here in Kampot, for our morning ministry we go on home visits to meet with people, get to know them and build relationships. This week visited a woman in the village who has absolutely nothing. no husband. no kids. no family. she is paralyzed from the waste down and blind. She also suffers from severe back pain. After hearing only a small fragment of her story, my heart broke for her. she has had an extremely difficult life, plagued by illness, loneliness, hopelessness, poverty, and death.
telling this woman that the Lord could bring her the joy she longed for made me feel……how could she have joy in this place? what does she have to be joyful about? and why would she listen to me, the privileged American teenager who is just stopping by to see what life on the other side is like? who am I to tell this woman anything about joy in suffering when I don’t even know what suffering is.
we told her about the Lord. we told her that we believe He is the ultimate Healer, not only of bodily pain, but pain in the heart and soul. we prayed that healing over her, physical and emotional. We asked her how she felt afterwards. she said she was full of joy. she said she was full of joy, but she didn’t say that the Lord gave her her sight back. Or that the Lord gave her the ability to walk again. her joy wasn’t an after effect of some thing the Lord gave her. His joy was the THING. the joy was and is Jesus Himself. she had joy because she had Him. The woman who I labeled as having nothing, had everything she could ever possibly need: Jesus.
on the walk home I was hit with complete and utter conviction, and I didn’t know why. i had told a woman she can find joy in Jesus, and she did. what’s the problem? i am a joyful person, I know that. I tell others they can find joy in the Lord, because I have experienced it myself. didnt love the way I was feeling about the whole situation, so i went to the Lord.
Habakkuk 3:17-19:
“Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the Lord;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
God, the Lord, is my strength;
He makes my feet like the deer’s;
He makes me tread on my high places.”
I have heard and read these verses so many times. (in fact my teammate Hannah Grace gave an entire sermon on them last Sunday) and I have always taken them to say something along the lines of, “you can find joy in every difficult circumstance or situation because you can always find something the Lord has given you to be thankful for.” But that is not what Habakkuk is saying. he isn’t saying “when times are tough”, or “when things aren’t perfect”, he is saying when you have absolutely nothing. No food, no money, no land. we can find joy in the Lord because He is the great Provider, of anything and everything we need.
the truth that Jesus revealed to me is that i don’t actually find my joy in the Lord. I have found my joy in the THINGS that the Lord has given me. i find my joy in my family and my friends. i find my joy in the things I am able to do, the experiences I am able to have. if those things were taken from me, my joy would go with them. and that is not how the Lord has called me to live. that is not the type of joy the Lord provides. the joy of the Lord is independent of circumstance and emotion. it doesn’t matter where you are in life, or how you are feeling. the joy of the Lord is constant and eternal. It is not found in any person, place, or thing. it is Jesus Himself. anywhere He is, joy is also, including within the hearts of each of us.
