Wednesday the Second Week of Lent – Rejoice Always
Our true North calling and our God hardwiring calls us to heartfully rejoice always to solidify the right heart attitude to posture us to weather all the storms we encounter on the horizontal.
As we continue our Lenten journey, it is helpful to remember who got us here. Jesus! It is important to remember who remains with us as we get tired and forget the daily routines we entered into Lent with. Jesus! It is also important to remember who has grace for us when we start and stop our Lent journey. Jesus!
That, in and of itself is reason to rejoice! Yet do we??
Quick story – I had a dear heart customer when I owned my café. Russ had a condition that caused him to blurt things out. If something didn’t go his way he would often blurt out ‘give me a break’ then when the blurt was out and up and his calmness returned, he would go back to being sweet kind Russ. When I am going through something in my life that is difficult on my ‘horizontal’ one of my tools in my tool kit is to read:
Phillippians 4:4 – Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice!
And honestly, my initial Russ reaction is to scream ‘give me a break’ because reactions happen on the horizontal. I suppose that is why Paul writes in the scripture the second time ‘again I say rejoice!’ Because it is really hard to do. Life has a way of kicking us sideways and not everything we face is worthy of rejoicing, yet we are called to rejoice always. I won’t lie friends – it is hard! What I can say is it gets easier the more times you take that tool out of the tool kit so to speak. Have a scripture that calms you down, the best tool in the tool kit is the bible ❤
Phillippians 4:4-13 helps us through anxiety. This is a key passage that is loaded with excellent tools and benchmarking tips to help us learn to hand over the anxiety we have on the horizontal so that we can strengthen our vertical.
Recently my pastor preached about this very topic and this is a sermon I often refer back to. Pastor Ted, does an excellent job of depicting all we have going on in our everyday life that makes us question our abilities to rejoice always. He goes on to explain how we can live out this scripture in our everyday lives. I hope you find as much value in this as I have.
Anita Stettner 