A Prayer to Find Joy When Joy is Hard to Find
We help one another find joy because of our faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Let’s keep walking in faith as we live in our present. Sometimes our “nows” fill us with excitement, and other times they fill us with trepidation. But God, in his infinite wisdom, gives us each other, the body of Christ, to strengthen and encourage and love one another.
Is your summer filled with joy? Or do you find yourself shaking your head in disbelief as you race to keep up with the days? God holds time in his hands as well as our hearts so we can trust him with these days.
Find Joy Scripture
In this you rejoice, though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith—more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” 1 Peter 1:6-9 ESV
Joy and grief rest side by side. Trials and faith work hand in hand. Fire and praise pull a response from our lips. We don’t see yet we do. This is the mystery of knowing God. It is the infinite wonder of a life surrendered to him. That we might know the fullness of the love of God and the ability to rejoice even when life takes our breath away.
How do we explain this joy? In these verses, Peter writes that it’s the type of joy that is inexpressible. It’s a joy that must be experienced to be understood. And to understand it, we must live our lives fully aware to our circumstances.
So in the days of busy and crazy, remember to breathe. Let’s inhale and exhale. See the sunrise and sunset. And always remember God is with us in the good and the hard. Joy shines when we remember your goodness to us.
Prayer to find Joy
Holy God,
We say, Holy, Holy, Holy are you, Lord. Your ways are higher than ours and yet, your thoughts are tender towards us. God, we ask that you would pour inexpressible joy on us as we believe you for peace, goodness, and your timing in our circumstances. How you love us and so we love you back.
Lord, we grieve. We grieve over our losses and disappointments, our wounds and our pains. We hold our brokenness up to you and surrender the pieces of shattered dreams to your healing touch. Touch us with your love that we might rejoice and bring you glory and honor as you reveal yourself to us.
Lord, we adore you. We surrender because you are love and even when we cannot see you, we trust you. Fill us with your joy as we walk in faith.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen
From the Joy Series:
A Prayer for Joy When You Need It
A Prayer for Joy
Do you ever feel like joy hides like an elusive toddler? You can hear it laughing, but you can’t seem to find it? This week’s prayer for joy will help.
Life contains joys and sorrows. It brings us times of sweet fellowship and bitter loneliness. And sometimes these happen all in the same day!
Discovering joy, holding joy, and experiencing joy. We long for it. And it rests simultaneously with our sorrows and disappointment.
We can know joy even when we know pain because joy is a fruit that God’s spirit grows within us. And holding onto it in the midst of difficulties takes place when we turn out eyes to the Lord, set our hearts on him, and hold fast to courage.
Scripture
“The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” Zephaniah 3:17
Some thoughts
This verse hangs on a piece of art in my home. I walk by it multiple times a day, but it’s easy to let the assurances of it flow off my heart rather than into my heart. But if we were to let the truths it contains simmer in our hearts, joy wells up within.
God is with us. In the fire, in the rain, in the sun, and in the beauty in our lives.
He saves with might. His strength is directed towards us to save, not to harm, not to disappoint, but to help.
He delights in us. Not because he’s God and he should, but because he wants us. He wants you and me to know the delight he has for us.
His love quiets our hearts. Our inner worlds of worry and concerns, doubts and fears stirs up anxiety cyclones in our thoughts. But his love quiets us so we rest assured in his presence and love.
He sings over us. He rejoices because of us. This truth arrests me in my tracks because I don’t feel worthy to be sung over. I know my weaknesses and tendencies and I believe I’m worthy to be chastised, not sung over.
But this is grace and mercy in action. Let’s open our hands and in humility receive it the joy God longs to give us.
The Prayer for Joy
Holy God,
We praise your name and give you glory! You are with us and mighty to save. We need you now, right in the middle of our life’s stuff, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let us rest in you as you quiet our hearts and doubts. You are good and your kindness and mercy is forever.
May you be so very real to us in this moment and let us hear your song for us. As you delight in us, we delight in you and know joy. Joy is your gift to us, to carry us through the sorrows and pains, to hold us together when we face our darkest nights. You are our joy and we rejoice because of who you are.
We love you and give you glory and honor and all praise. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
The Joy Series:
An Article to help you respond in grace to judgmental people:
How to Answer a Judgmental Person With Grace
When Your Heart Needs Perspective in the Waiting
There’s hope for perspective in the waiting.
My perspective in the waiting gets clouded by my impatience. Waiting. I don’t love it. It can make me feel crabby and in the long waits for answers to prayer, it can make me feel hopeless. And hopelessness is a desperate place to be.
But what happens when the things of life drag us down to depths we never dreamed we would reach? What happens when hope seems as distant as the faintest star in the night sky? What happens when we lose our perspective in the waiting?
It’s easy to get stuck in a disbelieving cycle that God can and will come through for us. In fact, I daresay, it’s a tactic the enemy of our souls uses to isolate us even further. It’s in these moments of doubt that we must turn to the only one who can help us. In fact, we can bring our doubts to him and receive grace.
This week’s Scripture passage
“We wait in hope for the Lord; he is our help and our shield. In him our hearts rejoice, for we trust in his holy name. May your unfailing love rest upon us, O Lord, even as we put our hope in you.” Psalm 33:20-22.
Positioning myself to wait in hope means that I need to recognize that God is my help and that he is working in ways that I cannot see, but I need to trust him. He is your helper. You can trust in him.
Then I need to hide in him–he is my shield. He is your shield. When we hide in him, we go where he wants us to go, and we stay protected from the tactics of the enemy.
One key component to this kind of waiting–the kind that knows hope–is found in rejoicing. We can rejoice because of who God is. He is kind, merciful, full of grace, loving, good, just, faithful. Think about his goodness towards you, remember his faithfulness, rejoice that he rescues you.
This week’s prayer
“Lord Jesus, King of kings, and Lord of lords, we glorify your name. You are most worthy of praise and there is no one like you. Our hearts bear burdens that steal our hope and we need you. We need you to be our hope. As we wait in you let your unfailing love fall upon us. Wrap us in your love like a comforting blanket on a cold and windy day.
You are our help and shield. You are with us, you guide us, and you defend us. May we rest in you, trusting and believing that you are working behind the scenes in ways that we cannot see. If we cannot see your hand at work, help us to trust your heart. You are for us and you never leave us nor forsake us.
We praise your name and receive your hope.
In Jesus’ name, Amen.