A Prayer About My Joy
Will you not revive us again, that your people may rejoice in you? Show us your unfailing love, O Lord, and grant us your salvation. Psalm 85:6-7
Dear Father, once again I begin a day thankful for the honesty, reality and candor of your Word. I am strangely comforted that the Scriptures are full of people like me-believers that are in constant need of what you alone can give. So many of your sons and daughters, throughout the history of redemption, give voice to my heart’s cry and longings. Today I’m thinking about my need for gospel-renewal and restored joy.
When I hear the Apostle Paul ask believers in Galatia (4:16), “What has happened to all your joy?”, I’m not sure how I’d answer. Have I fallen back into legalism? Am I filled with unbelief? Am I looking for joy somewhere else? Have I hoarded my hurts and wounds from you? Am I angry at you and don’t want to admit it? I’m not sure how or where my heart began to leak or lose its gospel felicity and childlike spontaneity, but I join the psalmist’s cry, “Will you not revive us again that your people, (that I) may rejoice in you?”
Father since your joy is my strength (Nehemiah 8:10), then cause my heart muscle to beat afresh with the joy which fills heavens courts, I pray! Holy Spirit, since joy, is one of the fruit you grow in the lives the children of God, then weed, prune and fertilize my heart for a fresh crop. Jesus, since you are praying that I would experience the fullness of your joy (John 17:13), then I will live with anticipation and hope, for your prayers never fail!
Glorious Triune God, continue to open the eyes of my heart to the unfailing, unflappable and unlimited love you have for me, and the whole Bride of Jesus, in the gospel. For there is no joy if there is no gospel. There is only episodic happiness and superficial relief.
Indeed, Jesus, though I have never seen you with my naked eye, I do love you, and I love you only because you first loved me. I do believe in you, because you gave me the faith to believe in you… now fill me afresh with an inexpressible and glorious joy as you continue to work your salvation throughout my whole being, and the entire cosmos (1 Pet. 1:8-9). So gratefully I ask, Amen!
