Fullness of Joy

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The joy of the Lord is my strength. When I am weary, when my soul feels downcast, the joy of the Lord is the strength of my spirit and the water to my soul.

“Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8:10

The enemy loves to steal our joy. His plan is to leave us feeling hopeless and without a desire for living. He wants to keep us just busy enough that we miss the small joys of life on this earth. Although the father of lies is having his way on the earth, the Lord has the victory and He has planted so many opportunities for joy as we live out our lives on this earth.


About a year ago, right around the time of Thanksgiving, I started a collection of sticky notes on my closet door. I started this collection during a time when I was really struggling with having joy in the midst of my circumstances. I was reading a book called, Daring to Hope by Katie Davis and she talked about the practice she had of writing down her small moments of joy on sticky notes and scattering them throughout her kitchen! I decided to adopt this practice too as a reminder to focus on the things that bring me joy! My sticky notes have everything from sleeping in the dark (a blessing only a night shifter would understand 😊) to getting dressed up to trail runs to the beauty of natural light shining through the windows to the sound of a heartbeat. Writing down these little things that bring me so much joy places me in a posture of thankfulness to the Lord for the simplicity of life.


There are so many small joys in this life the Lord wants to remind us of and focus our attention on. When we spend more time focusing and setting our minds on joy and thankfulness, we have less time to focus on the difficulty of our circumstances and the despair that wants to creep in. Thankfulness is a weapon to combat the enemy's plan to steal our joy!

The greatest joy of all is to know and experience the love of God. Living a life knowing you are loved and forgiven and have new mercies every morning is a reason to be full of joy. Knowing you can live a life of freedom in Christ and release your burdens to Him is a reason to be full of joy. Having the ability to know His heart, sit with Him and talk, and experience who He is gives me an overwhelming fire of joy in my spirit like nothing else.

There are so many emotions the Lord feels with us. He felt sadness and hurt and pain and disappointment in His life on earth. He has felt all these things on this earth so that He could walk with us through them. Because doesn’t it feel so comforting to know the Savior of the world can empathize with us? “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” Hebrews 4:15

Although the Lord feels and can empathize with the pain we experience on this earth, I think we underestimate the power of the joy of the Lord. I know I do! There are days when I just don’t feel it. And there are days when I just don't tap into the fullness of it. But the truth I want to remind myself and everyone reading this is, even on those days, when we spend time with the Lord and reflect on His goodness to us and the love He has so graciously poured out on us, we can be filled with immeasurable joy.

When anxiety was great within me,
your consolation brought me joy.
Psalm 94:19

This joy doesn’t always make sense. Our circumstances don’t render the joy we are experiencing. The joy we are experiencing comes only from Him.

“Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy, for you are receiving the end result of your faith, the salvation of your souls.”
1 Peter 1:8-9

I believe for a lot of us, the Lord wants to restore the joy of our salvation. There are times I think we make salvation all about the prayer we need to pray or the sins we need to repent and turn from. And it is about that, but what about the JOY?! I felt the Lord speaking that to my spirit, What about the JOY?! What about the joy that salvation brings? The joy of salvation is beyond anything we can experience in the physical realm of this world. The joy of salvation is knowing you are loved by the Creator of the universe and cared for by Him for the rest of your life. The joy of salvation is taking in the beauty of a Savior who would lay His life down for us, who would call us by name, and who would free us from the power of sin and death by dying on a cross! The joy of salvation is experiencing eternal life with the One in whom your soul loves. That is something to squeal, yell, scream, and jump around about!!!!

“Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.”
                                                        Isaiah 12:6

Our hope is here. We get to enjoy the hope we have in Jesus on this earth. Right now. His joy is available to us. All we need to do is take hold of it. We can have fullness of joy.

Beauty for ashes,
Joy for mourning
Praise for heaviness

I pray as you read these words you are encouraged to live and breathe in the joy of your Savior Jesus. He loves you so much. He delights in you every day and He loves to see your heart filled with the joy that flows from His Spirit. This is the only lasting joy there is and there is an immeasurable supply of it! Go after the more, the immeasurably more JOY! 

♥ Melissa

Soundtrack for the Joy Encounter :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97HexI3QvCc

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