Joyful while waiting.

Why do i wake up unhappy? How can i just wake up unhappy for no reason? I mean am usually a morning person, but there are those days you just wake up and wish the night would continue, that you didnt have to face that day and for no apparent reason.  In the grand scheme of things you are healthy, have a home, have food and people who love you so much and the cherry on top of this cake, you have an awesome relationship with God!! So why so downcast? why so unhappy!! Relatable or this is for only  me and a few crazy people?

 How do our emotions toggle from happy, content , grateful to unhappy for no apparent reason?  

I was having that kind of morning today! it was odd, and i could not shake it off.. till i decided to get into my favorite place in the whole wide world; the Word of God. And as i had my quiet time , the Holy Spirit dropped into my heart a popular Sunday school song  from back in the day;

Give me Joy in my heart , keep me trusting. Give joy in my heart i pray! 

Voila, eureka moment, i knew what was up. The enemy was trying to steal my joy.  John 10:10: ‘The thief comes does not come to except to steal, and to kill, and to destroy…’ ~NKJV.  He was trying to steal from me. He steals just about anything, and he is a smart thief, taking the most important gifts that God has given us.

Joy is described as a feeling of great pleasure and happiness. We experience joy in those moments when we are around people we love, food can make us joyful, a hobby we enjoy can also bring us joy… many things around us bring us joy; and uniquely for each one of us. But in those things, the true source of joy is God. Joy is the fruit of the Holy Spirit at work in us. True joy can’t be gotten from anywhere else. It is the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in our hearts.  The fruit of the Spirit is love, JOY, peace, long-suffering (patience) , kindness, goodness , faithfulness, gentleness and self control. (Galatians 5:22-23 ~NKJV)

It is important to know that if you are not joyful, then your patience, peace and long-suffering will also be affected. The Holy Spirit works in us to produce this fruit in our lives. Think for a minute if you can be loving yet impatient,  impatient yet gentle? Nope , they all work together. So if the enemy succeeds in stealing your joy, then all the other attributes will be affected / hindered.

On this journey of walking by faith and not by sight, there is a lot of waiting on God. Waiting is not fun!!! It is tough , it is what God uses to build our faith while stretching our ‘faith’ muscles.  Think on when you go to the gym for the first time, there is some muscle stretching and pain afterwards. It is quite uncomfortable and even painful, and the only remedy the gym instructor will give you is to keep on going to the gym and doing the same exercises that caused you pain. And so it is with walking by faith and not by sight. The only way to keep growing in faith is to remain in faith, to keep hoping, to keep trusting, to keep waiting on God regardless of what the circumstances in your natural surroundings look like.  It is not easy at all, but God uses all this to perfect the fruit of His precious Spirit in us. God wants us to be joyful as we wait on Him and on our own this is impossible as some waiting can be painful , humiliating and  hard. The apostle Paul puts it remarkably well when he writes:

Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. Romans 15:13 ~ NKJV

  True Joy cannot be bought, faked or even forged.  It is not gotten from things or even people but from the Holy Spirit. He is the only true source of real joy.  His work in our lives when we let Him , produces true / real joy.  As we experience His joy, we can wait on God for however long He needs us to wait while joyful and peaceful.  His Joy is  also a weapon we can use to frustrate the enemy’s attempts to make us miss God’s blessings for us. 

Prayer

Heavenly Father, thank you for being the source of all JOY, through the working of the Holy Spirit in our lives. I ask that you may fill us with all the joy and peace as we wait on you to perfect us to receive  what we are waiting on you for.