Nehemiah 8:10 (NKJV) Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
The joy of the Lord is our strength!
Not many people think of joy as being strength. When we think of someone we view as being strong, we very rarely think of joy as being one of the traits that makes them strong.
Usually we associate strength with determination, perseverance, patience, etc.
But in reality, if we don’t have God’s joy, we are miserable, weak and downtrodden. So without His joy, we can’t be strong.
Now let’s look at the flip side of this. His joy doesn’t come from having material things or from people complimenting us or people being our friends. His joy comes from knowing that He loves us, provides for us and has our best interest in mind, no matter what comes our way.
But if we don’t understand that, we tend to get caught up in our emotions. We judge how everything is going by how we feel. And oh, how those emotions can send us on a roller coaster ride!!
God gave us our emotions to enhance our lives, not to control our lives. Emotions help us feel different things and can add to who we are, but we need to make sure that we never let our emotions tell us who we are or how we feel.
If we live by our emotions, we will be a mess most of the time, simply because we will let our emotions dictate to us whether we feel happy, sad, depressed or strong.
Let God’s joy be your strength. Put your emotions where they belong; under the power of God’s spirit. Learning to do this will bring a new stability into our lives that we never knew existed.
Pastor Curt & Pastor Ellie
Seven Seas Ministries
P.O. Box 272
Bradford, RI 02808
401-315-0902
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