LIVING JOYFULLY

“Why don’t I have joy?” I was eight years into my believing life when I asked that question. Around that time, the Lord saw fit to employ me at a place composed, primarily, of non-believers. I knew I was there to be a light to those around me.

It’s appropriate to say that I failed in that department. I was spiritually dry which made my witness weak. Though I talked about the Lord to some of my co-workers, my attitude didn’t match my gratitude for being saved by grace and from God’s eternal wrath. I was limping along, even having heated arguments with some colleagues when I should have been demonstrating a gentle, quiet spirit.

One day, a part-time employee came into the office, greeting everyone with a broad smile and enthusiastic words. I knew she was a believer from our previous exchanges and I was taken aback each time by the joyful glow she exuded. I want that! So, I asked her how I could have the same joy she so consistently displayed.

While I don’t remember her answer, I’ve since discovered the secret for myself. It took years of praying, after that day, before overwhelming joy took root in my heart and transformed my faith. The secret? I made the decision to get serious about my life as a child of God through faith in Christ and began denying all of the unchristlike attitudes, behaviors and notions I falsely believed I was entitled to.

I threw down the gauntlet on my ways and slowly exchanged them for Christ’s ways. It wasn’t easy or seamless and I often lost ground on the joy I began displaying when I got caught up in the useless things of the world, but I was determined to persevere.

Ten years after that initial point of spiritual dryness, I’m thankful to God for his answers to my prayers that, in some ways, still baffle me. Even if I might dread a situation or season in my life now, the Lord has been faithful in outfitting me with a supernatural joy that can’t be explained even as I enjoy its fullness.

There are even times when my joyful living spills over to the point of laughter and I just go with it. It’s then I can acknowledge it might truly be Christ living in me and that I’m walking in the joy which is a fruit of his Spirit.

If you struggle to have joy as a true believer, pray to your Heavenly Father for it. He spares no good gift from his children who ask him (Matthew 7:11b). I now honestly delight in professing that the joy of my LORD is my strength for each day and circumstance. I pray the same stands for you.

Heavenly Father, I can’t believe I spent so much time being miserable in my faith life instead of living in joy. Forgive me for putting myself first then and thank you for blessing me with the good gift of joy I have now. Fill me to overflowing with your joy each day in hopes that it might spill over to someone else. In Jesus’s name I pray. Amen!

Throughout This Day: Read and meditate on today’s verse, allowing this truth from God’s Word to dwell richly in your heart and be demonstrated in your life, to overflowing.