She Yearns: Habits of a Godly WomanНамуна

Do you long for happiness? Experts tell us an overwhelming majority does, seeking happiness through relationships, wealth, and health. Although these sources generate temporary responses, the masses believe happiness will result.

Even believers can fall prey to this reasoning. When relationships flourish, health is vibrant, or business thrives, we feel elation, trusting these pursuits will make us happy. And maybe they will. For a while. But what happens when relationships deteriorate, business struggles, scales show an ungodly number, or health fails? Gone is our happiness. Where do we find it then?

The woman growing in godliness learns happiness stems from satisfaction in God’s steadfast love. The Bible teaches this joy is a divine work, not a mere emotional response. It’s a work God does within us as we grow spiritually. We cannot choose to be joyful.

At the same time, Scripture commands us to rejoice. Paul urges Christians to rejoice, echoing the psalmist, calling God’s people to be glad and rejoice in Him. We can choose to be joyful.

What a conundrum. We don’t have to grasp how it works, but we should understand learning to abide and praying with intention leads to joy. In one sense, God does the work in us. In another, rejoicing is a responsibility.

How does one make joy a habit?

• Identify Joy Stealers. Be it doubt, fear, failure, too many red lights, or a troublesome person at work, identifying what causes us to lose our joy is the first step in devising a plan for holding onto it.
• Train Yourself to Choose Joy. Paul compares his strategy for defeating all that comes against his faith to disciplining his body like an athlete. Like any life-giving discipline, choosing takes effort, but we can train ourselves to rejoice.
• Ask for Satisfaction in God. The psalmist asks God to satisfy him with His steadfast love. We should do the same. Our only hope for happiness is to stop looking at anything outside of Jesus for our worth, trusting God to love us in a way that satisfies.

What if we fear an excess of failure or a deficiency in seeking? Suppose we really aren’t enough? Will He still be faithful to His Word? He will. Even while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

Ask Him to satisfy you as only He can.

Unexplainable joy awaits.