The Secret Of Joy

Psalm 126:3

"The Lord hath done great things for

us; whereof we are glad."

        Have you ever started your day, and you thought you show Joy.  Your answer is must likely "Yes! If it was anything like this example, it was fake Joy.  The sort of pretend joy that plasters a smile on your face while inside you there is no joy.   Joy is not real if you are imposing joy on others by going up to someone who that moment discovered his best friend had a car accident and telling him to “rejoice in the Lord always,” to which the understandable reply might be, “Let me punch you in the nose and see how much rejoicing you’re doing then.”

         My friends, joy is not a matter of temperament it is your natural predisposition, an experience that must be manufactured for yourself and other people "faking it" or something so deep that it is not really happy. It's where the smile goes down rather than up. "Real Joy" this joy is a result of being "restored" by God not happy because of your genetics but happy because of what God has done for you. This joy is based upon an objective, real, God-given restoration. And those who have this joy are like those who dream.  

        The ancient world, when it referred to dreams, did not, first of all, mean a daydream. They meant an actual dream, the sort of dream you have when you are asleep. So when the psalmist says this was like dreaming, he is comparing joy to a very good actual dream. He is saying that this joy is like that. This joy is so good that when you experience it you think, “I am living the dream.” Such is the joy that this psalm is talking about.

So throw away all ideas that joy is found in things apart from God, or that God is the serious, gloomy, despondent, negative, critical sort of religious freak who will smack you over the wrists with a wooden ruler as soon as you step out of line. This psalm, first, describes the dream and then, second, tells you how that dream comes true.

        Amen!

Reading: (Ps. 126)

             (Acts 12:9)

Ref: (HG SB)

May God Bless You

And Your Family

Minister Robert A. Lail Sr.

The Cross Life Ministry