Ecclesiastes 9:7
Go, eat your bread with joy, and drink your wine with a merry heart, for God has already approved what you do.
Psalm 28:7 “The LORD is my strength and my shield; my heart trusts in him, and he helps me. My heart leaps for joy, and with my song I praise him.
There is a common misconception that Christians are not joyous or happy people. One of the reasons being is that as Christians and people of faith, we go through a lot. We struggle through many things and it makes it seem as if there is nothing else to this life we live than struggle and pain. That is so not true. I think another reason we are commonly perceived as unhappy people is that we, this generation specifically, capitalize on the wrong things. For some reason, we find more ‘joy’ in sorrow and pity parties than we do the moments of pure happiness or joy. We have our moment and we’ll post a nice picture with a sunny day but that’s about it but when we truly find our joy in the Lord, it isn’t so fleeting.
As Christians, we tend to talk more about how life is a struggle than how much joy there is to every day that we are alive. We hear sermons about how to get through the hard times, and telling us that the struggle won’t last always. But what about the moments in our lives when we are on the mountaintop? What about the times when we aren’t struggling or going to pure hell. They are not as far apart as one would think. There are many days when we are okay when things are going well and we have no complaints, but we don’t start talking about how our life is going until it’s going bad. That’s when we start to talk about faith in God. We must learn to praise God in every season of our lives. We must know that God intended for us to live a good life, He took our battles and our struggles. We don’t have to deal with them, we just have to live the life He has chosen for us, and every moment is not bad.
Serving Christ is not about struggling or fighting for our lives all the time. There are moments when we have to relax and enjoy His presence. We can find a moment in each day to smile. There is always something to be happy or joyous about. God has given us joy beyond what we can imagine, why do we suppress it in exchange for this idea that Christian are always unhappy. It’s like a battle of the testimonies, everyone wants their sad story to be heard. No one can truly say that they are doing good anymore, there’s always something wrong, something they’re fighting, fending off the enemy and His army. Sometimes the testimony is in professing how good God has been or basking in the joy He has given us.
We find our joy in the Lord so that no matter where we are in life or what we are going through we will have peace through Jesus Christ. We may struggle but we do not have to walk around defeated. We may have bad days but those bad days do not dictate our entire lives. No one and nothing can take our joy away from us, one of the only ways to lose it is to give it away.
We are children of God, born again through the life death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We should be some of the joyous and happiest people on the planet.
Response/Prayer Time
Take the time to think about what we talked about today and respond. Then have a conversation with God, ask Him to give you joy, to restore your joy if you've lost it.
I love you and I hope you have an amazing day or evening. Be sure to come back tomorrow for Day 145!
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