If I were to ask you to think of the most joyful times of your life, no doubt your mind would flood with memories of childhood moments with your family; Christmases, birthdays, vacations, and bed time tuck ins. For some it would include when you married your best friend, held your baby for the first time, heard the words "I love you," or accomplished something you were proud of. Hopefully it would include your salvation experience, maybe a time you felt God's love and forgiveness for you, or a time when you witnessed God's miraculous power at work. Whatever comes to mind, I can list a few things I bet you DON'T think of when you hear the word joy; times of disappointment, hurt, and financial distress. When you were told you have a disease, or you were mistreated by someone you trusted, when that marriage to your best friend ended, or when you lost a child or loved one. When we face difficulties, trials and suffering, we typically don't associate them with joy!
The Bible says "consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance." The Greek word for joy is chara which means "joy, rejoicing, gladness, enjoyment, bliss," it literally means "to celebrate!" But did you know that the meaning of the word "pure" here is important as well? The Greek word for pure is pas literally meaning "whole" or "complete." Did you ever stop to think that you cannot experience complete joy without facing "trials of many kinds?"
I have been very blessed to NOT have to walk through some of the terribly painful things that some of you have, but I do have some experience in the area of financial suffering. When Brandon and I were first married, we were quite typically broke. I remember crying when I would have to go to the grocery store because the 50 bucks for 2 weeks worth of groceries just wasn't enough for even one week of groceries. In fact after one year of marriage, the church we were working for felt so bad for us that they gave us donations from the church food bank. Unless you have been in a place of financial suffering, you cannot know the excitement of receiving a box full of government provided food. Canned foods with no labels (it was like opening a present!) and frozen "meat" were a source of overwhelming celebration for us as a young couple. Brandon and I joke that we "lived on love" back then. But even this is NOT the suffering I am referring to. Let me be more specific.
When Brandon and I felt God leading us to take a position at a church in Modesto, CA, we had a lot of nervousness, but we jumped right in. We moved to a place with a higher cost of living, Brandon took a cut in pay, I stopped working, we added two teenage girls to our family and we added twin infants. Add to that, we couldn't sell our house in Washington so we had to make double mortgage payments for 4 months and you have a financial crisis on your hands. We borrowed 10 grand from family just to get a house in Modesto, we burned through our savings and we felt the overwhelming (more like crushing) burden of debt. Yet when I think of joyful times of my life, I actually DO think of that first year in Modesto; but not because it was EASY. Once again, we lived out of the care center of our church. Brandon and I and the 2 girls who lived with us would "rock, paper scissors" over who had to go "grocery shopping" at the care center. It was like Christmas opening the bags and seeing our food for the week; especially if there were diapers! Each month Brandon and I would look at our income, look at our stack of bills and pay our tithe. We determined to take God literally that we could "test him in this" and see Him "throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that we would not have room enough for it." (Micah 3:10) I cannot tell you how exactly it all worked out. Sometimes, a specific amount of money that was needed would come in a check in the mail, other times financial needs would just "resolve themeselves". Sometimes, someone would show up at our house with a meal or with food or gifts for us. I wept the day that the other pastor's wives all chipped in and bought me a double stroller and two crib sets for my newborn babies. I know the givers were blessed for their giving, but I know we the RECEIVERS were blessed beyond anything I can describe. Brandon and I determined, that no matter what we faced, we would continue to give, and we would give with JOY. It was (and is!) a privilege for us to give back just a portion of what God had given us!
There is an obscure portion of Scripture that always rattles me when it comes to hearing and trusting God. It is in Judges chapter 20 and I encourage you to thoughtfully study that chapter. For our purposes here, I will sum it up with just a few statements. The Israelites (God's chosen people) had received God's instruction for what to do (go to battle), yet when they obeyed, 22,000 of their fighting men lost their lives! I don't know about you, but I would have wondered if I misheard God on that one. After that crushing defeat, God instructed his people again to go to battle the very next day, and again, they experienced staggering losses of fighting men (18,000). That second night, after losing thousands of their friends, fathers, brothers and neighbors, the Israelites again inquired of God for what to do next. Again He instructed them to go into battle. I can't imagine how hard it would have been to obey at that point. They must have been exhausted, defeated, and full of sorrow due to the losses they had experienced. Yet they obeyed and went to battle the next day. After it looked like they would be defeated again, God turned the battle and they defeated their enemy! Can you imagine their surge of faith in God? Can you even fathom the rejoicing and celebration in the Israelite camp that night? Why is it though, that often times our circumstances get darker before they get lighter? Or that things seem to get worse before they get better? I have found that trusting God, and experiencing joy are completely intertwined. Joy is beyond our external circumstances, it comes from an unshakeable belief in God to preserve you, to be with you, and to rescue you at precisely the right time. Deuteronomy 8 sheds a little light on the subject. God (speaking through Moses) says “Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would really obey his commands. Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry…He did it to teach you…” He is testing us, to see if we will obey, and He is allowing us to face difficulty in order to teach us, and develop us.
So back to our first year in Modesto, things were about to get darker. About six months into this year of struggle, I felt that the Lord instructed Brandon and I to give 400 dollars above our tithe. I felt it so strongly during a service, that I took out my checkbook, stared at the balance of under one dollar and thought about just writing a bad check and believing that God would provide the money before someone cashed it! Instead, I vowed that if God would provide us with that extra money, I would give it to Him without hesitation. Our house in Modesto needed some work done on it at that time. Among other things, it had hideous hot pink blinds throughout the house. Brandon had promised me that if we got enough money back in our tax return, I could buy some new blinds. A couple of weeks after my "vow to God" experience, I checked the mail and opened our $406 tax return! I was very full of "joy" at the idea of replacing my horrid blinds, when I felt a gentle nudge inside of my spirit reminding me that I had pledged that money to the Lord. I discovered right then that it was easier to vow something to God, then it was to carry it out. I went in my kitchen and the tears began to fall. Angry tears, that God would ask me to give this money when we clearly didn't have enough to begin with, but I refused to disobey God. I spent a good chunk of time praying; I did not want to give with a bad attitude; I wanted to give joyfully. As I wrote that check, I made another vow to God that went something like "God, even if I have hot pink blinds for the rest of the time I live here, I will be happy and have a good attitude and be grateful for them." I literally skipped, like a little girl, to the mailbox to send in that check.
What happened from that point is unexplainable. I really have rarely felt such JOY (celebration inside of me) and actual happiness and thankfulness for what I DID have; healthy body, great marriage, healthy kids, a house....and really, we never did go without. And then the provision from God began to roll in; for weeks and months we got checks sent to us from those who felt led to give us money. We got checks from accounts we had overpaid years before, we even got checks from places we couldn't recall ever having had an account! Our meager $400 gift paled in comparison to the THOUSANDS we received by God's provision. It really did get darker, before it got lighter, but our level of trust in God had never been greater. It seems to me that joy is sharpened against the contrast of difficutly and suffering.
The funny thing is, when we moved here, to plant Canyon Creek, we faced great financial distress again. We kept telling ourselves that we had been through this before, so we could do it again. It was much more difficult, but we had learned the lesson of rejoicing in our suffering, and rejoice we did. We were determined to obey and to allow Him to teach us and develop our character and perseverance. You see, it is not about HOW we get joy. Or to rephrase with emphasis in the correct place, it is not about how we get JOY. Everyone wants it, people are attracted to those who have, but it is really not about the joy at all. It is about Jesus. It is about how do I get Jesus. If I can seek Jesus, and press into Him, and get as close to Him as I can, joy is a natural result of my proximity to Him. That does NOT mean I won't feel sorrow, or pain, or loneliness, anger or grief, but it DOES mean, that in the midst of those feelings, I have an unshakeable belief in God to preserve me, to be with me, and to rescue me at precisely the right time. We lose our grip on joy, only when we lose our grip on Jesus.
There are the other things that can begin to sap us of our joy too; giving out more than we "feed" ourselves, allowing ourselves to go to a place of complete exhaustion, and seeking the signs of God and not God Himself. I call a lot of those things the danger of "loving the minsitry of God more than the God of the minisry." But really that can all be summed up with losing contact with Jesus. There is nothing like being at the end of yourself and your own solutions and strength and having the God of the universe touch you....the joy and gratitude just swells up naturally!
Someone out there right now just needs to hear it again right now....He hasn't left you, and He is not going to. He loves you, forgives you and wants to touch you, fill you and rescue you. Even if it seems like it has been 40 years of wandering in the desert, or the losses have been devastating, whatever it is you are facing....He will preserve you and be with you; even in the midst of the place of deepest testing. Our unshakeable belief in that is where joy is rooted, "whole" joy, developed in the face of trial.
For further study
Read Judges 20:18-36. Record your thoughts, insights and how you would feel in that situation, both before victory and after.
Read Deuteronomy chapter 8 (New Living Translation of this is good). Record how God took care of his people, and his warnings if they do not obey.
Share with the group: either something you learned from the above, or a personal example of something you have learned through trial or suffering.
Remember, this is how we encourage each other, share something with the group! Even if you have gotten behind in the study, jump in on this week and share something you are learning!
Your coach and your fan,
di
The Bible says "consider it pure joy whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance." The Greek word for joy is chara which means "joy, rejoicing, gladness, enjoyment, bliss," it literally means "to celebrate!" But did you know that the meaning of the word "pure" here is important as well? The Greek word for pure is pas literally meaning "whole" or "complete." Did you ever stop to think that you cannot experience complete joy without facing "trials of many kinds?"
I have been very blessed to NOT have to walk through some of the terribly painful things that some of you have, but I do have some experience in the area of financial suffering. When Brandon and I were first married, we were quite typically broke. I remember crying when I would have to go to the grocery store because the 50 bucks for 2 weeks worth of groceries just wasn't enough for even one week of groceries. In fact after one year of marriage, the church we were working for felt so bad for us that they gave us donations from the church food bank. Unless you have been in a place of financial suffering, you cannot know the excitement of receiving a box full of government provided food. Canned foods with no labels (it was like opening a present!) and frozen "meat" were a source of overwhelming celebration for us as a young couple. Brandon and I joke that we "lived on love" back then. But even this is NOT the suffering I am referring to. Let me be more specific.
When Brandon and I felt God leading us to take a position at a church in Modesto, CA, we had a lot of nervousness, but we jumped right in. We moved to a place with a higher cost of living, Brandon took a cut in pay, I stopped working, we added two teenage girls to our family and we added twin infants. Add to that, we couldn't sell our house in Washington so we had to make double mortgage payments for 4 months and you have a financial crisis on your hands. We borrowed 10 grand from family just to get a house in Modesto, we burned through our savings and we felt the overwhelming (more like crushing) burden of debt. Yet when I think of joyful times of my life, I actually DO think of that first year in Modesto; but not because it was EASY. Once again, we lived out of the care center of our church. Brandon and I and the 2 girls who lived with us would "rock, paper scissors" over who had to go "grocery shopping" at the care center. It was like Christmas opening the bags and seeing our food for the week; especially if there were diapers! Each month Brandon and I would look at our income, look at our stack of bills and pay our tithe. We determined to take God literally that we could "test him in this" and see Him "throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that we would not have room enough for it." (Micah 3:10) I cannot tell you how exactly it all worked out. Sometimes, a specific amount of money that was needed would come in a check in the mail, other times financial needs would just "resolve themeselves". Sometimes, someone would show up at our house with a meal or with food or gifts for us. I wept the day that the other pastor's wives all chipped in and bought me a double stroller and two crib sets for my newborn babies. I know the givers were blessed for their giving, but I know we the RECEIVERS were blessed beyond anything I can describe. Brandon and I determined, that no matter what we faced, we would continue to give, and we would give with JOY. It was (and is!) a privilege for us to give back just a portion of what God had given us!
There is an obscure portion of Scripture that always rattles me when it comes to hearing and trusting God. It is in Judges chapter 20 and I encourage you to thoughtfully study that chapter. For our purposes here, I will sum it up with just a few statements. The Israelites (God's chosen people) had received God's instruction for what to do (go to battle), yet when they obeyed, 22,000 of their fighting men lost their lives! I don't know about you, but I would have wondered if I misheard God on that one. After that crushing defeat, God instructed his people again to go to battle the very next day, and again, they experienced staggering losses of fighting men (18,000). That second night, after losing thousands of their friends, fathers, brothers and neighbors, the Israelites again inquired of God for what to do next. Again He instructed them to go into battle. I can't imagine how hard it would have been to obey at that point. They must have been exhausted, defeated, and full of sorrow due to the losses they had experienced. Yet they obeyed and went to battle the next day. After it looked like they would be defeated again, God turned the battle and they defeated their enemy! Can you imagine their surge of faith in God? Can you even fathom the rejoicing and celebration in the Israelite camp that night? Why is it though, that often times our circumstances get darker before they get lighter? Or that things seem to get worse before they get better? I have found that trusting God, and experiencing joy are completely intertwined. Joy is beyond our external circumstances, it comes from an unshakeable belief in God to preserve you, to be with you, and to rescue you at precisely the right time. Deuteronomy 8 sheds a little light on the subject. God (speaking through Moses) says “Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness for forty years, humbling you and testing you to prove your character, and to find out whether or not you would really obey his commands. Yes, he humbled you by letting you go hungry…He did it to teach you…” He is testing us, to see if we will obey, and He is allowing us to face difficulty in order to teach us, and develop us.
So back to our first year in Modesto, things were about to get darker. About six months into this year of struggle, I felt that the Lord instructed Brandon and I to give 400 dollars above our tithe. I felt it so strongly during a service, that I took out my checkbook, stared at the balance of under one dollar and thought about just writing a bad check and believing that God would provide the money before someone cashed it! Instead, I vowed that if God would provide us with that extra money, I would give it to Him without hesitation. Our house in Modesto needed some work done on it at that time. Among other things, it had hideous hot pink blinds throughout the house. Brandon had promised me that if we got enough money back in our tax return, I could buy some new blinds. A couple of weeks after my "vow to God" experience, I checked the mail and opened our $406 tax return! I was very full of "joy" at the idea of replacing my horrid blinds, when I felt a gentle nudge inside of my spirit reminding me that I had pledged that money to the Lord. I discovered right then that it was easier to vow something to God, then it was to carry it out. I went in my kitchen and the tears began to fall. Angry tears, that God would ask me to give this money when we clearly didn't have enough to begin with, but I refused to disobey God. I spent a good chunk of time praying; I did not want to give with a bad attitude; I wanted to give joyfully. As I wrote that check, I made another vow to God that went something like "God, even if I have hot pink blinds for the rest of the time I live here, I will be happy and have a good attitude and be grateful for them." I literally skipped, like a little girl, to the mailbox to send in that check.
What happened from that point is unexplainable. I really have rarely felt such JOY (celebration inside of me) and actual happiness and thankfulness for what I DID have; healthy body, great marriage, healthy kids, a house....and really, we never did go without. And then the provision from God began to roll in; for weeks and months we got checks sent to us from those who felt led to give us money. We got checks from accounts we had overpaid years before, we even got checks from places we couldn't recall ever having had an account! Our meager $400 gift paled in comparison to the THOUSANDS we received by God's provision. It really did get darker, before it got lighter, but our level of trust in God had never been greater. It seems to me that joy is sharpened against the contrast of difficutly and suffering.
The funny thing is, when we moved here, to plant Canyon Creek, we faced great financial distress again. We kept telling ourselves that we had been through this before, so we could do it again. It was much more difficult, but we had learned the lesson of rejoicing in our suffering, and rejoice we did. We were determined to obey and to allow Him to teach us and develop our character and perseverance. You see, it is not about HOW we get joy. Or to rephrase with emphasis in the correct place, it is not about how we get JOY. Everyone wants it, people are attracted to those who have, but it is really not about the joy at all. It is about Jesus. It is about how do I get Jesus. If I can seek Jesus, and press into Him, and get as close to Him as I can, joy is a natural result of my proximity to Him. That does NOT mean I won't feel sorrow, or pain, or loneliness, anger or grief, but it DOES mean, that in the midst of those feelings, I have an unshakeable belief in God to preserve me, to be with me, and to rescue me at precisely the right time. We lose our grip on joy, only when we lose our grip on Jesus.
There are the other things that can begin to sap us of our joy too; giving out more than we "feed" ourselves, allowing ourselves to go to a place of complete exhaustion, and seeking the signs of God and not God Himself. I call a lot of those things the danger of "loving the minsitry of God more than the God of the minisry." But really that can all be summed up with losing contact with Jesus. There is nothing like being at the end of yourself and your own solutions and strength and having the God of the universe touch you....the joy and gratitude just swells up naturally!
Someone out there right now just needs to hear it again right now....He hasn't left you, and He is not going to. He loves you, forgives you and wants to touch you, fill you and rescue you. Even if it seems like it has been 40 years of wandering in the desert, or the losses have been devastating, whatever it is you are facing....He will preserve you and be with you; even in the midst of the place of deepest testing. Our unshakeable belief in that is where joy is rooted, "whole" joy, developed in the face of trial.
For further study
Read Judges 20:18-36. Record your thoughts, insights and how you would feel in that situation, both before victory and after.
Read Deuteronomy chapter 8 (New Living Translation of this is good). Record how God took care of his people, and his warnings if they do not obey.
Share with the group: either something you learned from the above, or a personal example of something you have learned through trial or suffering.
Remember, this is how we encourage each other, share something with the group! Even if you have gotten behind in the study, jump in on this week and share something you are learning!
Your coach and your fan,
di
posted by Di Beals | 10:45 AM
2 Comments:
Di,
What a great gift you have for writing. I enjoyed your lesson, the stories- so encouraging and real. I really appreciate the fact you are willing to be transparent.
thanks Cheryl, you are very kind. I honestly thought I made no sense at all. haha
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