Last weekend, Jenn and I accompanied some of our college students and some other leaders to Passion Conference in Houston.This is the third straight year we have been able to take a group from our church to Passion and as usual, AMAZING! While there, you're exposed to amazing music and amazing speakers, leading you to an awesome encounter with God. After nearly every session we attended, I hit up iTunes to download a new song I heard.
If you know much about my taste in music, it is not often that I buy music without first listening to and analyzing it. We had to leave the conference early, so we missed Sunday's afternoon and evening session and Monday morning.
When we got home, we watched the Sunday evening session, and I turned it off, thinking that was it. Until our Bible study on Tuesday, I didn't realize I missed one of my new favorite bands, Rend Collective.
All that to say, I downloaded a couple of Rend Collective's new songs from their new album, without my usual investigation.
Here's where I get to my point. One of their new songs, Joy of the Lord, I chose as my new alarm as I began my week.
The song echoes Nehemiah 8:10, "the joy of the Lord is your strength." The song talks about praising God through the best of times and the worst of times. No matter what happens, we are called to rejoice in the Lord.
Let's analyze joy.
A lot of people equate joy with happiness. The thing is joy is eternal, happiness is temporary. Happiness is a feeing, it doesn't last, it's conditional. There are days, where I wake up and I'm happy. Then, there are days when I wake up and I'm not. It comes and goes. However, there aren't any days where my joy is gone! There's one thing I know for sure. The God that I serve holds me in His hands and has a plan for my life. No matter what I go through, I've got the strength of knowing that God is in control. My joy is eternal!
If you're a child of God, you should constantly have the joy of the Lord in you!
Does that mean that you won't have bad days? Nope! But that means that even when your days are darkest, you've got to realize that God is for you!
“No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
Romans 8:37-39 ESV
Nothing can seperate us! NOTHING!
I don't think there's much more that can be said. But, you know I'm going to try to find it.
Lucifer is the chief attempting thief of our joy. The name attributed to him, Satan, literally means "adversary." The opposition works himself into a frenzy to take our joy. Some times, he works our circumstances into a frenzy to take us into a spiral to steal our joy.
Can he take it from us? No! What God has given us, as Paul said, no one can take away!
That's why I called him the "attempting thief." He can't take it from us, but he won't stop trying. He will make us think he has taken it, by bombarding our minds with all sorts of scenarios and cloud our minds from seeing our joy.
So if you're going through a rough patch, look through the distractions Satan places in your way. Look through those and see the promise of God! It doesn't matter how dark it feels, God's light engulfs the darkness!
If you go through life with no joy, and you know it's because you are not a child of God, I beg you to turn your life to Him. All it takes is to confess that you need Him in your life, to ask Him to forgive you of your sins, and to ask Him to enter your life. After that, it is all about living out a relationship with Him. It won't be just a fire insurance policy, it will be a daily friendship with your Creator!
I implore you to remember this promise...
In the midst of my week of rediscovering God being my strength, my beautiful wife sketched this in her new journaling Bible.
I told you, when God wants you to realize something, He throws it at you all kind of ways.
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