Get
Your Joy Back!
TODAY’S
SCRIPTURE
Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all
circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus
1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, NIV.
TODAY’S
WORD
Did you know that it is God’s will for you to be joyful
always? God wants you to be happy and carefree. He wants you to love your life
no matter what your circumstances look like. In fact, when you have joy in the
midst of difficult circumstances, it’s the evidence that you have faith and
trust that God is going to bring you through.
God’s supernatural joy is strength. When you have His
joy, you can stand strong no matter what’s going on around you. You might say,
“Joel, I’m just not a real jovial person. I’m more serious. I never laugh
much.” I realize God made us all differently, but you can train yourself to
laugh more. I read where the average child laughs over 200 times a day, but the
average adult only laughs 4 times a day. What’s happened? We’ve allowed the
pressures of life, stress and more responsibilities to, little by little, steal
our joy.
Make the decision today to get your joy back. Decide that
you are going to look beyond your problems and look to God to see you through.
Ask Him every day to fill you with His supernatural peace and joy so that you
can live in His strength and victory all the days of your life!
PRAYER
FOR TODAY
Heavenly Father, I humbly receive Your Word today. I
choose to open my heart to You and invite You to fill me with Your joy and
strength. Thank You for showing me Your goodness and empowering me with Your
grace. I bless You today and always in Jesus’ Name. Amen.
***
3 hours ago
“When Joseph heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth.” (Matthew 2:22-23a NIV)
A lot of people think living an obedient life of faith means putting your mind in neutral and letting God direct you wherever he wants, as if you are a robot. That’s not it at all.
The Bible says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind” (Luke 10:27a NIV). You’ve got to engage your brain with God and live out the kind of life he has for you to live.
This is what Joseph did when he obeyed God’s command to move back to Israel. Joseph heard that Herod’s son was reigning in Judea, so he was afraid to go there. “Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth” (Matthew 2:23 NIV).
Nazareth is where the Bible prophesied that Jesus was going to live, so Joseph was exactly in the center of God’s will. And he got there by looking at the situation — the politics, Herod’s son as ruler — and he realized it wasn’t a safe place to be and engaged his mind with God to make the right decision.
So where should we get God’s command for our lives? We may not have angels showing up to guide us, but we do have hundreds and hundreds of pages of God’s Word. To live a life of obedience, we need to get to know what God has said to us.
Jesus talked about this in Matthew 7:24: “So then, anyone who hears these words of mine and obeys them is like a wise man who built his house on rock” (TEV).
We have God’s Word to help us live out a relationship with him. It’s not a dry book of directions. It is God’s love letter to us, a Father’s letter of instruction to show us how to live the kind of life he wants to give us.
Talk About It
- How often do you read God’s Word and then obey it without question?
- As you read God’s Word today, I encourage you to pray Psalm 119:34: “Give me insight so I can do what you tell me — my whole life one long, obedient response” (MSG).
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