JOY

Hey, everyone!

This week's Scripture Challenge features the word JOY and I can't count how often I have heard this word used in my lifetime! I can distinctly recall my grandmother telling me to count it all joy when bad things happened to me! Sometimes things seemed unfair and when I wanted justice my grandmother reminded me that the scriptures say we are to count it all joy! I sure didn't feel like being joyful when hard times came but through the years I learned what it meant to be joyful in those situations. Yes, it is hard! It is very hard! It hurts when someone does you wrong or you get treated a certain way because of what you look like or where you come from but God wants us to be joyful about it! Why? We should be happy that we are even worthy to go through these hard times because Jesus Christ went through far more than we can imagine and as long as we can keep our integrity and remain faithful then God will see us through! Our reward is waiting for us on the other side! I know that it's hard to endure some things here on earth but when we get to heaven we will say it was all worth it for what we get there!!

Psalm 30:5 and Nehemiah 8:10 sort of have the same effect on me...they comfort and bless me when I am hurting from the loss of friendship, the loss of a loved one or just in a sorrowful state. They both speak life and hope!! In Psalm we see that sometimes we do have sleepless nights where we cry and pray and seek God, maybe not even resting for a minute but then joy comes in the morning. I have never seen it to fail. God is faithful! In Nehemiah the people were weeping as they heard the law being read to them by Ezra but Nehemiah said for them not to weep and grieve but that it's a holy and sacred day. He also told them the joy of the LORD is their strength. This is something else my grandmother would say. THE JOY OF THE LORD IS MY STRENGTH. As a good soldier of the LORD, faithful until the end, she knew what it was to have adversity but more importantly she knew how to make it through. The LORD gives us a special joy that no one can even explain. You see this in the new testament when Paul and Silas are in the jail after being beaten and arrested for preaching about Jesus. When midnight came what did they do? They started singing and praising God. That is the joy of the LORD and it became their strength!

As a child I always wondered how I could keep from breaking the 10 commandments. They didn't seem too hard but sometimes there were circumstances which really made me question what I should do. If someone was mean to me, I wanted to treat them the same way they were treating me but Jesus said we would be known as belonging to Him if we responded in love instead. That is hard to do sometimes! However, Jesus said in John 15:10 if we keep His commandments then we will stay in His love. What a concept that we could actually live in a state of perpetual love, unconditional love just by doing what Jesus told us to do! Why did He tell us that? He said so that HIS joy might remain in us and that it might be full! He said it again in John 16:24...that we will receive the things we ask of Him so our joy may be full.

Have you ever noticed that things just work better when they are full? If my car is low on gas it isn't going to be long before it will stop working but if I have a full tank of gas I can go further distances and use it more than if I am low. When we get hungry and our blood sugar gets low we don't act quite right. We get a little confused, some even pass out but if we eat some carbohydrates with protein we will see a big change and we will feel a lot better! Have you ever been talking on your cell phone and the battery starts to get low? You know what happens! You can't talk as long as if your battery is fully charged! We are like that, too, spiritually! If we do not stay in the Word and keep the prayer line going, we will soon not be as effective as men and women of God. We don't operate in the fruits of the Spirit or have the renewed mind we are told to have if we stray away from our relationship with our Savior. Jesus wants us to have joy but he wants our joy to be FULL!

I pray that He fills your joy jar to the fullest today! May God bless and keep you always in all ways! I'll see you back here tomorrow when I do a blog hop with a few Angel friends as we celebrate Mother's Day! Don't forget to stop by Christina's blog to see her page and get some encouragement from her, too!

Hugs,