{ Wednesday's Word - JOY }

joy

a feeling of great pleasure and happiness

If we don't feel well physically or emotionally it'll often lead us to see our medical doctor. Those things can very often affect our spiritual life, too, and that's where I've been for way too long. I've tried on my own to get through a difficult situation and it was getting me nowhere. I told myself that I would "give it to the Lord", but I picked it right back up again and again and attempted to handle it on my own. I use the word "attempted" because I in no way could do it by myself and it was beginning to take a huge toll on me in all three ways.....

physical, mental and especially spiritual.

I shared with two different people this past weekend how I was desperately needing my JOY back. Wouldn't you know that God had a plan all along when He prompted my precious Friend to send me a "care package" that included a Bible study about JOY!

"Circumstances have a way of conspiring to leech the joy right out of our days. 

Even though we know joy is our rightful heritage from the Lord, 

we live as if we have never known joy's presence. 

We long for joy as if it were something far off and unobtainable. 

But joy isn't really a matter of receiving something new, but of discovering what has always been there. 

For believers, sometimes discovering joy is simply a matter of opening our eyes to a new way of seeing."

Contagious Joy - by Christa Kinde

In my heart I know that someone else reading this is in need of a restoration of your JOY.  

Take heart, sweet Sister or Brother, 

JOY truly does come in the morning.....

 and in the mourning.  

It might not be today or tomorrow, but since God's timeline is not like ours He will surely restore our JOY if we'll just ask and persevere and believe and once and for all lay it at His feet!