You have made known
to me the paths of life;
you will fill me with joy
in your presence.
-Acts 2:28
Category: Joy
Sunday Praise and a Prayer of Joy
Dear Heavenly Father, we praise you. On this Palm Sunday, we praise you for all you’ve done, for sending your Son in fulfillment of the coming Savior written about in the Old Testament of your Word.
That Zechariah foretold His coming in this way – “Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King is coming to you; He is just and having salvation, lowly and riding on a donkey, a colt, the foal of a donkey,” and that is just what He did.
And so we praise you, Lord Jesus, and honor and glorify you for coming as the only One who could have saved us, and has saved us from our sins. We are filled with joy that you loved us so much that you came to purchase our souls with the sacrifice of your own life, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
There is no joy like the joy of those who have been saved and filled with your Holy Spirit, that we might commune with you always, and know your love, your peace, and your hope. Help us walk in your joy as we keep in mind all you’ve done for us. In Jesus’ holy and mighty name we pray, amen.
How to Find the Joy We Seek
One of the greatest joys of being a parent is watching your children come through childhood, with all its arguments and competitiveness and jealousies, grow up, forgive each other, and become good friends.
To see your children making plans to get together, to sit and have a conversation, laughing and enjoying each other’s company, there’s just nothing like it. Seeing the love between them fills a parent with a delightful contentment.
I imagine this is a tiny fraction of the joy the Lord has when He sees His children maturing and growing in His love and then loving one another, forgiving and accepting one another in the spirit of godly brother and sisterhood.
The apostle Paul, along with Timothy, wrote to brothers and sisters in Philippi, sounding almost as a father writing to his children:
“Therefore if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from His love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others.”
Philippians 2:1-4
There is nothing so easy to fall back into when surrounded by the world than a worldly, fleshly, prideful, egotistical, argumentative attitude. Kind of like children, right? And the very antithesis of love.
But we don’t need to live that way.
We are filled with the Holy Spirit, the One who makes known to us God’s love.
And daily we have a choice: we can walk in the Spirit, or suffer in the flesh.
When we walk in the flesh, not only do we rob God the joy of an unbroken abiding relationship with us, made complete by seeing His children love one another, we rob ourselves of the joy and the peace we all so desperately want and need.
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…”
Galatians 5:22a
Love is the first fruit of walking in the Spirit, and all others depend on it. Love brings joy, and joy brings peace.
“I say then: Walk in the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.”
Galatians 5:16
As we walk in the Spirit, we won’t be held hostage by our fleshly attitudes. Yield ourselves to the life God’s given us, day by day, moment by moment, and the Father’s love will flow through the Spirit to us, and through us to others.
What an amazing privilege.
To know God’s love, a love far deeper than any the world can ever know, and to allow ourselves to be a conduit of that love for our brothers and sisters, and even for our enemies who so greatly need Him, glorifying and magnifying the Name of Jesus.
“It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us. And now, dear lady, I am not writing you a new command but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that we love one another. And this is love: that we walk in obedience to His commands. As you have heard from the beginning, His command is that you walk in love.”
2 John 1:4-6
In His Love,
Thankful Thursday – Good Medicine
“A merry heart does good like a medicine…”
Proverbs 17:22
Today, and every day, but especially in the middle of this mess, I’m so thankful God’s given us a sense of humor to lighten our hearts, change our countenance, bring us together, and remind us there is still joy.
What God revealed to Solomon when he wrote the proverb, modern medical science now understands.
Laughter causes us to take in more oxygen, stimulates our organs, improves the function of blood vessels, and increases the endorphins released by our brain. It stimulates circulation and relaxes the muscles.
It can help fight stress, relieve tension and pain, and lift depression.
And yeah, it can burn calories. It might not be a lot, but I’ll take it.
There Is a River
“God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging.
Selah
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
He says, ‘Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.’
Selah”
Psalm 46:1-3, 4, 10
No matter what we face, God is our refuge and strength. I love that the Hebrew word for God used here is Elohiym, the plural form of God. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.
The entirety of His character – His goodness, His faithfulness, His ever-presence, and more than I could ever list here – is available to us in times of trouble.
The streams of His grace and love and peace continually and eternally flow through the kingdom of God and sustain us.
“Be still…
Stop
and know…
Acknowledge
that I am Elohiym…”
that He is the I Am, the All-Encompassing, All-Sufficient, Triune God.
Selah.
Selah indicates a pause in the music. In the entire Psalm, there are 3 selahs.
Yes, they may be instructions for the music, instructions for the singers, but I believe they’re also instructions for us.
Pause… and contemplate what’s been said.
Pause… and let it take hold inside the heart and mind.
Pause… and believe.
This is a song a dear friend introduced me to years ago, and it never fails to bring tears to my eyes. The precious Holy Spirit of our God is a joyful, quenching constant for every need we will ever have. We can go to the river and be satisfied.
There Is a River
by Rita Springer
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of our God (repeat)
And I will rejoice
I will rejoice
And be glad
I will rejoice
And be glad
There is a fountain full of grace and it flows from Emanual’s veins
It came and it healed me
It came and refreshed me
It came and it washed my sins away!
It came and it healed me
It came and refreshed me
It came and it washed my sins away!
And I will rejoice
I will rejoice
And be glad
I rejoice in the Lord always
And again I say I will rejoice!
Rejoice in the Lord always
And again I say rejoice.
I will rejoice
And be glad
I rejoice in the Lord always
And again I say I will rejoice!
Rejoice in the Lord always
And again I say rejoice.