Choosing to Trust as We Discover Joy and Strength…
Well, we are halfway through our 3 month series “Joy and Strength.” Thank you, friends, for continuing to journey with me.
For 6 weeks, we have explored the many ways that the Lord can be both our joy and our strength. Of course, in the warm, carefree spring and summer seasons of life, our joy, delight and might are palpable and so very easy to profess. Claiming joy, strength and faith is quite seamless when our days are humming along at predictable paces. But what do we assert when the cycles of life grow precariously dark and bitterly cold? Can we still choose to trust God for His joy and strength during the bleak winters of our lives?
Let’s take a peek at what Scripture suggests...
“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.”
Job 1:21
Job is an incredible biblical example of steadfast trust under the most horrendous circumstances. Talk about a winter season! Job was as godly as could be and rich beyond belief when Satan took absolutely everything from him. Nevertheless, Job’s immediate response to losing his home, his health, his children, his servants and his livestock was to acknowledge God as God and to entrust his life to Him.
Job never faltered in his faith despite what was happening to him. He never gave up on God despite being mocked by friends for his allegiance to a God Who permitted such agonizing pain. Rather, Job chose full submission and trust in the Father, thus ushering in joy and strength to sustain him in his deep loss. And what’s more, even greater joy and favor awaited Job on the other side of his holy faith. God eventually restored Job to home, health and wealth with more blessings and abundance than he had before!
Perhaps one of the many poignant lessons of Job is that there is no such thing as the obsessive, controlling pursuit of happiness. We have so little say in the final say! There is only the discovery of the true joy and strength that come from trusting God in all circumstances.
Friends, I pray that we may choose to be trust models like Job so that we, too, can discover the joy and strength of our trials and still be able to say, as Job so faithfully said, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”