Joy

     Lately, God has really been convicting me of a lot of things and one of those things is joy. It`s so easy to be joyful when everything is going your way and you have everything that you want or "need." But we need to find our joy in God, not in this world or just when things are easy. I think it`s hard for us American Christians to focus on God and get our joy from Him when we have so many distracting and comfortable things in our lives. But our joy is in HIM because He redeemed us and He is our beautiful Savior who came and was punished as if He had lived our sinful lives. I think that`s something to be joyful about. But is that where my joy is coming from?? I think a lot of the time it`s not. We need to be joyful in blessings, in affliction, in pain, in tears, in victory, in defeat because our joy comes from the LORD!! This is a verse that God showed me in Psalms that was really awesome:


Psalm 4:7
You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.

   I love how this shows that God gives us even MORE joy than our "grain and wine" could EVER give us. And also that it`s GOD that gives us the joy and not ourselves trying our hardest to grit our teeth and be joyful no matter what. We can`t even be joyful without God!!!!! So it all comes back to His grace. God is so amazingly good. Hope you all had a great start to the week and I hope that all of you would be asking for more grace to find your joy in God.



--Rye Bread