This vain world promises us so much but cannot deliver. It even purports to give us joy. This world can never give us joy as it feeds our covetous self and encourages us to be always wanting. It can never satisfy us for we are deep and spiritual beings who need the Lord. We long for peace and power to live life and that is only to be found in God. Only He is the giver of joy and total peace. When we have peace with God, it is a true peace that fills our inner soul with joy.

True joy never fades even through the desperate times of life when we fail and fall. There are times when our faith can become tarnished and we fail to live in the light of God. We can fall away and find ourselves wandering into places we should never go, but our faithful God watches over all. We return to Him when we finally see the trivial and hurtful nature of this present age and come to realise that all our blessings are found only in the Lord. We return and our joy is renewed and burns brighter than ever. This is the way to peace and is to be found in the felt and constant presence of our Saviour, Jesus.

Those who stay constant to the Lord know great joy and the disappointments of life do not drag them down, as they know the keeping power of God and the witness of the Holy Spirit in the life. Joy can only be found in God and all other good feelings do not last. This world and our enemy, Satan can dupe us into thinking we need certain things in life to make us happy and to experience joy, but it is a lie, for the so-called joy of this world and our flesh, does not last. We can think we have joy but is is centred around the circumstances of our life and not on the reality of God. We can think we are living but it is just a sinful life we have fallen into. Let us return to the Lord for He will abundantly pardon and raise us up to serve Him anew in real joy and peace as we believe in Him day by day.

The hunger for joy should drive us to our Lord and God and to depend on Him, which is true life and peace. Let us make peace with Him today and enter into all His amazing blessings He has laid up for us, even in this life. Let us draw near that we will experience joys that never fade, no matter what our circumstances might be. The joy of the Lord is our strength and will dissipate all depressions and manias that are so false, and give us true stability by the indwelling of the Spirit of God.