Recently I remembered a story from high school where one of my friends had noticed and told me that I had the joy of the Lord.
For some reason that came to mind recently and I’ve been pondering ever since. Wondering. Do I still have the joy of the lord?
Since we are all raising our kids in an area of social media, we have a unique window into other peoples homes that no one has ever had before.
One thing I have noticed is that it seems like as mothers, we give ourselves an excuse not to be joyful all the time.
Our kids didn’t sleep last night, they are
sick again, our husband isn’t helping like we wish he would, we don’t have enough money to do the things we want to do, we don’t have the energy other mothers have, we don’t have the time to keep the house clean, everything is expensive, our kids stress us out, and the list goes on. I have experienced all of these things at some point or another. We all have.
And if I were a mother without Christ, I would have every reason to pitch my tent in the land of martyrdom and say, well this is just my life. It will be hard for the next several years as I am raising my young children. There is no other way around it. Kids are hard. It is stressful, one day I will be past it and then I can be joyful again.
But this is not the life of a Christian.
The life of a Christian is this: this is the day the Lord has made. I will rejoice and be glad in it. Today. Today with a newborn, today with a two-year-old, today with a newborn, a two-year-old and a three-year-old. Today.
Over and over again inscripture, we are encouraged to be joyful and to have joy in the Lord. I read many sermons and books of the Bible to prepare for this. specifically I read the book of Nehemiah, which I had never read before. It has the famous verse, that we most of us know which is that the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Without going into exhaustive detail, this was said to the people who had recently been made aware of all of their shortcomings. They were repentant and realized that they had not been following God or his laws. But rather than condemning them further, Nehemiah exhorts the people saying do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord, is your strength or better translated the joy of the Lord is your refuge or your stronghold or your fortress. As we are faced with our weaknesses, and our many failures as mothers, which we often remind oursellves of, I want to encourage us to arrive at a place of joy in the Lord rather than self-condemnation and sorrow.
But here’s the thing. Being joyful isn’t just being in a good mood. Really internalizing that the joy of the Lord is our strength involves knowing the Lord deeply and personally. All throughout scripture, we see that he is a joyful God. He rejoices over his people. In creating us and drawing to himself. Joy is central to who he is, and we cannot know Jesus without coming away more joyful. After reading and reading and reading on this and trying to compartmentalize and figure out how to impart to you guys how to possess joy, I have simplified it. God is full of joy. And he wants us to be full of him. The key to possessing joy as a mother, and not constantly feeling burnout, is communion with God and closeness with him.
If you want to get warm you must stand near the fire: if you want to be wet you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal life, you must get close to, or even into, the thing that has them. They are not a sort of prize which God could, if He chose, just hand out to anyone.”
Gk Chesterton says Joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian.
. “Gigantic joy is rooted in the fear of the Lord. Gigantic joy is not impervious to pain or inattentive to heartbreak. Gigantic joy doesn’t laugh in the middle of tsunami sorrow, broken promises or the irrevocable consequences of sinful rebellion. What gigantic joy does, is give the Christian a bottomless pool of hope that allows the Christian the energy and steadfastness to not grow weary in well doing. This kind of joy is the secret of being able to face sin and sorrow honestly and still end the day singing the doxology.
Psalm 35:9
My soul shall be joyful in the Lord, it shall rejoice in his salvation
I want to remind you that joy is attainable because of what christ has done for us on the cross.
Joy should be our response to Jesus. And out of every day closeness with god we come away full of his joy.
It makes sense that you become like you hang around. So if we spend time in the presence of the Lord, then we become more like the Lord.
So if we spend time with the Lord every day throughout the day, keeping him continually on our minds, praying without ceasing, listening to music that glorifies him, speaking kindly to our children, and our husbands, we will become more joyful. If you go to the gym multiple times a week, you’ll see results. If you eat healthy. Spend time with father you will become joyful.
I believe that God created us with a desire to be joyful. Since he is always happy and always full of delight, why would he not want the same for us his children?
nowhere in scripture is there a caveat, a place where he says, I know that being parent will be challenging, it is OK to put joy on the shelf for now.
In fact, it is more necessary than ever. Because we need strength. We need a refuge and a fortress. These days are full of challenges. And if we want to meet the challenges bravely, Jesus says we need joy to be our strong hold. When we are at the end of our rope and it’s only 8 o’clock in the morning. When it’s 2 AM which is personally my witching hour. Joy should be what we were crying out for. As David says, oh give back to me the joy of my foundation. Maybe some of us today need to ask the Lord to give us back the joy of our salvation.
Because we find ourjoy in the Lord, as we wake up 20 minutes earlier to spend time with him. We find that motherhood is more joyful than we thought possible. We have the space and capacity to do more and be more because we are being continually refilled by the Holy Spirit.
Sarah D. Shearer 
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