"Good morning! Are you happily rejoicing because things are going good for you today? Maybe the good news that you have received is some news that adds to your financial status, or a much needed job promotion, or a clean bill of health at your last doctors appointment. All of these and many like them give plenty of reason to rejoice and be glad. Good news always brings a force of emotional surge of joy with it, and everyone wants that without ending. But does every day actually bring things into our life that just makes you want to go out singing at the top of your lungs for the shear joy of it's all good? I didn't think so!
Yet the Bible speaks of rejoicing always, and again I say rejoice! If this is doable as the Bible speaks, then our rejoicing cannot be based on things always working out the way we want them so that we feel like rejoicing. Therefore, rejoicing according to the Word of God is obviously based on something else altogether different from this point of view. What could that possibly be? How about because God works things out to the good of those who love Him, and who are called according to His purposes. The Bible also instructs us to count it all joy when we fall into various trials. That doesn't seem to have any apparent reason for rejoicing, or does it?
We must remember that peace and joy all have to do with PERSPECTIVE (the mind that stays on God shall have perfect peace). If God is for you, who could possibly be against you, right? If He is the One that goes before you in life, then the path you're on has been cleared of all reasons to be troubled even if God chooses to leave something in your way that requires you to persevere through it. You then can have confidence that all will be fine. Jesus gave us insight that following Him in life would have resistance all the way through; here is where most decide they're not up for it. But the thing is, life with Christ, or without, life is still going to be filled with trials and the thorns of life. Why then face it without the Savior and your best Helper?
There is daily benefits in Christ that affords us with divine virtues that will carry us through anything that life throws at us. Yet, the masses choose to go at it alone as if they can create their own reasons for rejoicing; the thing is though, the populace who do life without Christ have a statistical high rating in society of drug & alcohol addiction, divorce, unhappiness of life, depression, suicide, constant relational problems, etc. Why would anyone think that doing life without the God who gave it could ever themselves do a better job? It's true whether you are saved or not, trials will come upon all.
But those who are in Christ are always able to bear the thorns of life with an enduring joy; and rarely are they found complaining, for they are able to rejoice in all things irregardless of the struggles while still managing to bring in the fruit and the joy of sharing it with everyone. Be a JOY that breeds confidence in those that would otherwise wilt under the pressures of life as they see you stand bearing fruit despite the pains it took to get it; perhaps they too will choose to rejoice instead of grimacing over the pains of life and with little or no fruit to speak of. Strength is always in the joy, not in the inventory! Joy is only lasting when it is in God." ~Dad~
A man met a little fellow on the road carrying a basket of blackberries, and said to him, "Sammy, where did you get such nice berries?" "Over there, sir, in the briers!" "Won't your mother be glad to see you come home with a basket of such nice, ripe fruit?" "Yes sir," said Sammy, "she always seems glad when I hold up the berries, and I don't tell her anything about the briers in my feet." The man rode on. Sammy's remark had given him a lesson, and he resolved that henceforth he would try and hold up the berries and say nothing about the briers. |
