"The joy of the Lord is your strength." (Neh.8:10)
I have always loved that verse. Twila Paris had a wonderful song that I used to love to sing based upon that verse. "The joy of the Lord will be my strength. I will not falter; I will not faint. He is my Shepherd, I am not afraid. The joy of the Lord is my strength. The joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord, the joy of the Lord is my strength..."
I know that is true. Absolutely, positively...but sometimes I forget.
When I live and love based upon what I believe, I find my strength renewed. As Isa.40:31 declares, "but they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles; they shall run and not be weary; they shall walk and not faint."
Problems arise, however, when we base our actions not upon what we believe but upon what we feel.
And here's the thing: sometimes we simply forget. We're too busy, too preoccupied, too self-focused, too tired, too overwhelmed sometimes to remember. Remember the rock-solid truth. Remember Who our Savior is and what He has done for us and who we are in Him. And when we forget what we believe, when we respond based upon our feelings or our level of exhaustion or our selfishness or our distorted expectations, then we find our strength shriveled and our joy diminished down to nothing.
We lose sight of the fact that His joy is our strength. Not our circumstances. Not our children's performance. Not our successes. Not even our loved ones health or happiness. Not our anything.
It's Him and what He has done and what He is doing right now in our lives--weaving together all the happy and hard and challenging and perplexing events in our lives to bring about His perfect will. And His will is always "good, pleasing and perfect." (Rom.12:2)
Sometimes, though, we need some good old fashioned reminding! No, not sometimes--we need it daily, hourly. We need to preach the Gospel to our forgetful, stubborn old selves on an hourly basis. That's why we have to be in the Word--so our Father can use it to transform and renew our minds to think rightly and remember the Truth. "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is--His good, pleasing, and perfect will." (Rom.12:2) If we don't, we'll just fall prey to that sad, dead-end old pattern of "stinkin' thinkin'"--this is hopeless; they'll never change; I'm all alone; God doesn't hear my prayers; no one cares about my needs; it's all about me...blah blah blah. Sure, we may not say those things...but we think them. And thinking them is just as deadly. Yuck!
Nope, time to do a little preaching to ourselves! As C.J. Mahaney says, "On a daily basis we're faced with two simple choices. We can either listen to ourselves and our constantly changing feelings about our circumstances, or we can talk to ourselves about the unchanging truth of who God is and what He's accomplished for us at the cross through His Son Jesus."
Time to "preach the Word; be ready in season and out of season"--to ourselves! Preach it, sister, when you're tired and you feel like crying or yelling! Preach it when you're discouraged or defeated and you want to just give in or give up. Preach it to yourself and remind yourself of the true Truth. It's not about my feelings...it's about His faithfulness. And He is working and moving and weaving and orchestrating and using it all for His greater glory and our greater good.
'Cause Aslan is always on the move. Especially when we can't see Him.
Think I might sing a chorus or two of "The joy of the Lord is my Strength" to remind myself.
To God be the glory.
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