Promises of Joy

            Have you had your Joy Juice today?  The sweetness of genuine joy in the Lord can overpower the bitterness of life.

             When pain and heartache rear their uninvited heads and barge into our lives, they are unwelcome visitors, and we don’t want them to stay.  We find ourselves asking “How could this have happened? Could God not have intervened?”  These are normal questions and very understandable when we are experiencing pain and hurt.

            Susie Larson tells us in her book, Your Powerful Prayers, that she too has asked these very questions. In her words, she said, “I knew for me, I needed to move on and ask different questions, ones that compelled me to look up and remember that God is good, His promises are true, and He’ll always make a way for me.”

            That’s such good advice for all of us.  Let’s examine our questions.  Maybe our questions should shift to ones such as: What is God showing me through this difficult time?  Is there hope in Him for a future? Will I allow God to use this in my life to make me sensitive to others, so that I can minister to them in their time of need?

            Susie Larson goes on to say: “We so often forget that God uses us not only through the blessings He’s entrusted to us, but also through the needs that are intended to compel us to pray bigger prayers….”

           Let’s pray…and pray big and deep and fervently….until God shows us “great and wonderful things we did not know”. (Jeremiah 33:3).