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Christmas Countdown 2018 Day 13 <3

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pc/Rachel Maxwell

On very rare occasions, like maybe five times a year, I have this post ready to go and either scheduled or I can just open it and click “publish.”

The other days, you get me…

fresh off my devotions…

bed head…

coffee breath…

sleep remnants in my eyes and sometimes mascara stains down my cheeks depending on how diligent my face washing went the night before. 

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Which means you get pretty much the thoughts that are on me straight from my heart in the moment. 

And this morning, this girl on the other side of the screen is feeling tired and starting to wear thin a bit as I look at the calendar days left free to do Christmas prepping. 

So the passage today breathes into me just what I need to be reminded about. 

(I also am thinking how my high school English teacher would cringe at the grammatical errors I know I am making as I type…sorry Mrs. Shepherd wherever you are)

So let’s begin with the NKJ of John 17:13

But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.

I can’t type it without hearing the Chris Tomlin song remake of Joy to the World…

Joy…

Unspeakable Joy…

But who’s Joy is it?

To whom does this JOY belong?

It is His JOY that fulfills us. 

In The Message, verse 13 reads…

I am on my way to you. But I say these things while I am still in the world, so that my followers will have the same complete joy that I do.

Complete Joy…that is exactly the Joy Jesus Christ has. 

Complete…as a noun…to the greatest content or degree.

Complete…finished ….in the verb form

Joy that has reached the furthest possible limit and can never be undone. 

That is the kind of Joy that He has…that He is…and that He is has conferred onto His followers as He agonizes in prayer in the Garden. 

Have you been deceived along the way to believe that God doesn’t want you to experience the fullness of JOY?

Now, not “happiness”…please understand.

There is a difference. 

Smiling cheerily and crowing on about how blessed we are because everything is just so perfect in our lives, and my my …. how God must love us to just give us all that and more…

No…

not “happy”…

but instead…

deep and true and eternal and complete….

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JOY

JOY that lights up faces in a too warm concrete block church in the Maasai bush…faces where flies are brushed away to they don’t rest and feed on the fluid around the lids and lashes of their babies. 

JOY that causes young people in a communist country to dance their praise to God and wander around looking for others to pray over so they too might receive this indescribable gift of true freedom. 

JOY that holds us tight as we stand by graves of ones taken far sooner than we ever would have thought we could bear and declares….

Our God is good…our God is faithful. 

JOY

Unspeakable JOY

That transcends all the mess and ugly of this world and our own tendencies to wander and says…

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PC/Rachel Maxwell <3

I will rejoice in the JOY of… HIS salvation.

Joy bends our knees as we fall silent before the One who gave His all for us so that we could be fulfilled in Him <3

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