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Hen I think about joy the
first thing that comes to my mind is a child. The joy a child has is so simple
and uncomplicated. They are joyful at the sound of their mother’s voice. Or
when they color a picture and get it hung on the refrigerator. Pure and simple
joy. The innocence of children makes me envious.
Now as I have gotten
older, and the reality of life seems to hit harder than it did when I was a
child, I find joy to be something that I have to really work hard at to find.
Not that I’m not happy, because I am. There are plenty of things for me to be
happy about. But, joy? Joy is different. It’s more than just an emotion or a
smile on your face. It’s the state of your heart, and position of your spirit. It’s
like when you hear people finding joy in the most hopeless situations. They are
not happy, but they find joy in their soul and heart. It’s almost as if joy and
hope go hand and hand. We have joy in the Lord as well as find hope in the
Lord. I believe that we have joy because
of hope and we have hope because of
joy.
So if joy comes from the
Lord, why does it seem so hard to find sometimes?
Lately I have found myself
asking, “What makes me have joy? Real, true joy?” Is it the sound of the ocean,
or the feeling I get when I know I’m going to see someone that I love? Even as
I am sitting here writing this, I am asking myself these very questions. I
think that my joy comes from knowing, in my spirit, that no matter what happens
and no matter where I end up in life, I will always have hope. Hope in The One
that has created every single thing about me. I know that even in the seasons
of feeling lost or spiritually dry, there is always Someone tugging at
me-watching and waiting for me to run into His arms again. Never has He left
me-I am the one that seems to leave Him. There have been, and will continue to
be, those seasons in life where I feel completely uncertain of what comes next.
But, I can still find joy in knowing that He knows.
Joy is a choice that I
have to make every day. Am I going to
have joy today in every circumstance? That doesn’t mean that I have to feel happy or have a smile on my face.
It simply means that my spirit is positioned to know and accept that God is in
control. It comes with the discipline of being conscious of what is happening
inside of my heart. What is God trying to
teach me today?
The joy of the LORD is my
strength. This encompasses every single thing in our lives. Joy is on a much
larger scale than we can outwardly see, or inwardly feel. It’s beyond our human
nature to define. Real joy can only come from the Lord.
