In the sermon 'Happy Christian Women' by Deborah Brown, she emphasizes the importance of being happy Christian women in order to create a positive atmosphere in homes, churches, and communities. Brown shares examples of women who struggle with happiness and their impact on their families. The Bible guides Christian women to manage their emotions through the fruits of the Holy Spirit, such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and gentleness. To create a happy and joy-filled home, women should be intentional in applying the teachings of the Bible, such as walking in love and kindness, showing compassion, and practicing patience. Brown shares personal experiences and practical tips on how to achieve this, including reading the Bible with children and choosing to focus on happiness in difficult situations.

I want to talk to you this morning about being happy women because the world needs more of them. So to our homes and churches. Scoot the mic closer to me. Is that good? Alright, sorry.

I want you to be happy women. Don't want you... Okay, I'm gonna go back to the beginning because if you didn't hear that, I want you guys to be happy Christian women. I'm assuming that's who's here. All right, so because I think that our homes and our churches and wherever you guys live, your sphere needs more actually just happy women.

So do your children's homes by the way. When your children leave your home to create homes of their own they need to be have happy homes. And this was born out of conversations I've had over the last several years. One woman told me that she was hard to live with. Another woman has told me that she's just not kind.

These are from the women themselves, not from those who know them. One woman that our children played together, she said, come you always ask, say to your kids thank you and please. A son told his mother he couldn't wait to turn 18 and leave the home. She said, well I can't wait either. There was a daughter who said that her mother was harsh.

My brother-in-law heads up a department in a major hospital in North Carolina. He has several men who take anxiety meds before they go home. So my question is why? It's not Christian to be harsh and unkind. It's not Christian to be hard to live with.

So for years I've thought about these women, because if this is what they say about themselves, What do their families say? What kind of home did these women create and then they caused their husbands and children to endure it? I want to know what kind of Christianity this is. And I've come to the conclusion just like you, this is not Christianity. Except that I see a lot of Christian women with long faces.

I'm sure that this song that My mother sang to me, you guys have sung to your kids. If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands. If you're happy and you know it, then your face will surely show it. If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands.

If you don't sing that song, you should. So if your face will surely show it. Have you looked in the mirror to see what everyone else sees on your face? Not your makeup? They see pleasantness on your face?

I mean, they look at you and think, there's a happy woman. I wonder what makes her so happy. So my question for you is, Are you a happy woman? Are you a happy wife? Happy mama?

Are you a happy friend? Church member or co-worker? A happy fill-in-the-blank? Menopausal woman? So I have come across those who frown on the word happy because they prefer the more holy word joyful.

And I think sometimes it's because they're not happy. They don't make the people in their lives happy. But at the end of the day, whatever word you use in the place that you live with the people that you live with, Are you creating a place that is wonderful and peaceful and fun and joyful and happy? So the people, the people in your life know that you love the Lord and that you trust Him completely. They know that you're thankful for his provenance that has caused your lines to fall in pleasant places?

They know that you are so glad for the life that God gave you. Does your husband know this and your children, your friends and your co-workers? If I asked them if you were a happy wife and mama and friend, what would they say? So if you are a happy wife and mama and friend, I want these words to inspire you to not grow weary doing good. Let them encourage you that your work is not in vain.

You should be reminded of the goodness of the Lord and excel still more. But if you are not a happy Christian wife and mama and friend, and I want these words to challenge the habits you've fallen into, And I want all of us to look behind our faces to our hearts. Ephesians 5 beginning in verse 15 says, See then that you walk circumspectly, as fools but as wise, redeeming the time because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is. And do not be drunk with wine, for this is dissipation, but be filled with the Holy Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your hearts.

The Lord. Giving thanks always for all things to God, the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, submitting to one another in the fear of God. So Paul tells us to be wise and not unwise and to understand what the will of the Lord is, which is to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And from Galatians we know that the fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, faithfulness, self-control. And being filled with the Spirit means we speak to one another the words of Christ, singing and giving thanks to God.

So what does it look like for a wise wife and mama and friend to be filled with the Holy Spirit. What is it that produces the fruit? Ephesians 5 15 starts with walk circumspectly. Walk in love and joy and kindness and goodness all the time. So I'm tempted to think, oh yeah sure, how does that work when my husband disappoints me or when my children disobey me?

How do psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs work then? But of course you know that doesn't let us off the hook. Paul does not qualify his words with, unless you're mad or unless your kids disobey or unless you're hurt or unless you're right, Paul says to speak the words of Christ with love and gentleness. But what is in our hearts will come out of our mouths. And those words will be either helpful or healing, and healing, with your face full of love, they will be hurtful and they will harm the ones you say that you love the most.

All the while our faces are hard and unforgiving. A woman recently told me that she was speaking to her three-year-old. And out of the blue, he said, Mama, you're smiling at me. All the caring of her children, she just stopped smiling. But she was speaking loud and clear, either joyfully or grumpily.

And that's the problem. What is in our hearts will come out our faces and our words. So I wanna talk about what we fill our hearts with because you all know it's where it all comes from. So most of us know that women are pretty much a bundle of emotions. It's generally how God has made us.

However, often our emotions control us, instead of the other way around. And the world would love to tell us all about our emotions, like as if they had designed them. They would tell us that our emotions, how we feel, is the most important thing. We have no control over them, so just let them fly, hun. Because how we feel is paramount, regardless of how it feels, regardless of the truth.

But for Christian women, the Bible tells us very different things about our emotions. The Bible tells us not to be a victim of our emotions. As Christian women, God has commanded us to certain emotions, such as fear not, delight yourself in the Lord, weep with those who weep, rejoice with those who rejoice, do not be anxious, have compassion, love one another, rejoice always, Put away all malice and bitterness. Emotions are just the outward signs of what's going on in your heart. Emotions reveal the beliefs that we hold.

So what do you believe every day in your home, with your friends, at work? Do you believe that God is sovereign in absolutely everything? Or do you believe that you deserve something better? Growing up, when I was growing up, whenever we complained that something wasn't fair, My dad would say, you want fair? And then he would explain what fair actually looked like.

And not at all what I had envisioned, a 10-year-old. God gets to define fair, and I don't want fair at all. I want mercy. I want love in the face of my own failings and lack of character. When you really believe that you deserve something better, What does that look like in your home?

If you were to believe the Bible in your home every day, what would that look like? If you were to walk circumspectly as wise Christian women and practice the fruit of the Spirit, how would you speak and what would be the expressions on your face? The Bible says to fear not, the most oft repeated command in Scripture. Another one very like it is the do not be anxious. So what does that look like for a woman not to be anxious and to fear nothing?

How is she to be confident and fearlessly happy? All the promises in Scripture. Jesus says, I will be with you always till the end of the age. He says that he will carry you as a father carries his son. He says, even to your old age, Even I will carry you and deliver you." He says that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers nor things present nor things to come, not height, not depth, not any other created thing, is able to separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

Is that enough to be fearless and confident and happy? Even in the face of tragedy? Can you say with the Psalm system, whatever the Lord does is good? Only if you truly believe it. The Bible says to have compassion on one another and to love one another and to put away all bitterness and malice.

So compassion and love with no bitterness and no malice sounds like a recipe for happiness to me. So how is your compassion meter for those living in your home? Are you quick with your empathy and love? You have the patience that compassion and love requires that makes a sweet atmosphere in your home, not allowing any bitterness to get a foothold. The Bible says that Jesus has felt everything that you feel and that he knows what you have to bear.

He's also walked through the valley of the shadow of death in front of you. Jesus told Paul that he would suffer much for the name of Jesus, but that he would be with him. And he says he will be with you. Do you really believe it? The Bible says to delight yourself in the Lord and to seek the Lord and be glad in Him.

So that's the secret of the happy, joy-filled woman with her husband, with her children, church, at work. That's the secret. Somebody said, what's the secret? That's it. It's to be delighted with the Lord and his ways, to know him.

It's here that happiness and everlasting joy dwells. This is how you create a joy-filled, happy-to-be-there atmosphere wherever you are by living the words of God in the scripture every day. So practically, It takes a lot of time. Every day you have to know what the Lord says to you in his word. You are a busy working woman or a woman in college.

Do not be too busy to know what the scriptures say to you. Deuteronomy 32, 47 says that these words, scripture's words are your life, they're your life. If you're a busy mom with a bunch of kids, Make it a part of your morning to read the Bible to them. What our family did was we used John MacArthur's Read Through the Bible in a Year program, and we started every day with that. We would sit around our living room and go around the room.

We'd all read five verses each. The little ones who couldn't read yet would sit on my lap or Scott's lap and you know we would read a few words and the kids would repeat them. And then we'd talk about it and pray. And we did this year after year after year. The Browns aren't terribly creative, but what it did do is that our children had read through the Bible from Genesis to Revelation tens of times before they left our home.

Not very long ago, Scott was going to be speaking at a father-daughter retreat, so he asked our girls what their best memories of our family were, and they said, those mornings reading the Bible. Now, you all know that my homeschooling had gaps. My children actually got out of the house without knowing some things, like Algebra 2 and Calculus. But I did know that whatever they faced in life, they would be ready for because they knew the scriptures and they loved the Lord. They had the answers.

Now, all that being said, though I speak with the tongues of men and angels and have the gift of prophecy, and I fully understand all mysteries and all knowledge and have all faith without love, without joy, it's nothing. And I am nothing. Hosea says that the Lord drew us with cords of kindness and love. So be the kind of Christian woman who creates a happy space, where kindness and love ooze out of the walls. In other words, be a happy Christian woman.

Do not be harsh. Do not be unkind. Do not be hard to live with. I have a friend who at one time had seven children under five. And she had just gotten into the habit of surviving.

She's a funny gal. She had one baby and then she doubled and had two and then she doubled and had four. The eighth pregnancy was a scary time But then she went on to have, you know, just one more each time. But she was just surviving with seven children under five. And she was just surviving with her husband and just getting to the end of every day.

But then it became evident what her survival mode was creating in her home. And she knew that she should be filled with the Holy Spirit and with that fruit she could not think of how to start. So because the fruit of the Spirit, the first is love, she went to 1st Corinthians 13 to find out what love looked like. Love suffers long and is patient. Love does not envy.

Love does not parade itself. It is not puffed up, does not behave rudely, does not seek its own. Love is not provoked and thinks no evil. Love does not rejoice in iniquity but rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

Love never fails. So love is patient is where she began. And she worked on loving her family through being patient. Then She moved on to love is kind. And she systematically worked through all those things in 1 Corinthians 13.

And it changed her life. And of course her husband's life, her children's lives. Scripture always, always changes your life. She went on then to have 11 children, and she was a happy mom, and I had a fun, loving home, where children still talk about it, and they loved it. But it became about because these words were her life.

I can think of no better way to order your life than that. To take the words of life and apply them every day in your home purposely. So choose life and choose happiness. In the Brown home, happy was a choice. We tell our children there was always a choice and you could choose the mad finger, happy finger, or the mad finger.

When the kids were little, Scott would say, you can choose happy, you can choose mad. Which you're gonna choose. And he would make them grab whatever finger their emotion was gonna go with, and he would make them pull it into their heart. They didn't choose the mad finger very often, but if they did, they were then punished because they were choosing to sin. And we still practice this.

Not long ago, a couple weeks ago, one of my daughters called to ask me to pray for her because she was struggling to choose the happy finger. And you know I still have to choose the happy finger at times too. And most of times it isn't easy because your emotions are so strong. And at times it's a struggle to understand things that God has not fully explained. But therein lies the path to maturity.

Your faith grows, your trust grows, and you rejoice in all things. And you grow. It's a win-win-win. And then you learn how to rejoice in all those things, and you get to help your family learn how to rejoice in those things and to choose happy. Their faith and trust and love will grow as they mature.

And you will get to say with James, I rejoice to see my children walking in the truth. Something I like to do is to put myself 30 years in the future. What do I want to look back on and see? What do I want to look back on and not see? All this my out-of-body experience.

One night when our kids were little and we were driving through the night to Florida, I made a list of all the things I didn't want to say when I was 60, which of course I was 30 at the time, or I didn't want to say on my deathbed. Things like, I don't want to say, I wish I had taken a walk with Scott every time he asked me. I wish that I had played baseball with Scott and the kids on those hot Saturday afternoons when I wanted to sit in the cool AC all by myself. I will wish that I had said, sure, every time, instead of being too tired. I wish I had been more patient with my kids.

I wish that I had cooked more with my girls. I even want to say, I wish I had sat on their beds and talked with them more. What we women are doing is so super significant, as we have in our hands, in our faces, and in our tone of voice, the ability to create a God-fearing, God-trusting, God-loving, beautiful life. Ours, our husbands, our children, and to some extent your friends and your co-workers. In all of their environment it affects them.

And it's forever. One day in the future you will hear your children talking about the time in your home. What are they going to tell your grandchildren? We all only get one chance to create a happy, joy-filled Christian home. And I am here to tell you that it can be done.

Scott and I intentionally and purposely set out to create a peaceful, love-filled home that had on full display the beauties of Christ and his kingdom, his ways, his loves, his affections, living out the fact that his ways are pleasantness and all his paths are peace. But it is, in some ways, for a season when your young children are learning to obey you, It's a hard and time-consuming way to live. For example, when one of our children would disobey and spanking was required, I would sit with the child in front of me, take his hands in mine, and ask him why we were there. I'd let him explain it to me and I would tell him my reason why we were there and why I couldn't just let him continue down this path. I would tell him that God had given me the responsibility for training him in the ways of the Lord and that his learning to obey me was a prerequisite for him learning to obey God, which is the most important thing.

So then I would tell him he had to lay across my lap quietly, no running away. I was not going to wrestle him there. And then I would spank him. He was allowed to cry. He was not allowed to scream out of control and not for a prolonged period of time.

And then I would hold him close. And I'd tell him how much I loved him. And then we would pray. When they were super little, I would pray and they had to repeat after me, you know, Lord thank you for giving me a mama who loves me enough to spank me. And Scott used to say I was raising neurotic children, maybe.

And then the child had to go and make peace with whoever he had wronged and get forgiveness. There was one time when one of the kids, when they were really little, that was the process. We were just starting the process. And then they were saying, they're going, yes, I'm not, yes, I'm not, yes, I'm not. Can we pray?

Skipping all the discipline, right? Yeah. It took so much time that process. Sometimes I think I don't I don't I don't have the time for this. And it was true.

And it didn't leave me much time for me. And not much time for friends. Not even much time for co-op. Because I had to be super, super careful with my time. But there's another way to walk through this season, and it's what I call the whack-and-go method.

I told you not to do that. Whack! Now, go tell your sister you're sorry. I heard one psychologist a long time ago say that when his mom got mad, she would grab anything and start swinging. Her girdle with the straps and buckles was the worst.

All right, that's one way to do it. And you know what? I give you, there's room for that, for the whack-and-go every once in a while. But I can tell you from experience which one brings the most sweetness between you and your children that lasts for a lifetime, not to mention the most profitability from a teaching standpoint. My girls are now 36, 33, and 26, And they would all tell you that I am their best friend.

My 29-year-old son would do anything for me. I am living the dream. For 22 years, I had young children at home in training. Then I had 14 years of young adults at home learning to serve the Lord themselves, which I think it was Kirk that said last night, the first 22, easy peasy. They're little kids.

You're cleaning peanut-burn jelly off the walls. Class 14, and they want to have talks at midnight and I'm already asleep and they come tromping up to my room and flop across the bottom of the bed to talk something over with Scott and me. Okay, David did that not too long after he was married. We heard the door open. It's got to run bad already.

We heard the door open and you can tell his boots. It's David. Scott says, turn off the light quick. Maybe he'll think we're asleep. It didn't matter.

Up the stairs he comes, flops across the bottom of the bed because he had something I want to talk about. My response is, you have your own home right now. But I wouldn't trade that for all the tea in China. They're all married now. They're having kids of their own and we are empty nesters.

23 grand, that's right. And our children are walking in the truth. And we, Scott and I, are the beneficiaries. I'm only 60. We've been empty nesters, just closing married all over a year.

I have More years on this end of child raising Than I had on that end of child raising. It was time well spent those first years We get all the rest of these years to enjoy the fruit and it's totally worth it. I'd do it again. However, I know that there may be those of you here who do have a hard story and maybe not a perfect upbringing and not a perfect marriage. But there's always Jesus.

Following him and obeying him will always bring life. I have a friend whose father was a drunk and lived most of his life in the gutters of L.A. She told me that she had one happy day in her childhood. When she was 12, her family went to a tent revival meeting, and her father got saved. But it lasted one day and then it was back to the gutter.

When he would get really, really sick, he would come home and his wife, her mom, would nurse him back to health and he would go back to the gutter. My friend and her brother were so embarrassed. This is, she's a generation older than me, so this is back in the 50s. Everybody knew whose dad was in the gutter, a wino. They would beg for her to divorce him and she would tell them that she'd made a promise before the Lord.

Both she and her brother are so thankful now for the example of what is a Christian woman and what a Christian home looks like. And they blessed their mother for her faithfulness. Years later, her father died in the gutter. But This Christian woman's family is serving the Lord. And so are her children and her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren.

This mama lived Christ to her children and made him lovely. All she had was Christ. And all you need is Christ, because He is what makes a home happy and a woman happy. So be a happy wife and mama and friend and church member and coworker, college student. Have pleasantness on your face for your family.

Have a sweet tone of voice. Make a home where your husband and children and friends and children's friends and grandchildren make it a place they want to be. Smile at your children and say please and thank you. Speak kindly and lovingly and correct with gentleness. Submit with gracefulness.

You want to be that woman whose husband and children rise up to bless her. Dwell and abide joyfully in your homes. Christians who believe in the sovereignty of God should be the happiest people. So be filled with the Holy Spirit, with all joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self-control. And walk worthy of the calling in which you were called, with all lowliness and gentleness, with longsuffering, bearing with one another in love, endeavoring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

Delight yourself in the Lord. He will give you the desires of your heart. Understand what the will of the Lord is. Obey him and be filled with the Holy Spirit. Walk as wise, happy Christian women.

Letting your speech be seasoned with salt. Find every way you can to create and be a joy-filled, happy Christian woman. Let's pray. Father, we know what a beautiful picture you've drawn for us in Scripture, and it's so clear. And it's so clear when our emotions aren't clouding our minds and our hearts.

And so we pray. We pray for your Holy Spirit to be evident in the moment when we are tested. That you would help us to choose to be obedient to you and to be filled with the Holy Spirit. And we need you to do that Lord. We need you to carry us like you carried your son.

That's what I pray for these Christian women in a pagan land, that they would be looked at and be thought of as a happy woman, that their children would rise up, Their husband would be so thankful for them and they would be blessed. Father, we're so grateful for your word and for the way it brings life. I pray for their strength, pray for them to be a happy Christian woman in their homes. Amen.