Developing Your Joy Center

I was recently going through a DVD series training for inner healing and they talked about the Joy Center.  I had never heard of such a thing.  They said there is actually a Joy Center in the brain, this center actually regulates the immune center, the pain center, and the emotional centers.  Unlike the other centers that develop up until a certain age of maturity and then remains stable, the Joy Center has the possibility of growing and developing throughout your life.  Isn't that just like God to place in our brains a part of us that can grow in Joy.  This Joy Center grows and develops as a child looks into the face of their parents and sees the joy the parent has over the child.  Also important connections back to the Joy Center are developed when a parent is displeased with a child actions but then later loves and accepts the child.  The Joy Center is hindered in growing and developing when a parent is upset with a child and never returns back to that place of acceptance and love.  This gives new significance to the verse, "Train up a child in the way he should go, Even when he is old he will not depart from it."  (Proverbs 22:6)  Isn't it just like the grace of God to give us the capacity even when we have been damaged in the Joy Center of our brain, the ability to grow our joy and even restore the connections back to joy.  This is very important when you consider the fact that the Joy Center regulates three other important centers in the brain and also why one Teacher of the Gospel said that Joy in the Lord is a mark of true maturity.  Many have criticized outpourings of the Spirit, like the Toronto Revival, where people were rolling on the floor laughing as not of God.  Interesting that the brain is designed to come alive through Joy and God would encounter His people through fits of laughing, silliness, and hilarity.  Maybe Father was bringing people into joy who had been stuck in seriousness, heaviness, depression, or some kind of bondage yet so many sit back in judgement.  In another book called "The Gift In You" by Dr. Caroline Leaf who is a neuroscientist who has studied the brain for 28 years, she says that it is healthy to laugh many times a day.  This is part of why children are so joyful is because they laugh so often throughout their days.  It is no wander Jesus in Matthew 18 points to becoming like little children to be greatest in the Kingdom of God.

Receiving His Joy over me,
Bret