New year’s resolutions are the order of the day. Everyone wants to lose… weight, I mean! Everyone wants to change and become better. Still, most new year’s resolutions last only three weeks. No wonder that Joey Adams says: “May all your troubles last as long as your new year resolutions.” Mark Twain puts it even stronger: “New Year’s Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual.”
What about joy as the main aim of 2012? “What’s new?” I can hear you asking. Joy normally lasts only as long as the Christmas season. Joy is gone with the 2011 December break as soon as “real life” resumes in 2012. Well, here’s a news flash. You don’t have to search for joy. It is as futile as trying to catch a handful of wind. Joy searches for you — The Lord’s kind I mean! All other forms of joy are man-made and temporary. Only joy that reads “Made in heaven” is lasting. It’s circumstance-proof. It doesn’t fade with age or lose value with use.
How does God’s joy find you? I don’t know. There’s no recipe or three easy steps. But what I do know is that Ecclesiastes 2:24 is true: “There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God.” God shares his kind of joy freely with all his loved ones. You don’t acquire it. You only receive it in surprising, supernatural ways. What I know for sure is that God is today extending an invitation to you to receive his peace. Prepare yourself to be surprised and overcome by heavenly joy during 2012. Live in expectation!
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Echurch is an online community of followers of Jesus. But we have a large footprint offline as well. We take the charge to care for those who can't care for themselves very seriously.