Skip to main content

Rejoice?

Lately I've been thinking about God's command to rejoice. To rejoice isn't a magical gift God zaps into you once you become a Christian; it's a virtue that is learned and that lesson can be painful. Yes, painful. You see the command to rejoice in Philippians 4:4 is not a command to be happy when you have a good job, kind family, and lots of sleep (though you should rejoice in those blessings) it's a command first and foremost to rejoice in the Lord and what better way to learn to rejoice in Him and His character than when He has taken everything else away?

I ask myself if all I had was God, would I be happy? If I could choose a wonderful earthly life and then go to heaven and there be no God, or if I suffer all my days and have fellowship with God, which would I choose?

Moses told God that if He did not go with them on their journey then he didn't want to go (Exodus 33). What about you? Will you praise God in the storm? Will you praise Him when you dance? Will you live each day with the knowledge that if God does not go with you, there's no point to go at all?

When it's all been said and done, God alone is perfectly good, holy, just, right, beautiful, wonderful, loving, fair, kind, and wise. Don't believe the lie that there is nothing to rejoice about because God is  and God does not change. You will never run out of things to rejoice in if you spend the rest of your days rejoicing in His character alone.

"Beloved, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known, but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is." 1 John 3:2

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What Is Your Purpose?

 A couple weeks ago, a young woman asked me, "what is your purpose?" it kind of threw me off. Ok, it really threw me off. It seemed a bit touché to say "to glorify God and enjoy Him forever" when she was looking for specifics. And I get why she's asking. My life does seem pretty random. Thirty-two years old, working on my BA, teaching music part time, working at a coffee shop part time, and living at least an hour from my closest family member. On paper it looks...well...it looks random. I get it. Kind of hard to pull a purpose out of the randomness.  I was talking to the Lord about it because sometimes, even for myself, the person living this life, it's hard to find a specific purpose in the randomness. Sometimes I wonder,  when I get to Heaven if I'm  going to have anything to offer God, if while other people show up with their kids, I'm going to hold out empty hands and say "it's just me." I mean, if He wants soldiers to defeat spiri...
Post a Comment
Read more

Body Image (1)

Contentedly situated in lawn chairs with our toes in the sand and the baby playing on a blanket at our feet, my friend and I watch her girls digging holes or running between the beach and the lake. Periodically, the girls run up to us to display the shells and rocks they've found. At one point, as the girls surround us, one of us adults comments on the baby being chubby (which she is, as a baby should be) after which one of the girls looks at me and says, "you're kind of chubby." She wasn't trying to be rude or smart, she was just being bluntly observant as children are. As I looked at I her and considered an answer, I thought of the baggage of body image that women have carried for generations, and I thought, I don't want her to carry this baggage too. I want better for her.   I replied, "you know, being a little chubby is actually a good thing. Our bodies function better and it helps keep us warm." This deep lesson was probably lost on her as she s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Wasted Gifts? Wasted Time?

You know how you can read the Bible twice, ten times, a hundred times and yet there's still something you haven't noticed or thought about before? That's basically my relationship with 1 Samuel 16:12-23. This is where Samuel anoints David to be king (first he had to meet all David's other brothers because David was the youngest so he was out taking care of the sheep). After the family dinner with Samuel, the text shifts back to King Saul. Because King Saul had disobeyed God, God had removed His Spirit from Saul and sent an evil spirit to terrorize him. In order to sooth the king's suffering soul, Saul's servants go out looking for someone who can play music to make him feel better.  There's a lot to think about in these short verses but the verse that struck me is verse 18.  Then one of the young men said, "Behold, I have seen a son of Jesse the Bethlehemite who is a skillful musician, a might man of valor, a warrior, one prudent in speech, and a handso...
Post a Comment
Read more