Grow Up....JOYfullly!

          Have you had your JOY JUICE today?  Drinking it faithfully helps us to “grow up” spiritually and become a bold Christian.

In my first book, I tell the legend of the Cherokee Indian youth's “rite of passage”. The tradition goes that a father takes his young boy into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone.  The boy is required to sit on a stump the whole night and not remove the blindfold until the rays of the morning sun shine through it.  He cannot cry out for help to anyone. Once he survives the night, he will be a MAN.  He cannot tell the other boys of this experience, because each lad must come into manhood on his own.

                  The boy is naturally terrified. He can hear all kinds of noises. Wild beasts must surely be all around him. The wind blows hard and shakes his stump, but he sits stoically, never removing the blindfold. It’s the only way he can become a man!
Finally, after a horribly long night, the sun appears and he removes his blindfold.

It is then that he discovers his father sitting on the stump next to him.  
He has been at watch the entire night, protecting his son from harm.

And so it is with us and God! Though at times we feel very alone, God our Father is watching over us, sitting on the stump right beside us.  When trouble comes, all we have to do is reach out to Him.  Just because we can’t see God, doesn’t mean that He’s not there. Hide the words of 2 Corinthians 5:7 in your heart: “For we walk by faith, not by sight”. 

Our Heavenly Father is there, even when you can’t see Him!  What a joyful truth!