GET YOUR ZEAL FOR CHRIST BACK

This is going to be a bit of a call back to a blog I typed back in 2009. Before I get to it, I'm asking for your prayers. Now things may change after I post this but as of right now, I've been asked to do something real big. At least to me it's big. I'm not going to mention what that thing is just yet, but I'm asking for your prayers that God has his way and that no flesh gets the glory.

So back in 2009 I typed a blog called, "No Joy, No Strength. No Faith, No Strength." If you go back and read the blog remember it was back in 2009, and I've typed worse things in a blog. Anyway, this is the part of the blog I really want to call back to:

 You hear it said all the time, "The joy of the Lord, is my strength." Yeah, that really sounds good, don't it? But, do you really carry the joy of the Lord or do you let the Devil ride? (Shout out Deacon Moody, the coolest deacon I've ever met.) Do you carry joy, or do you carry hate? Some of us, including me, need to check ourselves. We say the right stuff, but do we really mean it? A lot of us are weak because of our lack of joy. By the way people can sense that, which is why you can't get through to people. We often use the Bible verse, "Weeping may endure for a night, but joy's gonna come in the morning." That's true, don't get me wrong. I truly believe that, but I think and believe that we can cause the night to linger longer than it has too. For some of us, the morning could've been here, but we let the Devil influence how we think and feel. Thus we stop believing. Thus we start to doubt. When people go to the altar to give their lives to the Lord, the verse found in Romans 10:9 "That if thou confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shall be saved." A lot of people confess but they don't believe, and I think that's how we lose joy. In our heart, we truly stop believing thus we lose joy. Faith is also important for strength, because if we lose faith, we lose joy. My pastor defines faith as this, "You got to see it before you see it if you're ever going to see it." Now the Bible says, that life and death lies in the power of your tongue. So with faith, you got to see it, but I feel that speaking it will add more confidence to your faith. Now if you're gonna have faith, doubt has got to go. Trying to have faith with doubt is like trying to have a classy show on VH1. It's not going to work. I'm just saying if you're feeling weak mentally, maybe you need to get some joy in your life. Use your faith and speak that you will have some joy in your life. How to get joy, you ask? Jesus. Jesus can give you joy. As the late Rev. James Moore would say, "I know Jesus can give you joy! JOY! JOY!"

To be honest there's not much I can add to this but here's an attempt. Don't you wish that you didn't have to force a smile on your face? Don't you wish that you didn't have to be fake? There's an old hymn that says, "Since Jesus came into my heart,Since Jesus came into my heart;
Floods of joy o’er my soul like the sea billows roll,
Since Jesus came into my heart." When someone really has the joy of the Lord, they don't need to fake it. They don't need to force a smile. That's not to say that they don't feel other emotions, but they don't let the devil upset their rest. It took me a long time not to let people get to me. I'm not perfect in that yet, but I've gotten much better with that. As far as letting people do what they do and not letting it affect how I act. There's a phrase that has been used in the past decade that says, "Haters are gonna hate." People are going to do what they do behind close doors. What's done in the dark...you can only hide who you really are for so long until the mask comes off.

So the question comes how does one truly be joyful. I said in the post in 2009 that Jesus can give you joy. Kurt Carr has a song that says, "We got to put Jesus back number one." We have become so dependent on our phones and social media that when we wake up in the morning what's the first thing most of us do? Check for text messages and notifications. What if we woke up and actually started off when a Thank you to the one that woke us up? What if we started with a prayer? What if we started off with meditation on the word of God? If we really put Jesus number one, make him the first priority of your every day, joy will follow. Real joy. No longer will we have to fake being joyful. No longer will we have to force a smile on our face. Get back to when you first received Christ into your life. We need to get back to the zeal we had when we first got saved.

Now if you're not saved, the bible says, "That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved."

Stay Saved,

Daniel Richerson