Chose to do all things with joy & strength. Dont trust your fear more than you trust your God.

Let’s just look at things pragmatically – take all the actual emotion out of it – what makes more sense … Living a life of happiness, joy, strength, and purpose? Or living a life full of complaints and fear and sadness and regret? …

K – now – is it better to trust God & his heavenly magnificence or be full of fear of the world?

Hopefully, you agree that the obvious answers are happiness, joy, strength, purpose and God!

And yet – it’s SO hard to live like it, right?

I am guilty every day of giving fear first dibs on my mind & my heart.

I think part of what makes our relationship with God so powerful is that it requires us to CHOSE him every day, (which subsequently is why its so easy to follow the world & all its shiny, easy options).

Having an all-powerful and all-knowing Lord could mean that we wouldn’t have a choice with what we do, how we do it, and who we do it with. But we DO have a choice. He could require our submission and blindly follow him, but he doesn’t. We get to choose.

Hi, free will!

The problem with getting to choose though – geesh, is that we have to choose!

Fear is loud.

Sadness is loud.

Grief is loud.

Loss/Betrayal/Jealousy/Addiction are loud!

God is not.

He is quiet.

He is the whisper in the corner reminding you that those things are not real and if you just would listen and trust in your heavenly Father, then all of those loud distractions would disappear!

He asks you to hear all the blaring, scary noises and ignore them.

IGNORE THEM!

If you love God, ignore them.

If you trust God, ignore them

If your life & your heart are truly his, then you find a way to ignore all the noise – not because it’s easy or it suddenly becomes quiet, but because you know the noise is just that … noise!

Horrible, painful, distracting, confusing, stressful noise – but still, just noise.

It’s not good, therefore it’s not from God, therefore it’s not worth paying any attention to!

It’s all still a choice though. It’s hopefully not a hard choice to make (cause duh – God, joy, strength etc), but it IS a hard choice to commit to & own! It requires you to have a ton of discipline and awareness. It demands that you put aside your assumption of how you attain joy and strength and instead put your faith in God to deliver everything you would ever want or wish for.

Do you choose joy & strength or sadness & misery? Do you choose the Almighty or the world?

The minute I choose to trust God over myself is when I know peace and feel hope, and I love it! The thing is though … its a choice that you constantly have to make.

You can choose to live with joy in your life, even with hurt, grief, trauma, stress, and despair. It sounds impossible but I promise you, friends, its not. Joy is a choice. Choose God and joy will follow. Joy comes from God. We experience joy when we cast our cares onto our heavenly Father and trust that He is in control

XO

Tay

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.”

Romans 15:13