Joy as a verb

I will joy in the God of my salvation. 

Habakkuk 3:19

Don't be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

Nehemiah 8:10

Have you ever noticed how much more strength you have when you are joyful?  Perhaps you've noticed how beaten-down and powerless you feel when you're sad. Of course, you don't choose the circumstances that surround you, and you can't expect to feel joyful all the time when you are in the midst of  grief or suffering.

My Auntie Grace was one of the most joy-filled people I've ever seen. I first met her at my grandfather, Clifford's, funeral.  She was rejoicing that her dear brother was now with the Lord he loved. Her cheeriness inspired so much fun in the hearse, the somber driver didn't quite know how to react to us. 

We all still missed Clifford terribly. We were still grieving, but Grace infected us with the joy of the Lord, and we shared it that afternoon despite our pain, and rejoiced freely.

With her life, she showed one of God's powerful tools for coping with suffering. Choosing to rejoice is not a Band-aid, pretending that you're not hurting.  Rejoicing is instead taking your eyes off yourself and moving them on to the God who created you, restores you, rescues you. 

Rejoicing is a powerful act of seeing who God is, seeing what he has already done, and giving him credit for it--praise. The simple act of getting your focus off yourself and onto him will make you feel better, no matter what else is going on.  But when you are then reminded of WHO he is, you will become stronger and more genuinely full of hope.

As you can imagine, rejoicing is a powerful weapon against satan (intentionally not capitalized).  The last thing that old serpent wants is for God to get honor, and the second to the last is for you to have joy. If the only things you can think of to rejoice about are that chocolate isn't poisonous and that baldness isn't illegal--there's your start.

Then, move on to his love for you. 

Joy in HIS salvation

When I was in college in the 1970s, I wrote a song with these verses from Habakkuk as the lyrics. In those days, I could play the piano and write music. In fact, until the last few years, I could play and compose. I took them for granted, even though I enjoyed them as gifts of God.

Now, only with the right combination of seizure meds can I play, and that is nothing like the old days. Composition may be gone until I'm with the Lord. Bummer having a tumor right in the creative part of the brain. It also hits the auditory cortex and autobiographical memory, so I can't even listen to my own music without problems. There are certainly far worse problems, far worse tumors. I'm simply letting you who love music into my world a bit, to give you some understanding.

Aren't these verses wonderful? One of the ways God's word shows its power is that it was fresh and powerful to me all those years ago, and yet this very passage is all the deeper in meaning to me today, when I have so many new ways to chose to joy in the God of my salvation.

All of you have some losses, somewhere that the fig tree is not blossoming, the grapes are no longer on the vines. We all choose to joy in the Lord or not. He is our strength if we make the choice. And oh! The heights we can reach!

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.

The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights [or, he brings me safely over the mountains].

Habakkuk 3:17-19