God's Mercies, Our Joys

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing. (James 1:2-4 ESV).

After reading yesterday’s devotional you may want to ask me the question in our picture for today. I promise, I have not been too high in the mountains and suffering from lack of oxygen to the brain. The truth of Scripture is that God’s mercies are to be our joys. Our dissatisfaction with life will inevitably lead us into a cycle of discontentment, sin, guilt, and depression if left unchecked. Discontentment will eventually lead to sin, sin to guilt, guilt to depression, and depression back to discontentment. This cycle slowly destroys everything we encounter and touch, leaving us joyless and empty. In order to break this deadly cycle, the pursuit of joy is essential. This is the impact of our reading today. If we joyfully interpret everything that happens, sickness, death, loss, poverty, as actions of mercy rather than judgment, it will transform the way we live as Christians. We must look to Scripture to find comfort that he indeed loves us and does good toward us at all times: God is the one who helps; therefore, we have nothing to fear. (Isaiah 41:13) God’s love is displayed and proven when he sent his Son to die for our sins. (1 John 4:10) Nothing can separate us from God’s love — absolutely nothing. (Romans 8:35-39) God loves us with an everlasting love. (Jeremiah 31:3) Jesus loves us with the same love that the Father loves him. (John 15:9) These are merely a few of the references we might go to. Please don’t miss this truth. Jesus, God’s only begotten Son, was a man of sorrows (Isaiah 53:3). He was despised and rejected by men, suffered and died for crimes he was innocent of, and soaked up the wrath of God for sins he never committed. God ordained all this because He loves us (John 3:16). And since he loves us, we should expect to suffer in this life just as Christ suffered, because “suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us” (Romans 5:3-5). But thank God that, even “as we share abundantly in Christ’s sufferings, so through Christ we share abundantly in comfort too” (2 Corinthians 1:5). Our ability to interpret God’s actions towards us as good is inevitably tied to our contentment and joy. If we’re unable to see his providence as good, we will never be content, and without contentment, we will never fully know the joy he has for us. I’m not crazy! God really has our best working from every circumstance.