October 26, 2009
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Letter 14 on assurance and fighting for joy (a letter to my Friend)
Dear Friend,
I know You are with me in this pit for You are the Friend who sticks closer than a brother. You have promised never to leave me nor forsake me. I know I have every reason to rejoice in You today, for You are my God, my Savior, my Redeemer, the Lover of my soul, my Strength, my Portion, but I am having difficulty rejoicing in You today. I don't feel like rejoicing, yet I know that rejoicing in You goes beyond my feelings. So I am asking You to be gracious to me once again. I am not asking You to remove me from this pit, but help me to rejoice in You while I am in this pit. Restore to me the joy of my salvation. Rejoice my soul today for Your glory. Is it not to Your glory that I rejoice and sing and shout joyfully to You? O my Lord, You alone can make me rejoice. I am weak and weary now in my heart and soul and mind and body. I don't even feel like fighting for joy. But You have redeemed me, You have already given me the new song, help me to remember the words and the tune, and then open my mouth so I might sing it once again to Your glory.
I love You.
Redeemed by Your blood and kept by Your grace, trusting in Your promise to give me fullness of joy,
Karen
You can find links to all my letters on assurance and fighting for joy here.
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Comments (9)
Karen,
This lament could be written by most all of Christ's faithful ones. We need His assurance - He has made it a point to reassure us thousands of times..."Let not your heart be troubled," "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world," Fear not, for the Lord your God is with you,"
I have found (we have found) that the Lord does not lose patience with us at these times. He stops and stoops down to minister to us - to hold our hand and look us in the eye. He holds us tight and whispers in our ear that He understands. Nothing can separate us from His love. Nothing!
What slow learners we are! No, I don't mean "head" knowledge, I am speaking of "heart" knowledge. What we have seen and heard from Him should be enough to sustain us through all kinds of storms - and it is. We just need to develop the habit of saying a believing prayer for His joy in good and bad times. Maybe that is it. Maybe developing the habit of thankful prayer in the good times will make it easier to remember our gratitude for His love when other voices try to drown out the voice of the Holy Spirit. Are we forgetting the Holy Spirit? Let's not.
One other thing that helps me is to remember to pray for my friends who also have difficult issues and for my friends who are being blessed, I thank Him for that...
I care very much that you will be well and happy, but most of all that you will draw close to Him and in everything give thanks. His joy will come soon and often. It will become the norm to rejoice and be glad every day. He has promised that for me, too!
Norm
I keep looking for the escape clause. I admire your attitude about this. I am not there yet.
Have a lovely day,
frank
A wonderful, honest letter to our best friend. Blessings!
@quest4god - Thanks, my brother. I was losing patience w/ myself, even though God was not, and that of course made it worse.
I was reading about the dark night of the soul and though the lion was prowling, I had the thought, "How could this happen? I am so ecstatic w/ the love of God!" and within 12 hours, there I was totally decimated, joyless...That was frightening.
I'm still reflecting on this whole experience...I do think there should come a time when it should be the norm, more or less, since as we grow closer to Him we will be more and more filled with Him. I guess I was naive, but I really was beginning to believe I was approaching that.
Yet now I'm considering that the closer we come to God, the more we will be opposed by the evil one. Temptations from within and without will always haunt us and taunt us so long as we are in these mortal bodies. Yet as we're closer to God, we'll be more equipped to fight our enemy.
I'm seeing how I really need to continue to pray that I would not be led into temptation and to be more aware of what triggers these events. As I've written about before, I must be aware of my weaknesses, those things Satan keeps coming back to...
@ANVRSADDAY - I've now known His joy (by His grace alone) and so I'm fighting for it. Perhaps if you think of the best thing in the world you would ever, ever want if given a choice, if you could have anything at all, and then multiply that enjoyment by 1000's, then that gives you some small picture of what I mean...So I'm fighting; I'm asking; I'm wrestling w/ Him to bless me. Beyond comprehension. His joy is available to all His children. I encourage you to ask Him and see what He will do! I know I've known only a small bit of His joy, but I can't stand now not having His joy! To have lost the sense of His joy is perfectly dreadful and wretched.
@cerwindoris - Thank you!
@naphtali_deer -
Thanks,Karen. It sounds awesome. I have never heard of anyone make such a big deal out of it. I guess most pastors have not experienced that kind of joy.
frank
@ANVRSADDAY - Frank, I wouldn't have made a big deal out of it until a couple weeks ago...I knew Him yes, but I didn't know joy like this until recently. I actually had intended to write on joy late last year/earlier this year, but in the meantime I ended up writing about a lot of other things...and now I know why. If I'd written about joy then, the posts would have been theologically fine, I'm sure, but I would have been writing them on a whole different level than I'm able to now. I'm not saying I've arrived by any means, but God has given me joy I've not known before. I came to a point a few weeks back where I found myself asking for joy; I was desperate. It started the day I wrote this.. I wasn't quite sure how that was going to turn out but God answered that prayer exceedingly above all I could have asked or imagined!
Matthew 7:7-11.
Karen
@naphtali_deer -
Thanks for sharing Karen. I am very happy for you.
blessings
frank