This post may contain affiliate links which means I may be paid for products you purchase through my links. See my full disclosure for more.

How can we find joy? Whether you are teaching about joy (see the youth Come Follow Me lesson, “How Can I Find Joy in Following the Savior?”) at church, or you want to have a discussion with your family, here are a few ways that you can get the conversation started. True joy only comes through following Jesus Christ. Everything else is basically a knockoff of that. Watch the video or read more below.

Save it for later, pin it now

Listen Instead

This Or That

Start off by hosting a short This or That quiz. Quickly sketch a few pictures beforehand in your notebook or get real fancy by making a moving scroll box. For example, This or That question number one could be: Which is better- a boat or a plane? For boat, write down A for plane, write down B. Keep it super simple and short- no more than five questions. Invite everyone to tally up their answers at the end of the quiz and reveal the results. For those that scored five A's, you receive the most joy. Those of you with no A’s receive no joy. Obviously, that's an exaggeration, but it's supposed to be! It's a silly exaggeration to make the point. This is not where true joy comes from, and it's not like you can take some quiz and get a bunch of joy all of a sudden. Discuss how claiming joy really works, read those scriptures, how we are here to have joy (2 Nephi 2:25), and how that is found.

Doing this type of activity increases participation because people are doing a lot of answering really quickly with easy questions that really don't have any consequence. It's a fast way to introduce the topic.

Where’s your focus?

Where our focus is makes all the difference. President Russell M. Nelson stated, “The joy we feel has little to do with the circumstances of our lives and everything to do with the focus of our lives.” To help demonstrate this, grab some binoculars. You will use them two ways: one the correct way and one backward. This makes the view closer or further away. Try this object lesson with a collage of pictures or you can do this with words. You are basically going to do something as shown in the photo below with the words, “Joy" and “Jesus” being small and surrounded by a whole lot of other things. Next, invite somebody to come up and look through the binoculars the wrong way then tell you what they see. Then, ask someone to come up and look through them the correct way and find something to focus on. What do they see? If they choose not to focus on the words “Jesus” and “Joy” move them over to those words then ask again for emphasis.

The point is when we focus just on everything else, that is what our life is about. When we focus on Jesus we receive the joy and other blessings from doing that. the joy that. When we focus on all the other stuff, it's hard to claim joy. There are some great quotes from President Nelson you can use here.

“Joy is powerful and focusing on joy brings God's power into our lives.”

Then discuss that quote. How have people seen that to be true? How have you seen more of God's blessings and power as you focus on Christ? Talking about the joy that comes because of repentance and God’s power there is a great example. Here's another one from President Nelson:

When the focus of our lives is on Jesus Christ and his gospel, we can feel joy regardless of what is happening or not happening in our lives”

Two great quotes, talking about the importance of focusing and setting our minds to those things that are joyful. If you've been around somebody who's constantly complaining versus somebody who's constantly cheerful there is a dramatic difference in just that alone.

Binoculars to focus on a paper with lots of words

Turn it into an Acronym

Invite your class or family to turn the word “joy” into an acronym. What could joy stand for? Something easy to help you remember where true joy comes from. You will want to look up some O and Y words beforehand, so you can throw some out there to get people going. What I ended up coming up with for myself is “Jesus opens you to more.” That's what happens, right? When we turn to Jesus Christ, there's so much more available. Often we hear people talking about joy, but they don't quite grasp what joy is because they've never felt it. They're constantly searching for that. When we turn to Jesus Christ, he opens this whole new world that we couldn't even fathom beforehand. It opens us to more. Jesus opens you to more. J-O-Y.

Print the JOY acronym I used in poster format at the bottom of this post. You can post it on the board as inspiration.

The Paradox

Yes, we are absolutely going to experience all the emotions. Invite your class to shout out emotions that they feel on a normal day, week, whatever. What did they feel this week? Everything from embarrassment to anger, to sadness, to frustration, confusion, all of them. Have them shout all of the emotions then discuss the following question: “Can you be sad or can you be feeling pain and still be joyful? Can you still have joy while experiencing sorrow?” Now here's another quote from President Nelson that is basically the answer. It’s a great way to wrap up the discussion.

We can feel joy even while having a bad day, a bad week or even a bad year.”

President Nelson goes on to give some examples. For instance, the prophet Lehi in the Book of Mormon. He went through all kinds of things. But he's the one that shared with us that scripture and 2 Nephi about how we are here to have joy. We can find that joy no matter what. This opens up a great opportunity to share stories from your life and for other people to share theirs. Try asking somebody to come prepared with a story beforehand about how they have still found joy, even though their lives aren't perfect. For me, it's really easy to go back to my cancer. There were a whole lot of hard times, and lots of tears but I still was able to claim joy. As long as we understand that joy comes from a relationship with our Savior, repenting daily, keeping our covenants, service, and understanding our divine identity; you can have joy all the time.

One of the phrases that President Nelson uses is that we can “claim joy” when we understand where joy comes from. Claim it. How do we claim it and what prevents us from doing so? What steals or interrupts our joy? How can we block those types of influences out of our lives so that we can have a very joyful life despite what's going on around us?

Those are just a few ways that you can get the discussion going with your family or your church class. Remember the most important thing when you're teaching or sharing a principle of the gospel is to know the truthfulness of it for yourself. If you are someone that is struggling to find joy, make sure you are turning toward the Savior and asking for direction on finding that joy, and being able to feel it. Then you can teach this with power because you have a testimony of it.