I sit here on a cloudy gray day with cool temperatures thinking about how easy it is to feel unmotivated on such a day. I come to live with them and accept them earlier in the spring or late winter, but by mid-May I long for the sunshine and increasing warmth that hints of summer.

 

On days such as this, I can be far more aware of what is wrong in the world, what is challenging friends and family, and the weight of all of it than when the weather perks up everyone and everything.

 

I can feel the subtle downward tug on my heart and spirit, sense the shadow try to creep over my thoughts.

 

On such days it is far less easy to keep the one thing present that is absolutely essential.

 

Joy!

 

The dictionary describes joy as “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness”. That is a starting place to consider this essential ingredient, but it really doesn’t make the shift needed to regain that sense of joy.

 

I can think about how so much of the world is broken even as the people are broken. It can be easy to think this is unusual, but even a quick scan of recent or ancient history tells a different story.

 

Today as I considered that my thoughts came to rest in Nehemiah. It is one of the Old Testament books I love. I never fail to see comparisons for the present when I look back into the text.

 

Nehemiah’s leadership and clear focus also provoke me as he guides the people in rebuilding the walls and gates of the city of Jerusalem that had been decimated by God’s punishment for the sins of His people. God had used the Philistines, Assyria, Babylon, and others seeking to awaken His people to return to Him.

 

Then I come upon the scene when Ezra reads the book of the law to them and helps them understand it. Finally their hearts are pierced and those listening begin to weep and mourn as they recognize how far they have drifted from God.

 

But then Nehemiah steps forward and admonishes them in that familiar verse to rejoice and enjoy the Lord and His goodness in Nehemiah 8:10:

 

“The joy of the Lord is your strength.”

 

Joy is more than a feeling.

 

 It is a central reality for those who trust in the Lord and rest in His great love for them. It is something we are to embody in how we face life and respond to the circumstances we face.

 

I love what Margaret Feinberg says about joy in her excellent book, Fight Back with Joy:

 

“Joy emanates from the abiding sense of God’s fierce love for us. The tigerish love of God from which joy comes is foundational to faith. God’s love guards us, protects us, grows us, strengthens us, and compels us to walk in greater trust and holiness. This is no passive affection, but a feisty, fiery pledge to grow us into the fullness of Christ. When we embrace this love and cultivate an awareness of it, our hearts are filled with joy.”

 

My response to His fierce love for me is to “cultivate” an awareness of that love.

 

 Cultivating requires hard work on my part. I cannot just sit there asking for it to happen. I need to participate. I need to plow up the ground of my heart, mind, and spirit. I need to turn over the earth, get rid of the weeds sown there by the enemy, and fertilize the soil with the rich truth of His love.

 

The fertilizer often comes from putting to death everything that is not like Him in my life. It comes from laying my disappointments, discouragements, dead hopes and dreams before Him mixed with my hot tears, then allowing Him to mulch them into the soil so new growth can occur.

 

I need to face the reality that the enemy of my soul hates joy.

 

When I utilize it as a weapon to fight his devices, he cannot win against my deep abiding awareness of my identity as a fiercely loved daughter of the Lord.

 

God created us to know and experience joy. When my heart, mind, and spirit intersect with His love, joy erupts and equips me to rise above the circumstances of my day and life. It becomes a powerful tool!

 

Joy is a gift and a tool we must not forget to cultivate, hold fast to, and utilize every day. Choosing joy is not easy and may not even make sense. Perhaps that is one reason it is such a powerful and effective tool.

 

 

 

 

 

Desire is as much a part of each of us as our DNA. (I mean this in the broadest sense of the word desire.) I’m talking about the strong feeling of wanting something or wishing for something to happen. I can see it in an infant just a few hours old.

 

Innately each of us comes hardwired with a desire to be held, nurtured, and nourished.

 

Most of us know and have read about how infants will fail to thrive or flourish if that doesn’t happen and the infant is only given a bottle to meet his or her physical need. There is a need for more…. a connection with another person.

 

Connection seems to be essential for us. Desire is planted deep within each of us.

 

One of my favorite authors is John Eldredge. In his book, The Journey of Desire, John makes a powerful statement:

 

“All our deepest longings require others to come through for us. Inevitably, someone stands in the way.”

 

 Those desires and longings clearly mean someone else needs to choose to respond to us to be the one who supplies us with what we wish or to get out of the way and not be a hindrance to our achieving that wish.

 

Often we discover the world around us cares far less for our wants and desires than we wish. It can seem as if indifference becomes our enemy. We are often faced with the reality that others may care less about our wants or desires. Flights get canceled for a long-planned for trip and no one seems to be able to “fix” it. Even our favorite barista can have a bad day and suddenly the long-awaited brew is not what we were so much looking forward to.

 

We are convinced a friend knows what we would love for our birthday. After all, we give her clues along the way, but our birthday comes and she remembers it without any of the evidence of the clues having been heard.

 

It can happen with husbands and children and we can be tempted to wonder if we are being ignored for who we are, what our longings and desires are. It can start to cause us to feel invisible.

 

If we are children, we pout, complain, rant, or cry. If we are adults, we try to suck it up and smile graciously and appear we are grateful and that it doesn’t matter.

 

We can sometimes get away with that outward expression for a period of time, but inside it begins to take a toll. The disappointment can lead to discouragement, frustration, depression, resentment, and bitterness. All of these start to close off our hearts, surround them with a moat and broken drawbridge, isolated by our own choice and decision to try to avoid more hurt.

 

Sometimes these same things result in one more log tossed onto the fire of our discontent that is growing within us and unexpectedly spews forth to a degree that can even shock us.

 

Of course, as believers seeking to be more like Him, we do not just rid ourselves of these longings and desires. We send them heavenward in prayer hoping or even trusting the One who loves us most will grant what we have asked whether it is to pass an exam, get a particular position, be healed of a disease threatening to take our life, or allow us to feel loved and cared for finally.

 

The problem with desire, wishing, and longing is it becomes more important than the one we believe can grant it. We put something ahead of someone.

 

 Can we cease to be human? Stop wanting, wishing, and longing? No, of course not, but we must take care to remember it was the struggle of the brightest angel in heaven and led to his fall when he could not let go of it.

 

The problem with desire is that we can allow it to rule us and control us.

 

 What is the answer then?

 

It can start with submitting to the Lord, yielding to Him, surrendering to His lordship and perfect love for us.

 

It can also bring us to Psalm 37:4:

 

“Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

 

 We need to be careful about what the verse is saying. It is NOT saying if we love Him, He will give us what we want. You see, if we look carefully at what it means to “delight” in the Lord, our understanding will grow to see it might be read more accurately in one of the following ways:

 

…Be gratified in the Lord

 

…Be captivated by the Lord

 

…Be entranced by the Lord

 

If we are these, will our attention be on our desire for something or on the Someone we have given our hearts to?

 

 

Last week a friend and I were having a conversation about this. She admitted that she had been having a downward tug on belief in herself and whether she was “enough” as a mom, a writer….you name it.

 

I get it!

 

I also get those feelings and temptations to “go there” no matter what our age or season of life. I have experienced them quite often over the course of my lifetime.

 

Feelings of inadequacy can come for many reasons or no seeming reason at all sometimes.

 

They can start as a sense of just feeling “off” and move to that sense of having a gnat or fly relentlessly buzz around you creating irritation. If left unchecked, it can start to weigh us down like lead weights pulling us to the bottom of the sea.

 

It’s not really depression so much, but we simply stop moving forward. Doubt comes in alongside and does its usual dirty work as well. We can start to get mired down.

 

Doubt brings with it a long list of areas where we see ourselves as “less than”.

 

Doubt has been around since Eden and is a far more significant enemy than we might think. It’s subtle, shifty, and can be deadly.

 

Ask Adam and Eve.

 

All of these remind me of when Solomon shares that it is the “little foxes that spoil the vines”. These things nibble away at us so our strength and vitality start to ebb away.

 

I grew up not only feeling that sense of inadequacy, but also believing it so strongly that it greatly influenced my life for a time. When I came to understand the truth of its source, I began to do better at defeating it from overtaking me so easily as it had for a long time.

 

It can happen very often when we start something new. It certainly happened for me when I started writing on this website a bit over a year ago, but I could say it has been true when I stepped into other new areas as well. I could easily feel that as a wife and parent, a teacher or even as a professional clinical counselor.

 

The good news is that we are often led by the Lord to step out, take a risk, and move into some new thing or area. It is one of the ways He strengthens trust, faith, and reliance on Him. It is also a very important way He uses to allow us to discover gifts and abilities He has placed in us that we were not aware of or only had a slight sense might exist.

 

I am quite sure He has grinned at me (or you) more than once when we have risked moving into a new area and discovered it was something we actually could do fairly well. Perhaps it awakened a passion we were hesitant or fearful to explore.

 

The BEST news is the truth found in Paul’s words in 2 Corinthians 3:5 which I am sharing in the NLT today:

 

“It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God.”

 

 Coming to grips with that powerful truth puts everything in better focus. He gives us His lens to see more clearly.

 

If I (or you) were totally adequate to do or be anything, we would never grow in our relationship with Him nor could we discover the gifts He placed in us for His use when we rely on His adequacy.

 

The challenge is that the enemy of our souls does NOT want us to discover, know, or keep that in our hearts and minds. In fact, he knows our frailty so well that he is counting we cannot or will not gain this knowledge.

 

He starts whispering lies that we don’t even recognize as him and before long we think “we” are the ones thinking and feeling this. It can take us on so many rabbit trails where we shift our focus even more on ourselves. That is when the Lord begins to fade and we start to lose whatever truth we owned on this.

 

So here is what I want you to know.

 

You are His child if He resides in your heart.

 

He loves you more than you can ever imagine.

 

He has created you uniquely for His purposes including the gifts He has placed in you that look differently than similar gifts look in anyone else.

 

He is NOT expecting you to be adequate on your own, but because of Him you can be adequate.

 

“It is not that we think we are qualified to do anything on our own. Our qualification comes from God.”     2 Cor. 3:5 NLT

 

He is totally adequate for whatever He asks me (or you) to do.

 

You can trust Him!