Is Joy a Weapon?

The word “fight” is what caught my attention.

Fight Back with Joy is Margaret Feinberg’s latest book.[i] As you may know, I am passionate about fighting on our knees for our marriages and families, and I am convinced that worship is a powerful weapon in spiritual battle. When I saw Fight Back with Joy, I was eager to consider joy as another important weapon.

But is joy really a spiritual weapon? As I pondered that question, I focused on Nehemiah 8:10: “The joy of the LORD is my strength.” My thinking followed these successive steps:

1. The word used here in Nehemiah for “strength” is maowz, which means “place or means of safety, protection, refuge, stronghold” (Strong’s H4581). Maowz is sometimes translated as “fortress.” The prophet Jeremiah wrote, “LORD, you are my strength and fortress [maowz], my refuge in the day of trouble!” (16:19, NLT)

2. This means that the joy of the LORD is our refuge; it is a place of protection. In fact, the HCSB translates Nehemiah 8:10 like this: “Do not grieve, because the joy of the Lord is your stronghold.”

When we let go of joy, we make ourselves vulnerable to the enemy.

3. So … if joy is a weapon, then perhaps it is a shield, which offers protection. Roman soldiers had shields which would completely cover them, protecting them from attacks above or from the side.

4. The apostle Paul said that our faith functions as a spiritual shield. Could joy be a part of our faith? It is! It is a core piece, just as metal was sometimes the core piece of a Roman shield.

Joy is the faith that God loves us passionately and personally, intensely and intimately. Joy is the faith that God will keep His covenant promises to us without fail. Our conviction that we can trust God implicitly is what protects us from the schemes of the enemy.

Joy is not an emotion, although it can be expressed as an emotion. Joy is something we do: joy is choosing to believe that God loves us.

Perhaps we can say that joy is like the inner layer of metal within an ancient shield, adding strength to the wood and leather.joy

5. If joy is a weapon, then it is a shield of defense. We can choose to keep ourselves within the refuge of joy, keeping our thoughts and spirits deeply sheltered within the love of Christ—a love that is so wide and long and high and deep that it covers us fully and endlessly (Ephesians 3:18).

6. In researching Roman shields, I learned that the ancient shield was not only defensive but also offensive. How interesting! In fact, some claim that the Roman shield was primarily offensive. It was actually used to punch the enemy. It was the Roman soldier’s “main weapon.”[ii]

So … if joy is a shield, then it is also offensive. I love that! We do not only protect ourselves through joy, but we also advance through joy. We come against the enemy—we overcome the enemy–when we practice tenacious joy.

Here is how we “punch the enemy” with a shield of joy:

We will believe that God loves us. (Pow!) We will believe that God is actively loving us right now in this situation. (Crash!) We will believe that God’s love in unfailing. (Wham!) We will believe that God’s love for us is perfect, wise, and powerful. (Boom!) We will believe that God withholds no good thing from those who belong to Him. (Smash!)

7. So … yes, I think that joy is a weapon. Our shield of faith, strengthened with a core of joy, is a powerful spiritual weapon. As we believe truth, including the truths of love which strengthen us with joy, we are well equipped for victorious battle.

Ann Voskamp puts it this way:

The joy of the Lord is your strength and the person of Christ is your unassailable joy – and the battle for joy is nothing less than fighting the good fight of faith.[iii]

Take up your shield of faith, with its strong core of joy, and watch God win!

[i] Worthy Publishing. 2015.

[ii] http://web.utk.edu/~cohprima/scutum.html. Accessed 6-6-15.

[iii] http://www.aholyexperience.com/2015/06/when-you-want-to-thrive-instead-of-just-barely-survive/

(Shield) Image courtesy of vectorolie at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Forget Your Marriage!

Jun5

Forget your marriage.

Forget working on your checklist for the ideal marriage.

Instead, focus on your spouse.

Trying to achieve a certain kind of marriage can make us crazy. It can be very discouraging. But a lot of that hard work is misdirected energy. We are actually off-target when we focus on the marriage itself.

We have been called to love someone, not to create a particular kind of marriage. We do not take our marriages with us to heaven. We take people with us to heaven.

Focus on loving your spouse, serving according to his or her needs as God directs. As a result, your marriage will be blessed. But turning your eyes away from your spouse to focus on the marriage itself will bring frustration and disappointment.

We thrive when we stop trying to manipulate our marriages, and instead focus on valuing our spouses. They are the real treasures. Your husband is the real treasure. Your wife is the real treasure.

Forget your marriage. Instead, focus on your ministry as a spouse.

When we stand before God, we will not be evaluated by the type of marriages we had. We will be accountable, however, for the way we ministered as wives or as husbands.

We torment ourselves with continually measuring our marriages against our version of the perfect marriage. We can live free from that! Instead of evaluating our marriages, we want to evaluate ourselves as wives or husbands. Let’s pray for insight into the needs of our covenant partners, and then let’s ask God to enable us to minister to those needs according to His wisdom and purposes.

FORGET THIS: FOCUS ON THIS:

grumbling gratitude

changing your spouse accepting your spouse

evaluating your marriage evaluating yourself as a spouse

controlling your spouse serving your spouse

judging, which is claiming examining the motives of your heart
to know someone else’s motives

pursuing your own agenda pursuing Christ, the One who fully satisfies

(This material is adapted from Radiance: Secrets to Thriving in Marriage.)

Blessings to you,
Tami

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Images courtesy of Ambro at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Have no FoMO!

May29

Have you heard about FoMO?

The “Fear of Missing Out” is the latest trend. This phobia can cause endless checking of social media, as well as feelings of anxiety and depression. But Christ-followers have no need to take part in the FoMO fad because we have this fantastic promise from God:

Psalm 84:11 assures us that we will not miss out on even one good thing if we are following Christ.

But we are often tempted to feel that God is holding out on us, aren’t we? We think, if only God would give me the good thing of better health; if only He would give me the good thing of that relationship I want; if only He would give me the good thing of more money or a different job. We wonder how we can get God to just let us have that good thing that He is holding back from us.

But when we believe that God is withholding a blessing from us, our thoughts are rooted in deception. God withholds no good thing from those who follow hard after Him.

There is no generosity like the generosity of God toward His people. He is absolutely lavish in His love.

We can trust Him.

We can trust Him with our marriages. We can trust His instructions to us. We can trust His plans. We can trust Him with our needs, with our disappointments, and with our longings. We can trust Him with our lives.

Joining you in living FoMO-free,
Tami