Wow, I was listening to a sermon while working the other day, and the Holy Spirit shared this with me. “Mark, you never had or knew My joy until you began to do My Word.”
His words caught me by complete surprise and, as I look back over the last several decades, I knew He was right.
Look, it might be hard to do God’s Word, to let it control you and operate in your everyday life because we’ve been doing our ways for so long, and because the enemy, the devil, hates for us to discover how to do God’s Word because it means his (Satan’s) influence in our lives is coming to an end. But I can tell you from personal experience that you will never experience the joy of the Lord, His backing up your efforts to do His Word, until you step out in faith – Yes, faith – and do His Word. Once you make the decision to do His Word, you begin to pick up spiritual momentum and even if you get knocked down now and then by the enemy, God gives you His joy and encourages you to try again. This occurs over and over again and you begin to get stronger in the Lord and you trust Him more and more. The joy you experience as He rewards you for doing His Word is like nothing else. It is the greatest joy in the universe and it’s unlimited because God is unlimited.
God bless,
Mark
Note: While we may not agree with everything a particular church or Christian group teaches or believes, there are times when we can be blessed by something outside the realm of our current understanding of God.