Finding Joy by Seeing God in Everything

He has made everything beautiful in its time. Also He has put eternity in their hearts, except that no one can find out the work that God does from beginning to end. Ecclesiastes 3:11

When I first started this blog, my goal was to see God in simple, ordinary things.  It was a way to come up with blog posts, yes, but more importantly, it was a way to keep my mind focused on the spiritual side of life as much as possible. Some days that's easy. Some days that's hard.  But, it has made me more spiritually minded for the most part.

Last night in my ladies' Bible class, we finished up a lesson about being joyful. There was a quote that really caught my attention (Sorry that I don't have the name of who wrote it. I'm bad about not listing sources on my lessons.) Joy is the flag that flies over the castle of our hearts announcing that Jesus is in residence today. I love this!!  We can learn to see God in everything - we can learn to have JOY, when Jesus is in our hearts.  We can fly that flag showing who is in residence there.  What a wonderful thought!!

There is a catch to being able to fly that flag. The only way to experience the fruit of joy is to be obedient to Christ and submit to the Spirit on a daily basis. To discover joy we must quit searching for joy, itself, and go looking instead for the ONE who IS joy - JESUS! And by learning to see God in everything, we will learn to be obedient to Christ and learn to submit to His Spirit.  We will find, that along the way, we have found true joy.

“If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”  John 15:10-11

 “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”

John 15:4