Joy

Last December during my Christmas break I woke up early one morning to have some "quiet" time. During that time I came across verse 16 in 1 Thessalonians "Be joyful always". This verse has stayed with me and the word joy has constantly been on my mind since that time. Also shortly after that devotional time we celebrated Christmas with my extended family. Each year we have a random gift exchange (we draw numbers, person with number one gets to pick a gift first, the person after them can select their gift or pick a new gift etc.). So we never know for sure whose gift we will receive. Randomly after many different trades I ended up with a gift from my Grandma. The gift ended up being a Willow Tree Angel and the description on it read Joy "Joy frees the spirit". I was completely taken back by the gift and again felt that God was revealing this word to me for a particular reason. I know that the Lord is wanting me to learn from this verse/word and apply this verse/word to my daily life.

This fall I was thrilled when I found out that a study was going to be led in our church on the book of Philippians. I feel the Lord has been leading me to study this book for the last couple of months and again this book is centered around the word joy! I am excited to see what the Lord is going to reveal to me during this study. I also feel that with everything I have gone through the last two months joy was something the Lord did not want me to forget when dealing with a very difficult situation. No matter what the circumstance we are to always feel joy in our hearts because we have the greatest joy of all and that is our personal relationship with Christ. No circumstance/situation can every void out that joy that will always and should always remain in our hearts.

"Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer". Romans 12:12