Choosing Joy and Conquering Fear: 5 Steps to Spiritual Happiness
Choosing joy and conquering fear as shown
through Rebekah’s symbolic Journey to Fruit of the Spirit.
Study the 5 Steps to Spiritual Happiness
2000 Years Ago: Rebekah Choosing Joy
Rebekah pinched herself to see if she was real. Ouch! Next time she wouldn’t pinch so hard! Today, choosing joy was a no-brainer. It was showering her!
It just didn’t seem that this could be happening to her.
One day, she’s walking to the well for water, just like any other day from the time she could carry a water pot, and then a man comes along, someone whom she has never seen before in her life, but he speaks the same language as her family, and he’s got some wonderful stuff in his saddlebags…
and they are for her! Just the stuff a girl dreams of… jewelry… diamonds!
The man wants her to go with him. He wants her… Rebekah!… to climb up on one of his camel-beasts and go to a far country. And marry a man she has never seen before.
The man says he and his boss Abraham prayed long and hard about the perfect wife for the only son.
And God told them where to go to find Rebekah.
It was a powerful story. She felt she, also, had a knowing about this; it seemed right, somehow. There was no fear, no dread of leaving home and family. No reluctance to leave the luxury she knew for the discomforts and inconveniences of the trail. No, she didn’t dread it. She only felt incredibly drawn. To a man God had chosen for her in this supernatural way.
But it was different for Mother.
“Rebekah!”
“Yes, Mother,” Rebekah replied. Reluctantly, she left her dreaming and joined Mother and brother Laban where they sat with the servant from the far country.
Mother’s tears welled as she drew Rebekah into her arms. Mother believed also that this was from God, but it was so hard to let her daughter go. She and Laban begged the servant to let her stay just a few days, maybe ten.
But the man shook his head. “Hinder me not.”
Mother whispered to Rebekah, for she could not speak aloud. Tears flowing rivers down her cheeks. She knew so much more than her daughter, seeing much potential for misery. Hard knots hampering trust. But… “Wilt thou go with this man?”
Rebekah turned her lovely face up toward her mother’s. “I will go.”
Her heart was choosing joy; soaring skyward on dove-wings.
Today: Choosing Rebekah-Joy
Have you ever been in a position where you knew something was right for you, and yet at the same time totally out of character?
You want the new job position, but it’s way beyond your comfort zone. It will demand your absolute maximum effort. How do you know it’s the right thing? Can you do it justice?
Some of the circumstances that test our trust and jeopardize our joy are things we actually want to pursue for growth and success. To become more than we are today, we have to climb onto pretty tall camels sometimes. But the promise of diamonds isn’t all that convincing when your whole being is screaming scared. Will you go?
After I started my first full time position, I had recurring nightmares. In fact, once in awhile I have versions of the same nightmare to this day. Or night, I mean. I was at my job, but I wasn’t able to perform, so I was messing up in a big way, and I knew I’d be fired. I was late for work, I was goofing off, In this nightmare, I was doing all the wrong things, and I could. not. help. myself. The fear was incredible, and even in the nightmare, I tried to wake myself up and tell myself it was not true. I was doing the job and I was performing. My boss was happy with me. I would not be fired.
But the acid taste of the bad dream lingered in my awake-ness, too. After all, it was my subconscious exposing what I had deep down inside. Fear. Fear of failure. The agonizing fear that I wasn’t enough.
Choosing Joy Over Fear: 5 Steps to Spiritual Happiness
Most of the time it is fear that is getting in the way of joy. Every negative feeling we have – anger, insecurity, insufficiency, loneliness – all stems from fear of some sort.
So we have to figure out how to manage fears. I’ve tried to come up with a list of deliberate steps to conquering fear and choosing joy. I’ve named these steps…
- Be Prepared
- Acknowledge the Fear
- Utilize the Power of Prayer
- Set Goals
- Channel the Fruit of the Spirit
Be Prepared
Whatever the thing is you struggle with most, prepare some defenses for when the feelings overwhelm you. Rebekah took a giant leap of faith. She had no guarantee of success. She did have her faith in God. And God’s Word is full of promises of success when we follow His direction. We can prepare for the difficult times by stuffing ourselves with these promises, so we can drag one out whenever a camel is waiting to be climbed.
Acknowledge the Fear
Our perfect love gives us courage to “just do it.” When we just do it, we discover that God is right beside us, lifting a foot onto that first step, and then another, and after awhile we realize we’re riding the camel. And we can depend on this to happen every time we step out in faith. We don’t know how it will happen, but we know it will. When we recognize our feelings as fear, we can deliberately choose love, which by interpretation can be the same as choosing joy, and the fear is cast away. There’s no fast magic in this, but the more we choose to do this, the easier it gets.
Utilize the Power of Prayer
Sometimes the prayer channel gets clogged by our fears. It seems useless to pray, because nothing is changing. That thing I have to do will not go away; I have to figure out how to do it; no one will do it for me. But. Remember that God has promised that no prayer goes unanswered? Grab that one for dear life, and pray, pray, pray. When the job is done, when you did your best, you’ll discover the ways that prayer helped. Maybe not during the trial, but later. So go the good old Gospel way and pray!
Set Goals
So today wasn’t that great. I spent most of my 16 awake hours without a lot of joy. I forced myself to do the work, I spent 30 minutes suffering through my exercise program, my meals were grab and go because I was running late, I forgot to drink my water. On and on, right? But the goals are in place. You’ve written them down, and they’re all good. Give yourself room to mess up sometimes. Admit that no one is always perfect. Choose one thing to do, then pick up the pencil and tick the task off the list. Then another. Then you’ll be back on track, joyfully nailing your goals for the day and eagerly making a new list for tomorrow. That is how it works. Some days are nothings; forget them and choose to live for the good ones.
Channel the Fruit of the Spirit
Contrary to our lazy hope that the fruit will just grow in us when we give our lives into God’s Spirit, that’s not the way it happens. I’m sorry to burst that bubble. Every single fruit, and that includes Joy, is the direct result of digging a trench to water the tiny seeds that are deep inside, wanting to sprout. They need irrigation, fertilizer, sunshine, and regular attention. Talk to those seeds if you want them to grow. “Okay, Joy, I know you’re in there somewhere. Am I holding onto some hurt feelings, little hard rocks that keep the water from flowing down the channel? All right, broken fingernail, callused palms, but those rocks have to go. I’m choosing Joy.”
On this Journey to Fruit of the Spirit, are you choosing joy?
The Fruit of the Spirit
Ten “Friday of Preparation” studies align the story of Rebekah in the Bible
with a Fruit of the Spirit, then concluding with the “Legacy” post.
The series begins with “Love.”
