The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength
Joy is essential to having spiritual strength. The Holy Spirit gives joy to every believer. It is the fruit of the Spirit living in us, when He is in control of our lives. However, if we fail to rely on the Spirit, if we look at our problems instead of looking at the goodness and power of God to overcome them, we can get discouraged and grieve. Our grieving saps our strength. Ezra and the other scribes warned the people of this danger. When the people heard the Word of God, they were convicted of their sins, and they were grieving. However, Ezra broke into their grief. (Nehemiah 8:10) He told them to go eat what is rich and drink what is sweet. He commanded them to send portions of those good things to people who did not have any prepared, so they could rejoice, too. He admonished them not to grieve, because the joy of the Lord was their strength. As I said, this is vital for us, as believers, to do God's will in our lives and to grow stronger spiritually all the time.
The Bible is very clear that Christians are to "rejoice always." (I Thessalonians 5:16) The joy of the Lord is to be continually in our hearts, and we are to express it with our words and actions to remind us and others that God is there for us all of the time. When we are rejoicing in the Lord, we know all things are possible. We will not give up trying to follow the Lord, but we will get stronger and stronger in our walk with Him. Yes, there is a time to grieve over our sins. There is the need for confession and repentance. As I wrote earlier, we should weep, fast, and pray over the sins of our society and our own sins. However, we must not live in that state continually. Once the sins are confessed and forgiven, we praise God for cleansing us. We get back to the joy of the Lord from the Holy Spirit. As our spirits are lifted, the Holy Spirit empowers us with more and more strength. See what I mean? The joy of the Lord is our strength. Therefore, let's obey the Lord and rejoice, no matter what happens to us. Keep the Lord in focus, and it will be easy, since He is so good.
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Tomorrow, I intend to read Nehemiah 9-11.