I spent some time pool side yesterday with my wife and daughter. We wanted to get some sun and enjoy the water. When we arrived, the pool was pretty full with kids fresh out of school for the first day. They were mostly elementary and middle school kids, with a few high school students as well.
We found chairs, sat down, and began to relax. I put in my earphones and enjoyed listening to some of my favorite praise and worship music. I believe in the old saying, “garbage in, garbage out.” That’s another blog. As I sat listening to music I looked out over the swimming pool. I could not hear anything from the outside world, I could only see the faces of the kids in the pool. I saw laughter, joy, worry and stress free faces, and young people having fun. The Lord spoke to me and said, “Take your earphones out for a moment.” I did as the Lord told me.
Suddenly the sound that came along with those faces were audible to me. Great laughter and joyful noise filled the air. The Lord spoke to me and said, “I’m about to do this for my people who have been crying out to me from their brokenness.”
As I thought about this, the Holy Spirit began to enlighten me. Those kids had spent the last nine months or so in school working, learning, going to class, doing homework, taking tests, and stressing out over grades. Now, they were worry free. No stress from the class work, assignments, homework, nor the tests they had to take.
For those of you that have been going through a season of hard work, stress, difficult assignments, and tough testing, God is bringing you out of a testing season and bringing you into time of laughter and joy. He is taking away the look of discouragement and weariness and giving you a stress and worry free look. The key to the beginning of this season is a joyful noise. Psalm 100 tells us,
“Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing. Know ye that the Lord is God: it is he that hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name. For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”
As you begin and continue to live out this chapter, God is going to swing wide open the doors of joy and laughter to your life. Psalm 30:5 tells us “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.” The Lord says the sun is about to rise. Morning is upon you. Lift your voice! Joy is here! The Spirit will bring upon you laughter like a child.
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