Strength in Joy

Nehemiah 8:10 states that "the Joy of the Lord is our strength." But what does that really mean? What does it mean to have strength in joy? How can joy be strength? 

Control is something that is difficult to give up. To be able to laugh and enjoy your life means that you are giving up your right to stress and try to control whatever is happening in your life. It means that you are resting. Who knew that resting took strength too? Just like vulnerability takes strength to be able to open up, so it takes strength to rest when you don't have control.

To have joy and rest in the thought that God is ultimately in control is to kick the enemy in the pants. The enemy will do his best to distract us from God, and if he can get us distracted with stress or focusing on anything besides God, then he's winning. Really, he's already lost the war, but he does his best to take down the children of God and keep them from intimacy with the Father.

I'm struggling so hard to write this right now. I'm struggling with things from the past being brought up that hurt more than words can say. I'm questioning my qualifications to even write about joy and how we have strength from it. I feel very weak right now. But I feel like this is a post the enemy doesn't want me to write.

Even as I write about how weak I feel, I already know that this weakness is a lie. And once you know something is a lie, it's hard to keep believing it.

The enemy attacks the area that you're called. If you are called to lead, you might find you struggle with feeling insignificant. If you were called to be a speaker, you might struggle with the belief that your voice doesn't matter. The enemy will lie until he's blue in the face to keep you from realizing your calling and living up to your true potential. But that's all that they are: lies. They are powerless unless you agree with them and believe them. But you have the power to stop believing these lies.

God has called me Joy. I can go more into detail on that later, but it's a fact. So what have I struggled with most of my life? Negative thinking and depression. In fact, it took some convincing from God for me to believe that He could call me Joy. He had to remind me of when I was little and how much I laughed and how people would comment on how they loved my laugh. He told me that how a child is, before they get tainted by the world and the lies of the enemy, is how He created them to be. 

God has called me Joy and is helping me get back to the person that He made me to be. To give Him my troubles and heartbreak takes the strength to let go. To say that I can't control this and I am giving my sense of control to Him and am trusting Him to take care of me and my future takes strength. It doesn't sound like giving something away would take strength, but it does.

For some reason, even in situations we can't control, we feel like if we worry about it enough or feel enough for it, we can somehow control it. While that's not true, it still feels like it. Especially, when it's a situation when you feel someone has wronged you. We feel like we can hold a grudge against someone and really make them pay. But the only one really paying is us. If we feel someone died unjustly, we can be angry and bitter at God, but the only ones suffering is us. Suppose you have a court case coming up and you feel totally out of control, but you feel like you must worry about it, hoping that will make it go better.... but it really doesn't help anything. 

To give it to God takes strength, and to laugh at it shows your strength. To be able to laugh and enjoy life, even in hard and trying times, shows the enemy that you won't be phased by his attempts to pull you down and distract you. Once you can identify his lies in your life, laugh at them! They have no power when you see them for what they are: lies! 

Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him. We are that joy set before Him, and His joy in us is what brought Him through the pain of the cross. Without Him going to the cross, there would always be separation between us and God. But His joy in us took Him through and helped Him endure. His joy was His strength. 

Our joy that we get when we give up our need for control and even our right to be angry, is so much greater than living in worry or anger. I've heard that peace is silent joy, and joy is loud peace. To give up our negative emotions, no matter how hard it is, brings us to a place where we can encounter God's joy and peace. That is your strength. You are strong when you have joy. It shows your strength. It is your strength to get you through the hardest times. 

So God has not just called me Joy... He has also called me Strong! No wonder the enemy didn't want me to know my identity! I now laugh at his plans and his lies. They hold no power over me.

When was the last time you laughed at your problems? 

Trust and EnJoy

When you go skydiving, you  jump out of a plane and fall through the sky. (Hopefully) you don't spend the entire time freaking out about whether or not your parachute will catch you. (Hopefully) you trust the instructors to have given you a well working parachute and will ensure you make it to the ground safely. Really the best thing you can do is trust that your parachute works and not spend your time in the sky worrying about it, to do what your instructors told you and expect what they said to be true. The best you can do is enjoy the view and experience of "flying."

Wouldn't it be awful to spend the whole time regretting stepping out of the plane and stressing and worrying about something you have absolutely no control over? It's sad to think that this is how a great number of us spend our lives.

One thing I've learned since being out here is that we were never meant to carry four things in this life:
1. worry/stress/fear
2. bitterness/unforgiveness
3. regret
4. shame

We were just never designed to carry them! Just like our bodies weren't designed to digest bleach, bad things happen when we try to carry any of these four things. Plus, we miss out on the good things of today because we're living with something we were never meant to live with.

God wants to take all of these from our shoulders and give us His rest. We aren't meant to worry about the future, and worrying about the past is just silly because we can't do anything about it. We were made for the Garden of Eden, where there were no troubles and we lived in perfect connection with God.

But there's more good news! God doesn't only want to give us rest. He wants to give us joy in the rest!

One thing He told me not long after I moved here is to Trust and Enjoy. He wants us to trust Him and enjoy the life that He's given us. As someone who grew up singing the old hymn Trust and Obey, this element of enjoying surprised me. I had to double check in my spirit to see if I'd heard that right. I had. God explained that in trusting Him, we will do what He asks of us. Obedience should be an automatic response to fully trusting Him. But the thing He wants to remind us religious people, who tend to be very solemn about our relationship with God, is that He wants us to enjoy life. He wants us to enjoy this gift that He's given us!

Often times when we think of the word Joy, people try to soften its meaning by saying it's not a feeling or an emotion, just a thing we supposedly "have" with God. But if you look at any definition of joy or how God uses it in the Bible, you can see that it very much is an emotion; and one that we are capable of truly having with God.

Now you'll see that "Joy" is the root word of  "Enjoy." So to enjoy something is to actually have joy in it! So many times we strive after joy and try so hard to have it, but that's never what God intended. Joy is not something to work for. Just as a gift is freely given and someone might tell you to "Enjoy!" God wants us to enjoy (have joy in) this life He's given us. We don't need to strive for it. We just need to sit back and enJoy it.

So I challenge you, if you want to experience God's joy in your life, try sitting back and taking a serious (but not really) look at the good that God has placed in your life for you to enjoy. Accept it! It's a gift! And keep doing it. Keep looking for the good that God wants you to enjoy and actually take the time to praise Him for it and appreciate it.

Be sure to give your stress/worry/fear to God and trust that He's not lying to you when He tells you something. God can't lie because He is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Trust Him to take care of you and give yourself permission to sit back and enjoy the goodness He's given you. Trust that His instructions are good and for your good.

Bad things may happen in life, but that does not take away from the beauty of today. We really only have today. Let yourself see the beauty.Trust and EnJoy!