Yesterday was hard. That sounds blunt but there is simply no other way to describe it. Honestly, it sucked. The Lord was taking me and my squad through some hard things that we really needed to work through but it still hit us hard.
In morning devo, we all asked God to reveal to us the roots behind the lies we believe. This was nothing new- I’d worked through lies from the enemy before but this was different. To use World Race jargon, I got wrecked. I realized that I had spent my entire life, all 22+ years, believing that I unworthy of being loved. This lie was so engrained in my mind that it dictated everything I did. Everything fell in line- all my insecurities, my actions, my relationships, EVERYTHING negative I believed about myself stemmed from this one lie.
Fast forward two hours and we had our team debrief. I felt like I got hit by a train. Most of my team was in tears at some point as we walked through difficult stuff. I left that meeting knowing it was good and needed but just feeling heavy.
The rest of the day I kept wrestling that feeling of heaviness and asking God to take it from me. Needless to say I wasn’t in the best mood to move into our worship session that night but I had told my squad we would start with a time to share praises. Even though it was a hard day, I was blown away with all the praises our squad had to share. We spent 20 minutes just praising God for blessings that have happened in our lives, in the lives of our friends both here and at home, in our families, and within our leadership team.
Even on the hardest day when we didn’t want to, we praised God. We took a second to step back, examine our lives and recognize His goodness.
1 Thessalonians 5:16 tells us simply to “rejoice always.”
ALWAYS. It doesn’t say to rejoice when things are going well. It doesn’t say to rejoice when you want something from God or need help. It doesn’t say rejoice when you want to rejoice or when you feel like rejoicing. It says “rejoice ALWAYS.”
God is good on our best days and on our not-so-great days. When we remind ourselves of His goodness and rejoice even at our worst, we are truly walking with God. It isn’t always easy- the last thing I want to do is get on my knees and rejoice when I feel like God isn’t listening to me or paying attention to me. But every time I do, He shows me something better than I could have imagined. He loves us dearly and when we have to walk through hard times, He is right beside us encouraging us- we just have to look up and rejoice.
