Nehemiah 8:10 reads, “The Joy of the Lord is my strength.”
Have you ever considered those words? The lyrics can’t help but uplift a heart.
How do you define joy? Joy is much more than happiness. It’s a state of being. Happiness usually depends on a person’s circumstances, a momentary thing.
When life runs smoothly and no one near and dear is ill, life is good. When you feel assurance in a good job and surrounded by a loving family, life is rosy. When you have a sense of financial security life can be lived in a bubble of safety.
A person can be considered a Grinch or a Scrooge if he or she isn’t happy during the holidays. But even for one who is full of smiles and feels good, life status can change in the blink of an eye.
Joy, on the other hand, is a deep-seated assurance that the Lord has my life in His hand. Despite what comes my way, God’s got it. And my hope is joy because I know what comes once life on earth is over.
I’ll use a few life chapters of my own as illustrations that what we face is temporary. There wasn’t a lot of money when I grew up. But at age thirteen, I baby-sat and then cleaned the neighbors’ home, thus earning my own money for clothes and makeup.
After high school, I worked and saved for a year. Then I worked the year I attended what was then known as junior college.
I call the years of my young adult life as BC days, meaning before Christ. They included a teen pregnancy, a resulting marriage that only lasted two years, and early in my second marriage, the murder of my father.
A year later, the Lord opened my heart and I chose to give Him my life.
Since that spring of 1976, there have been up and down events in my life, but I haven’t faced them on my own strength. The resulting joy is a deep-down life of hope, hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t have faith in the Baby born in Bethlehem.
“For God so loved the world that Hew gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
God gives a life of joy. He infuses strength to face anything life presents. That joy and resulting strength is my wish for you this December and into the coming year.
May the joy of the Lord be your strength.
How do you define joy? Joy is much more than happiness. It’s a state of being. Happiness usually depends on a person’s circumstances, a momentary thing.
When life runs smoothly and no one near and dear is ill, life is good. When you feel assurance in a good job and surrounded by a loving family, life is rosy. When you have a sense of financial security life can be lived in a bubble of safety.
A person can be considered a Grinch or a Scrooge if he or she isn’t happy during the holidays. But even for one who is full of smiles and feels good, life status can change in the blink of an eye.
Joy, on the other hand, is a deep-seated assurance that the Lord has my life in His hand. Despite what comes my way, God’s got it. And my hope is joy because I know what comes once life on earth is over.
I’ll use a few life chapters of my own as illustrations that what we face is temporary. There wasn’t a lot of money when I grew up. But at age thirteen, I baby-sat and then cleaned the neighbors’ home, thus earning my own money for clothes and makeup.
After high school, I worked and saved for a year. Then I worked the year I attended what was then known as junior college.
I call the years of my young adult life as BC days, meaning before Christ. They included a teen pregnancy, a resulting marriage that only lasted two years, and early in my second marriage, the murder of my father.
A year later, the Lord opened my heart and I chose to give Him my life.
Since that spring of 1976, there have been up and down events in my life, but I haven’t faced them on my own strength. The resulting joy is a deep-down life of hope, hard to explain to anyone who doesn’t have faith in the Baby born in Bethlehem.
“For God so loved the world that Hew gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).
God gives a life of joy. He infuses strength to face anything life presents. That joy and resulting strength is my wish for you this December and into the coming year.
May the joy of the Lord be your strength.
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