Hosanna Restoration Church

Truly, the joy of the Lord is our strength. It is easy to see that not everything in life is a source of joy. There are a lot of unhappy happenings in everyone’s life. We could make a long list of reasons not be joyful if we did not know Jesus. He is the one that changes everything. He is to be our focus, so that when all of that other stuff presents itself, we look beyond it to Him.

The truth is, if we love the Lord and trust in His name, we are filled with Joy. In fact we are so full of joy that it is bubbling over always ready to come out. Unfortunately, far too often we manage to contain and restrain that joy and allow other things to overflow instead.

Have you ever wondered why we are so able to suppress radical shouts of praise, and cannot control our anger for a second? Why will we work so hard not to overflow with the things God desires and just let the rest roll?

Our joy and our praise were never intended to be kept hidden behind closed doors! Jesus is full of joy and if you are full of Jesus then you have all the joy you need. You always have a reason to rejoice. Jesus was able to look beyond the horrors of the cross because of the joy set before Him. We can rejoice that He paid the price for us. If we never had anything else to rejoice about, that would be plenty, but we have so much more to rejoice over.

We have so many promises from God that when we really begin to understand them we truly will not be able to contain the joy. What gives you joy? What steals your joy?

What would happen if we just locked up all of our doubts and fears and decided that we would go ahead and put our trust in the Lord no matter what the circumstances are in our lives? What if every time the enemy raised his head he ran into a shout for joy from us? What if we started expecting the Lord to defend us and every time things looked out of focus we shouted joyfully, “God is for me?”

I think you can imagine that it would radically change everything in our lives. That is what Jesus came to do. He came to radically change our lives and in so doing to use us as proof of His covenant with His people. (Isaiah 41:6) We are God’s proof that Jesus accomplished everything He said He would.

God has always provided plenty of evidence to support His declarations. We need to stop suppressing evidence and be the witnesses He has made us to be. The truth is, we are filled with joy! The question is what will we do with it?