The Joy of the Lord (for wives)

The Joy of the Lord is our strength. We have much grace and power in God when we maintain a joyful mood. The psalms tell us over and over again, to praise the Lord, to sing praise to God. The Bible speaks about the sacrifice of praise. What does that mean? I am amazed at the times when I am tempted to be discouraged and I instead resist those feelings and begin to sing, the peace and joy that slowly infills my heart is incredible. The fears and doubts slowly fall away and faith and hope are once again filling me with the Joy of the Lord.

Why is Joy so important? It is truly the key attitude that we as wives must do our best to maintain because our spirit affects so many lives. When a wife is joyful it makes her husband free and happy in his role as husband. Often we take on burdens and problems (that are not for us to carry) and we lose our joy. I really am finding that as I make it my "business" to be joyful, (in times of trouble) that the problems are always taken care of, somehow and some way. When we are joyful, we show the world around us that God really works but when we are sad and grumpy, we show them the opposite. If we were not happy in God, why would our children be? What hope will they have for their lives? This is so vital to our husbands and our children.

Sometimes we see some flaws that we think our husbands may have and we think it is our job to straighten them out. That is how we will most certainly lose our joy. Ann Ortland says, "It is not our job to make our husbands holy, but it is our job to make them happy." Wow, what a ministry we have! Life gets so busy with the babies and children and we lose sight of this sense of purpose and responsibility towards our husband. We often forget that scripture teaches us that we were created for the Man’s sake. It is when we forget that and lose sight of that, that we lose our joy. Why? Because we can not serve 2 masters!

Satan has many distractions for women (and we are the weaker vessel) so we must always evaluate who is in charge on a day to day basis. Is it our husbands, or maybe it is the children, or maybe the in-laws? Or maybe it is our church or religious system that we are following that has first place in our hearts. It could be even our friends. No matter who it is, there is no way that God can bless us if we are rebellious to our husbands, even if it is in a subtle way. The Bible says that our hearts are desperately wicked: we so easily deceive ourselves into thinking that our hearts are right towards our husbands, when in reality we may very well be rebelling against their authority. Let us be ever on our guard.