Lord, many of Your people are heavy-laden. A spirit of heaviness has fallen across our land, and perhaps the world. But I know You draw near to those who are crushed in spirit. You promise that joy comes in the morning, that weeping may endure for the night, but Your faithfulness will awaken the dawn. Come on sunshine!
With expectant hope I anticipate Your deliverance from the deception and depravity of mankind that is everywhere.
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Lord, You are my strength, my hope, my joy. This I know and this I believe. Yet a spirit of heaviness has taken hold — I haven’t been able to release its grip. Would You anoint me with the oil of joy, and help me put on a garment of praise?
The trials have been fierce lately — relentless. Suffocating. But I know You are with me. I know that in Your presence is fullness of joy.
Why can’t I access it?
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Lord, the Christmas bells are still ringing, twinkling lights still dot the landscape. Sanctuaries still announce Your birth with red, gold, and silver raiment laced through the evergreens, and yet a spirit of heaviness weighs me and many others down. I need a breakthrough of joy, Lord. Rescue me from this sadness.
It has no rhyme or reason — this sadness. It just is. Perhaps it’s an accumulation of sadness — sorrow upon sorrow until now it is beginning to consume me.
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Lord, I know that I know You are my source of joy. There is absolutely nothing better than being in Your Presence where joy is unspeakable and cherished. Your joy makes me want to dance in the rain as I rejoice in Your love, but … there’s always a but, isn’t there, Lord?
But life is muddy sometimes and my happy feet slip in the mud and down I go — back into the pit, stuck in the miry clay.
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Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference
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