The Root of Choosing Joy

The ROOT of choosing joy?

Yeah, that's something I made up.  Yesterday.

See, I woke up and something came to mind-  I felt a little slighted by someone in my church last week, so suddenly I felt morose and didn't really want to go back this week.  I let myself start feeling depressed.

I let myself be late.

When I walked in, I thought I heard the man say to open our Bibles to Romans 12.  So I did.  I started reading.  But my mind was bogged down by the familiarity of the passage, so I touched the icon to change translations, and scrolled to The Message. And that's where I met God yesterday.

And He taught me about The Root of Choosing Joy.  I was smiling by the end of verse 2. Then, remembering that Paul is speaking, and he's speaking as a brother and also a teacher, verse 3 hit me square between the eyes.  Choosing Joy is as simple as believing the gospel. For real.  Do I believe the gospel or not?  The root cause of my depression is failing to believe the gospel.  So the Root of Choosing Joy is believing the gospel.

I'm speaking to you out of deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it's important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.

By the time I got to the end of Romans 12- which is something I memorized long ago and have used as my Mission Statement for Life-  I had realized that the man didn't ask us to read Romans 12, but Acts 12.  No matter.  God and I had met and we were having church, there at a table in the back of the room, and I contemplated what He was saying to me for the rest of the hour as I also enjoyed watching my girls play with their dolls, making them write each other love notes. I'll catch up with Acts 12 later.

Are you struggling to live out of deep gratitude for grace and understand yourself by what God is and does?  Let's stick together on this.