From the Joyful Journey book:
Immanuel means that God is always with us and desires to interact with us in all situations.
However, we often forget this truth or we are not really aware of it. Our awareness is often dimmed when we experience life's difficulties and become overwhelmed in spite of the reality of His presence and His desire to connect with us….

When we are awash in emotions or pain, we naturally seek someone emotionally stronger to help us. While this would seem to be a good time to seek God, perceiving His presence can be very difficult when we are flooded with painful emotions. Interacting with God is only possible when we perceive His presence. Reviving our desire for relationship through practicing gratitude allows for easier and pleasant connections with God that motivate us to practice more often.
~ page 16, Joyful Journey, Wilder, Kang, Loppnow, Loppnow

Session A: We continue revisiting joyful memories recorded in your Golden Moments. Look for God’s presence. Invite Him to share His thoughts about that joy.

The Joyful Journey book teaches about interactive gratitude and thought rhyming. For today’s Session B focus, you are dwelling with joy on the second of five thoughts from God, in this case, each instance is drawn from a bible verse. It may be adapted into language of God speaking to you. It will lay groundwork for later use of these insights to help us synchronize with God.

God hears us in our rejoicing moments and the grievous ones. Not only that; He wants to share the moments with us, to help us cope. 

He also wants us to do the same with others.

From a neuroscience perspective joy is always relationship that is because it is largely created by a right hemisphere to right hemisphere connection in the brain Min my right brain. Interacts with your right brain and we are happy to see each other. Usually through eye contact. The result is joy.
~ page 35, The 4 Habits, Warner, Coursey

Session C: Be prepared to write a sentence or two from here on out. You will be practicing interactive gratitude. We’re training our brains to find gratitude which in turn brings out joy. We are also training our minds to listen for God speaking to us.

Today we are "Giving thanks in all circumstances,” and letting God respond.

iSight: Having the recognition that God is present, is truly good and perseveres in doing good for us.

From the Joyful Journey book:
1 Thessalonians 5:18 says, "Give thanks in all circumstances for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." All means all. In every circumstance we are told to give thanks. When we give thanks, gratitude becomes the vehicle through which we become aware of the presence of Immanuel, the God who is always with us. Gratitude in the middle of difficulties allows us to have iSight. We encourage those who desire to strengthen their iSight to start by practicing gratitude during times of joy rather than distress. Over time we can learn to enter into gratitude in times of distress, but it is easier to learn during times of joy. 15-17 JJ Wilder, Kang, Loppnow, Loppnow

Gratitude opens us up to the presence of God. Gratitude is a password into our awareness of the presence of God. We specifically chose gratitude because it is the easiest and fastest path to connection and because throughout scripture, God in His wisdom has always encouraged us to give thanks.

By the way, the spiritual discipline of Examen invites the Holy Spirit to lead our walk back through the day looking for, among other things, times for gratitude. After your alarm sounds, close session C with a brief worship of God based in joy. Both prayer and verse are provided.