What consumes your mind controls your life.” Kate Hewitt
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” Habakkuk 3:17-18
We live in a World of condition. What’s the condition of our family, our finances, our marriage, our job, our car, our clothes, our status and on and on and on? Our joy is often conditional based upon the condition of what we often allow the World to define as important.
The Lord tells us that the only condition of importance is the condition of our relationship with him. He teaches us throughout his gift to us of the Bible, that a life surrendered to him yields a harvest of riches that cannot be defined or fathomed without close and intimate relationship with him.
If God has blessed you with a simple life, thank him. If he has allowed you to live without the diluting confusion of too much stuff and complexity, praise him. If he has removed any and all things that cause you to take your eyes off of him, recognize that he loves you especially because he has gifted you with a direct line to him, sans all things that can potentially draw your eyes and desires away from him.
So many times in the scripture we are taught that worship occurred during times of tragedy and that joy and fullness of life was the result of obedient worship, faith and acknowledgment that God is good in all things. Worship in all things big and small, good and bad.
Choose unconditional joy because your are the daughter or son of and unconditional Father. He loves you so much that he allows you to choose or reject him. God’s only desire is a close, personal, intimate relationship with us. He wants a relation that was chosen, not assigned. He loves to deliver the desires of our heart as they are revealed through relationship with him. Choose him. Choose joy. Choose simplicity. Choose him because he chose to create you for the purposes he longs to fulfill through you. Choose a life fulfilled by the only source that fills. God the Father.
You’ve got this.