This week you get two for one.

“Joy is a deep-seated sense of well-being, of safety in God’s universe. Joy is part of the fruit of the Spirit, growing as a natural product of the transformation of one’s inner self to be like that of Christ, which itself is full of joy. We should, to begin with, think that God leads a very interesting life, and that he is full of joy. Undoubtedly he is the most joyous being in the universe. The abundance of his love and generosity is inseparable from his infinite joy. All of the good and beautiful things from which we occasionally drink tiny droplets of soul exhilarating joy, God continuously experiences in all their breadth and depth and richness.” 

~ From Dallas Willard’s, The Divine Conspiracy: Rediscovering Our Hidden Life in God, p. 62

“If we think we will have joy only by praying and singing psalms, we will be disillusioned. But if we fill our lives with simple good things and constantly thank God for them, we will be joyful, that is, full of joy. And what about our problems? When we determine to dwell on the good and excellent things in life, we will be so full of those things that they will tend to swallow our problems.”

~ From Richard Foster’s, Celebration of Discipline: The Path to Spiritual Growth, p. 195.

PRAYER

“Great are you, O Lord, and exceedingly worthy of praise; your power is immense, and your wisdom beyond reckoning. And so we men, who are a due part of your creation, long to praise you—we also carry our mortality about with us, carry the evidence of our sin and with it the proof that you thwart the proud. You arouse us so that praising you may bring us joy, because you have made us and drawn us to yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” (From Augustine’s, Confessions, p. 3.)

Arouse my heart, O Lord, so I will know the wonder and joy that comes from your presence. In Jesus’ name, amen.