Day 37 - 40 Days of JOY

Dr Jim Brown's TruNorth Devotional
40 Days of JOY
Day  37 | BE GLAD AND REJOICE
BE GLAD AND REJOICE

Joel 2:21-23
“Fear not, O land; Be glad and rejoice, For the LORD has done marvelous things! Do not be afraid, you beasts of the field; For the open pastures are springing up, And the tree bears its fruit; The fig tree and the vine yield their strength. Be glad then, you children of Zion, and rejoice in the LORD your God;”


The LORD here enabled the Prophet Joel to see into the future enough to encourage God’s children that His blessings were returning!

Joel was encouraging them to have FAITH and to be glad and rejoice!

It was as difficult to have faith in Joel’s time as it is to walk by faith today.  Yet, the LORD tells us that “the JUST shall live by faith.”  (Romans 1:17)
 
Are you?  Are you living by faith or are you tripping over the day’s news and letting your emotions tie you in knots?

It is, of course, your choice.  But Hebrews 11:1 tells us that faith is: “Faith is the substance of things HOPED for, the evidence of things NOT seen.”

The adage, “I’ll believe it when I see it,” is NOT faith.  It takes no faith to believe something that you can see, but it does take FAITH to believe something you cannot (yet) see.

The People of Israel – in Joel 1 and 2 – had been disobedient to the LORD and thus were hard hit when an army of locust brought the drought.
 
When we are right with the LORD, we WANT “the day of the Lord.” But when we are not right with Him, we DREAD “the day of the Lord.”
 
“Faith is the substance of things HOPED for.”  What are you hoping for?  Are you focusing on that or the pain you’re in at the moment?

Prayer: LORD, it’s not always easy to walk by faith, and yet, that is what you desire me to do.  Help me, LORD, to look more at you and less at the problems.  Amen.