How's your joy these days?

What are your days like? Do you wake each morning dreading the day’s activities? Does your spouse feel belittled and unappreciated?  Are you constantly cranky with your children? Is rush hour traffic just another opportunity to grip and complain? Well, if you’re a true believer in Jesus Christ, may I respectfully suggest that something’s amiss in your life?  If your days are consistently plagued with worry, impatience, annoyance or over-busyness, the Lord is not being allowed to minister to your heart and help you correct these ungodly tendencies (which should be the exception and not the rule).

Proverbs 8:32 tells us that “all who follow [God’s] ways are joyful.”  This is not to say there won’t be times we struggle with irritability and impatience.  Of course we will.  We live in a fallen world and were all born with an inborn sin nature.  However, when a follower of Christ is striving for submission in these messy attitudes, the regenerating power of the Holy Spirit works to help us not just monitor these unholy expressions but rather to “grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ” so that we can say “I am overwhelmed with joy in the Lord my God!” (2 Peter 3:18; Isaiah 61:10).

Test yourself.  If the joy of the Lord is NOT your strength, I suggest you do some detective work.  Identify the unholy attitude and give it to God; give him lordship in that area.  Then, the christian joy that is rightfully yours as a believer in Christ will return...I promise.