14 Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,
that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.
15 Make us glad for as many days as you have afflicted us,
and for as many years as we have seen evil. Psalm 90
Cry to be satisfied with His steadfast love. Begin the day seeking to be satisfied in Him and His character. Then we will sing for joy and be glad.
God’s steadfast love produces joy in us. Sustainable joy. Mason records the shift he experienced in his experiment in joy. From self-confidence to confidence in Christ. From “Will I be happy?” to “What form will my happiness take?”. His anxiety was replaced with joyful confidence.
I added the next verse for context. It is the afflictions that strip us of our self-confidence. The afflictions show us that living for our kingdom doesn’t work. There ultimately is no joy to be found there.
I feel like I’ve been living in evil days for some time now. Many Christians have it far worse than me. The evil of my life has been “unfruitfulness” in the face of apparent faithfulness. Days of ‘plenty’ were followed by days of “pestilence, plague and drought”. My joy can’t be in successful ministry. That is death.
That switch is part of my re-discovery of joy. But it is a battle to walk by faith, not sight each day. Faith that my labor is not in vain because at times it sure looks like it.
I cry for the days of joy to exceed these days of “evil”, in the here and now, not only in the forever days of joy to come.
“A life of joy depends upon approaching each day not in fear or worry but in the confidence of faith.” Mason
Again.
“Joy springs from a deep, settled confidence that God’s life in us is incorruptible and inalienable.” Mason
I’m not precisely sure where or how my mindset shifted. The “lousy” parts of life remain “lousy” but don’t occupy my landscape, dominate my thinking. He is my portion in a more conscious way. The dread dissipates more quickly.
Just witnessed a “successful” man flush it all for the fleeting pleasures of sin. Under the great veneer there was a moral rot that had not yet come to light. A rot that would cause an implosion with debris striking his family, church, friends, and more.
I’ll take my lowly life if that means I don’t shipwreck. Success is not enough if God is not our portion and our cup. We’ll go looking for all the wrong things in all the wrong places, or they will find us ready and willing.
“The depths of misery are never beyond the depths of mercy.” Richard Sibbes
“. . .an implosion with debris striking. . .” I have been wondering about your thoughts.
Heartbreaking