Today, we're going to take a posture of peace by letting joy take up space in our lives.
Hi, I'm Lindsay Van Zale. Posture is a podcast that serves as a short audible fist bump to remind
you that God is in everything. Together, we're going to be emboldened to take a daily posture
of perfect peace. Psalm chapter 16 verse 11 says,
You make known to me the path of life. In your presence, there is fullness of joy.
At your right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. David writes this Psalm about the
Lord and I love this truth. He says, In the Lord's presence, there is fullness of joy.
And as we've talked about before, God is always present with us. So that means that joy
is always present. God wants joy and gladness for you. He wants joy and gladness for you.
So much so that he placed his empowering presence in you so that you could have full access to all
he is, including his joy. A question that I've been asking myself in this season is,
if that ever-present joy is always full, like this Psalm talks about and like Jesus promised
in John 15 11, then what is there not room for anymore? You know, joy takes up space in our
hearts and in our minds. It expands our capacity in the midst of hardship or conflict or suffering.
It gives us the eyes of heaven to see from God's perspective and then empowers us to act according
to his perspective and his plan. So things like discouragement, fear, offense, bitterness,
rage, there's no room for that anymore because as joy expands in us, it pushes those things out.
Joy equips us to walk in our authority. You can't be joyful and feel inferior at the same time.
And your enemy, Satan, knows this, which is why our joy, much like our peace, is often under attack.
He can't touch our joy because he can't empty any fullness of Christ. He can't undo any work of
Jesus. So what he tries to do instead is diminish the power of joy in our eyes so that we don't
give it priority. And there's many ways he does this. There's two that I'm seeing constantly
right now and I'm going to talk about one today and I'll talk about the other tomorrow. But one
way that the enemy tries to diminish the power of joy in our eyes so that we see it as a lesser
thing is he makes joy to feel like an indulgence that belongs to the world and not an inheritance
that belongs to those who are in Christ. He tries to make us feel guilty for experiencing and
expressing joy, especially in the midst of hard times when I believe joy can actually be the most
transformative. I have experienced this guilt myself. I see it in others. Right now I'm actually
seeing it a lot on my social media news feed. People are almost apologetic for having joy
or having moments of gladness in the midst of this pandemic because it's been such a hard
season for people and people don't want to seem unsympathetic to others' pain.
But let me tell you something. When I have been discouraged, I have never been encouraged
by somebody else's discouragement. In my own hard times, what reconnected me with my courage was
seeing other people experience the fullness of Christ. Their joy, their peace, their kindness,
their hope. That became an invitation for me to believe again that there was more for me than
where I was just currently stuck. Joy does not bypass pain. It doesn't ignore it. It brings us
through it. Hebrews 12.2 says that Jesus, who is the founder and perfecter of our faith,
it says, for the joy that was set before him, he endured the cross. Jesus endured through the worst
pain because of joy. This joy that we have been given, it doesn't come and go. It's not finicky.
It's not fragile. It is always present because God is always present and we need to allow it
to take up its rightful space in our hearts and our minds. The joy of the Lord is a powerful
force that strengthens us and I have had to make the decision many times over, especially in hard
times, that I will not put off the very thing that strengthens me.
of perfect peace is found in Isaiah 26 3 and in Hebrew it is shalom shalom
meaning complete wholeness nothing missing nothing broken this is who you
are in Jesus let's declare this together today I am kept in perfect peace with my
whole heart I trust the Lord I am strong I am victorious I am whole
remember friend you are a living testimony of Jesus's ultimate win not
because of anything you did but because of what he did for you with every step
you take today you're putting Jesus's victory on display and Satan's defeat on
replay