Here is something awesome you should know about our squad: We are a pretty joyful squad. Di shared with us by the campfire that while our squad was being prayed over before training camp by the leaders, coaches, etc it was declared that we would be a squad of joy. When I heard this I was a little blown away.
Almost a year and a half ago I got out of a very destructive relationship, one that had sucked me emotionally and spiritually dry. Almost immediately after I had cut my ties with that person I was flooded with hope for the future, and I felt this immeasurable sense of joy, a deep, rejuvenating, healing joy that God placed in my heart. As the days went by I would wake up with the word joy on my lips, I would literally wake up some mornings and just say “Joy, joy, joy” over and over again.
Backtrack to the summer of 2005. I painted a picture of a woman in water, and she looked completely content and safe, she looked like the epitome of joy. I looked at that picture for years and years, feeling like the woman in that painting had something I didn’t, something that I wanted. After the breakup of my relationship last year, I looked at that painting with new eyes, it was like my heart and spirit finally understood what my hands and eyes had produced years before. For a months I looked at that painting as a reminder of the joy that God had infused back into my life, and I wanted to make it a part of me forever, so that I could look to it as a reminder of where true joy comes from, to remind me to be forever thankful for such joy. So a couple months ago I got that painting tattooed on my back – it’s my joy tattoo.
I’ve felt like the word “joy” has been my word, the word and sense that God gave me last year. The Tuesday we set out for our night together where Di told us that we had been spoken over as “The Joy Squad”, we had been worshipping in together in the Pavillion in the morning. I went to sit on the benches outside the main worship space, just to have some private time with God to talk and think. I was sitting there, barefoot with my eyes closed, reaching up to my heavenly Father and I heard him say to me, “Sarah, a year and a half ago I put the joy in your heart, but now I am writing it all over you.” The atmosphere at the pavilion that morning, at least for me, was so thick with God’s love and joy it was like I was breathing it in.
So that night, when Di told us that our squad was the Joy Squad I was amazed. I’ve known in my heart what true Joy is, and now as a squad we get to share it with the world.
Romans 5:1-2 NLT “Therefore, since we have been made right in God’s sight by faith, we have peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us. Because of our faith, Christ has brought us into this place of underserved privilege where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God’s glory.”
