AN OUTWARD EXPRESSION OF AN INWARD EXPERIENCE
David Ring was born with cerebral palsy. He had complications at birth and he was technically dead for 18 minutes after delivery. No oxygen reached his brain and a portion was permanently damaged.
His family’s story was catastrophic – his father had a mangled arm, two of his siblings died at infants, three of them suffering from haemophilia (a disorder that impair the body's ability to control blood clotting, which is used to stop bleeding), living in perpetual poverty, and the parents eventually separated because of the stresses of life, and his father died of liver cancer when David was 11 years old.
David said in his book, Just As I Am (p. 23): "Happiness is determined by circumstances, but joy depends on our relationship with the Lord Jesus. Your happiness can be taken away because of circumstances, but nobody can remove your joy.
"You say, 'Dave, I’m saved, but I don’t think I have joy.' Do you know why? It is because circumstances are robbing you of the joy that is in you. Joy is still inside you, but the problem is that someone or something is stifling your joy. Joy should be an outward expression of an inward experience."