the joy
of the
LORD
is my
STRENGTH
nehemiah 8:10
"Choose joy." That's a popular phrase I've been hearing lately. But every time I see it, I dismiss it. "Choose joy? I already have joy," I scoff. (#pridealert!) Let me tell you - I was wrong.
A friend recently described me as being a person full of joy. I had to think about that for a minute. "Did she say joy? I don't feel very joyful. Has anybody been paying attention to me lately?" Over the past few weeks, the last word I would've thought to use to describe myself would be "joy". I'd have sooner told you I felt overwhelmed or even defeated. But joy is so much more than an emotion. It's more than a fleeting feeling, here one minute and gone the next. Joy really is a choice, and more than that, it's a gift. As we see in Galatians 5:22-23, joy is the second of the listed fruits of the Spirit. This means that joy comes from God, and He calls us to experience it through Him.
When my friend told me that she saw me as someone gifted with joy, I realized that I'd been denying myself the ability to experience joy (note: to experience = active, to feel = passive) and because I was doing that, I was denying a key part of my character. And because Satan is really good at inception (witty credit goes to Brittany), I found myself in the middle of his lies. I thought that because I was wrestling with different issues, I wasn't supposed to experience joy. I thought that struggles went hand in hand with wallowing in self-pity. But all of these lies acted like molasses to my feet and weren't just preventing me from living in my full character but was closing me off from receiving God's transformative work in me.
We are never pushed into a corner in our struggles. We can always choose joy. For me, true strength is manifested in experiencing joy in the midst of adversity. We don't need to have joy in our circumstances, we need to have joy in the fact that we serve the one who is above our circumstances. It is the joy of the LORD that is our strength. No joy that I can conjure up for myself will be able to sustain me. When the winds are raging around us, and the waters are rising up above our head, it takes a ridiculous amount of strength to be able to stand firm in the joy we find in the victory we have through Jesus Christ.
He will
empower you
with
[inner strength]
through his
Spirit.
ephesians 3:16
4 comments:
1. THAT BIBLE VERSE IS SO AWESOME. gonna journal thattt
2. i LURVE what you are saying. Joy from the Lord is a completely different feeling from "being joyful because you saw a tree" (which can sometimes be true)
3. Satan..he's got nothin on the Lord !!!!!!
4. LET"S CHOOSE JOY TOGETHER. ITS A JOURNEY. I LOVE IT.
5. i love you
6. true strength. #BOOM
I finally got around to reading this, and you're so right!!!!! Joy can be such a hard thing to find sometimes, but most often it's because we're looking for it in the wrong places - True and lasting joy only ever comes from the Lord!
Thanks for sharing, friend! love you.
{True strength is manifested in experiencing joy in the midst of adversity.} What a beautiful image, Natacha!
And as a sidenote: a) you are bigger than these struggles and b) more importantly, so is God. c) I love you.
Totally relevant to my life, Tach. Thanks for sharing :)
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