Looking for Some Fresh Joy
I love to read the Psalms. The majority of the Psalms were written by King David, a man considered by God to be a man after Gods own heart. They were written by someone that God considered to have a heart like His. I assume that God meant that David had an honest heart that truly loved the things of God. He was authentic in his walk with God but he was also flawed. He made mistakes. I love the Psalms he wrote because they are honest before God. David ranted at times. Expressed doubts at times. But in the end he always came back to faith and love for God.
Several days ago I stumbled on a scripture that I had read many times but for some reason it jump out at me. Psalm 25:9 says “The meek will He guide in judgment, the meek will He teach His ways.” My first thought was “what does it mean to be meek?” My second thought was, God must be saying meekness is a key to having God guide you in the correct way. God is saying meekness is an important trait to have if you want to understand God’s ways and be guided by Him in what to do in your life. This set me on a two-fold journey of exploration. One question I had was, what does it mean to be meek? The other was, what else does God promise if we are meek?
Meekness explained by Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Dictionary is an attitude of humility towards God and gentleness towards people, springing from a recognition that God is in control. Weakness and meekness may look similiar but they are not the same. Weakness is due to negative circumstances, such as lack of strength or lack of courage. But meekness is due to a person’s conscious choice. It is strength and courage under control, coupled with kindness. Meekness is active and deliberate acceptance of undesirable circumstances that are wisely seen by the individual as only part of a larger picture.
Lets unpack this a bit and wrap our brains around what meekness looks like in our own life. I believe it’s something like this… Circumstances happen to us all the time that we did nothing to cause. We experience bad circumstances, suffering and trials that just happen. Like when a person of perfect fitness gets a doctors diagnoses that cancer is growing in their body. Or your humming along doing fine financially and the market crashes taking all your money with it. Or you think your marriage is fine only to find out your spouse has been unfaithful and wants a divorce. Life happens. And with good comes bad. We live in a world that is broken. Sin has corrupted our world which has caused us to reap the byproduct of it. That byproduct is the repercussions we face throughout our life.
Experience of bad things happens in our lives and when we are meek, we accept those circumstances as part of God’s bigger plan. We choose to allow God to be the sovereign God and accept that He knows better than we do. Instead of allowing anger to root in us and plant a seed of bitterness, we draw closer to God and allow Him to be our source of joy. In our trial, we place ourselves in the hands of God and live in the joy of the Lord. Maybe nothing else is good in life but God is good and that’s enough for us. We let His strength be our our strength and His courage be our courage. We place our rights aside and live in the knowledge that God has our best interest in mind.
Easy to say, harder to do. But if we can find a way to live in meekness God promises some pretty great things.
Psalm 37:11 says “The meek shall inherit the land and delight themselves in abundant peace.”
Matthew 5:5 says “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”
And Isaiah 29:19a says “The meek shall obtain fresh joy in the Lord”
Just love some of those words, like delight, peace, blessed, inherit, fresh and joy. When you start to meditate on the promises of God its hard not to strive to please God. We gain so much by just letting God be our God and letting Him be in charge. Meekness at its core requires us to trust in and lean on God. We gain so much by being meek.
The meek get God’s guidance so we can make good judgments. He teaches us His ways so we can know the correct way to live. Not because He wants to hold out on us and keep all the fun things away from us, but because He knows that we are built in His image and we function best when we live like He has created us to live. We then will have fresh joy because it’s in the Lord that we get our joy. When God fills you up inside its an incredible feeling. There is no other feeling of happiness that can touch the feeling of God lighting you up from the inside out. When God has poured Himself into you and you are consumed by worship it is the most euphoric feeling that you can ever feel. That my friends is the joy of the Lord, it comes only in the pursuit of God. When we pursue God and draw near in worship, it is where joy is found. Fresh joy comes in our meekness.
What a great word delight is… the meek inherit land and the earth. And then they delight themselves in abundant peace. They experience great pleasure in the great inner peace that abounds in them. They are completely at peace with themselves, the world and others. And it fills them with happiness. Can you imagine having an overwhelming amount of peace in your life? So much so that you are filled with incomparable pleasure. That I believe would also be fresh joy.
Meekness… it seems to hold some really great promises of God. I’m asking God for help with achieving meekness in my life. I could certainly use some fresh joy. How about you?