it's stealing my joy. I want to get this corrected." 

The Holy Spirit is so good to nudge us to say: No, that's not right. Confess that to God.

He wants us to walk in the victory after we confess. 

3) Pray for grace

We need the grace of God in our lives to help us to overcome these situations, these temptations, these habits that they've become, these character traits that we don't like (we know they're not Christlike). We need God's grace. 

We need God through the supernatural power of the Holy Spirit even to give us the desire not to act like that, to overcome these tempting moments, to walk in godliness, to desire godly character. We want that to be our response when we're frustrated, struggling, and overwhelmed in life. We need God's grace so that we want to. 

Our flesh is weak. We're Christians, we've got the Holy Spirit living in us. But our flesh wants to defeat us. Recognize God's grace. 

It may come by the way of a Scripture. 

It may come by the Holy Spirit within you, just giving you that nudge. It's grace that gives you the want to. 

It's God's grace that works it all out going forward so that you can do that with a heart of humility. 

There are some who say: I'm saved. I have a license to do this -- to walk in this habitual sin. I know I'm going to heaven anyway. Yes, being a Christian, we are going to heaven. But, being a Christian, God also gives us grace to have victory over a sin, even in the moment of temptation, even in the moments when we've fallen into that sin, when the Holy Spirit is prompting us that something is wrong. It's God's grace that gives us the power not to sin, not to continue in that sin or that bad habit. 

I want my life to be a testimony for God. 

• Lord, would you give me grace today that I will not fall into sin?
• God, would you give me that supernatural power that it will come into my life -- that's not of me but of You that I will overcome this and I'll walk in victory?

Recognize how desperate I am for God's grace 

[Recognize] that we don't conform to this world, but we become transformed by the renewing of our minds. We do what is good and acceptable to God. God is well-please with us. 

In the end, we get our joy back. 

Scripture for further study: 1 John 1:9, Romans 12:2