Words Of Encouragement To Start The Day (Friday 10/15/2010)

Getting My Joy Back…

Psalm 51:6-15 (Amplified Bible)

⁶Behold, You desire truth in the inner being; make me therefore to know wisdom in my inmost heart. ⁷Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean [ceremonially]; wash me, and I shall [in reality] be whiter than snow. ⁸Make me to hear joy and gladness and be satisfied; let the bones which You have broken rejoice. ⁹Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my guilt and iniquities. ¹⁰Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right, persevering, and steadfast spirit within me. ¹¹Cast me not away from Your presence and take not Your Holy Spirit from me. ¹²Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and uphold me with a willing spirit. ¹³Then will I teach transgressors Your ways, and sinners shall be converted and return to You. ¹⁴Deliver me from bloodguiltiness and death, O God, the God of my salvation, and my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness (Your rightness and Your justice).

There are times in our walk, where our joy in serving God seems to have escaped us. It seems that we are miserable, dissatisfied and we intentionally or unintentionally want to make everyone around us miserable too. There is an unrest in us that comes from being out of place or out of step with God. We are tortured because we have allowed a place for sin, lies, deceit and iniquity to take a place where peace, truth, clarity and obedience should reside. We have entered a place where we have allowed our joy to be taken, misaligned or buried because of our lack of presence where God abides or our lack of God where we abide. Our covenant has been compromised, and our spirit is grieved and we sometimes do not even realize why.

I have found times in my life when nothing has made me happy, and even to see others happy mad me sad and miserable. I doubted that anyone really could have real happiness. It was in these times that I realized that I usually was out of the arc of safety. That I had allowed sin to enter in and the truth of what I really needed was far from my ability to see, that I was out of alignment with God and out the presence of God. It is when we are trying to live our way and have God to that joy will never be present. We are like torn between two lovers, the love of flesh and what should be our love for God. When we are in this state, it is seldom that we realize that we need to repent and turn back to God, because we do not think that we have left Him, nor do we think we have a problem. We have learned to rationalize our behaviors and make excuses, for our discontent. Everyone is to blame but us, and what we have allowed our walk with God to become. We refuse to see that our focus has changed from God to other things, people and priorities to include ourselves and what we perceive as what we need to be happy.

We forget that it is the “JOY OF THE LORD,” that is our strength. We forget that it is in “HIS PRESENCE” is fullness of joy. We forget that truth inside of us will restore the joy and the peace that we need. We forget that when we repent and turn away from sin, and iniquity that we will gain peace, that will give us contentment and joy. We forget that gladness will replace the sorrow of sin. We foret that God will give us beauty for our ashes, and gladness for our mourning. When we turn back to God, we gain our covering back, and our guide in the form of the Holy Spirit who will be there to uphold, direct, and restore unto us things that have been missing. When we come back into right standing with God he purifies us and we are cleansed of the filth and dissatisfaction that was present when we were out of the presence of God. We have to realize that we need God to give us what we need to be satisfied with ourselves and those who are around us. That joy is rarely about what is on the outside of us, what we have or what we can make happen, but it about what is on the inside of us and what God makes manifested within us. Come back to the Joy of the lord, for it lies within our salvation, our recreation and our sanctification, it is in the truth that only abides in God, in us!