We all want to cultivate a life that is useful and brings joy into living. The Bible inspires us to learn of the love of God, the source of happiness. And God has given us all good things to enjoy. The following piece is a great example of how to live a truly joyous life within. The principles are especially important for those who've suffered trauma and addiction, which robs us of these very principles. It stifles our ability to find delight and joy, and delight is something each of us needs. 

  "Joy and delight are the things that brims the channel of life, stimulates, freshens, enlivens, tantalizes and attracts. It must at all costs be beautiful. It must embrace that part of religion that glows for us, the thing which we find beautiful in other souls, the art, the poetry, the tradition, the love of nature, the craft, the interests we hanker after. 
It is by meeting the larger spirit that lies behind life, recognizing the impulse which meets us in a thousand forms, which forces us not to be content with narrow and petty things, but emerges as the energy, whatever it is, that pushes through the crust of life, as the flower pushes through the mould. 

  Now many of us have a dark suspicion of all that is joyful, inherited perhaps from or Puritan ancestry, a fear of yielding ourselves to its influence, a terror of being grimly repaid for indulgence, an old superstitions dread of somehow incurring the wrath of God, if we aim at happiness at all. 

 We must aim then at fulness of life; not at husbanding our resources with meagre economy, but at spending generously and fearlessly, grasping experience firmly, nurturing zest and hope. The frame of mind we must beware of, which is but a stingy vanity, is that which makes us say, "I am sure I should not like that person, that book, that place!" It is that closing-in of our own possibilities that we must avoid." Arthur Benson. 

  Now these pursuits have nothing to do with money or spending, or luxury; but rather, this is all about attitudes and our souls inner pursuits that are all spiritual, and all about embracing the good in the world which Christ has provided for us to brace and strengthen us in our battle against evil.