THE JOY OF THE LORD IS MY STRENGTH

Nehemiah 8:10
"Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength."

Joy is not happiness! Happiness is temporal and is dependent on your circumstances and the comfort of your flesh, joy is the opposite! Joy like faith is a spiritual force which needs to be actively stirred up. As Christians the Bible instructs us to walk by faith and not by sight so even if your world appears to be crumbling down we are told not to focus on our circumstances, but on God’s saving power to deliver us from our circumstances. We would do well to remember that the aim of the enemy is to shift our focus from dependence on God onto our current situation. When we do this we are not walking by faith – instead we are walking by sight which essentially causes us to walk in fear.

The ‘joy of the Lord’ is a place where we get to where we can stand firm in assurance that for God there is no situation too hard for Him to deliver you and I from (Jer 32:17) and that only He has the ability to do it for as (Psalm 20:7). When we get to this place we experience a supernatural peace which stirs up ‘joy’ within our heart. This joy kicks ‘fear and worry’ out of our heart and joy takes residence within our spirit and flows like blood through our spirit and causes our spirit to experience supernatural strength. God tells us that we must ‘enter His rest’ (Heb 4:10-11) and to cease from trying to do God’s work for Him and to let Him take full control of our lives. We are to cast ALL not some of our burdens upon Him so that He can exercise His full power in our lives! Some of us are too busy trying to do God’s work that we have never entered into ‘His Rest’ and are constantly frustrated and tired with life – we are all guilty of this!

However with ‘the joy of the Lord’ it doesn’t matter the circumstances, you and I can feel rest assured that a brighter day is to come. The knowledge and experience of this can be likened to a person who walks alone down the high street with a big smile on their face. You may think that they are deluded or has just remembered a joke; however this person knows the secret. They know how to possess the supernatural strength which is a product of experiencing ‘joy’ even though their circumstances  contradict this. Have you experienced ‘the joy of the Lord’? If you haven’t shift the focus from your current situation, and back onto God. This joy is not exclusive and is available to all who have faith and dare to believe that there is nothing too hard for Jehovah (Jer 32:17) and that when He takes over the battle, the battle is over !

2011 By Rianne Sintim. All rights reserved.