This past weekend I was blessed to be able to attend our woman's retreat. I love going for the following reasons: we are pampered (given cookies, chocolate, scripture verses, bags of goodies), we have a time of fellowship (catching up with one another outside of church), we laugh (games, crafts, free time, late night talks), and we have a great time of bible teaching (and time of silence to mediate on God's word).
This years theme was JOY John 15:11 " I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete." So what is joy? It is the deep and eternal delight in God, God is our source of joy. The purpose of joy is to glorify God. A great quote by Piper says it all "God is glorified when we are sanctified in Him." For me personally, I found this question so helpful: what keeps you from joyful connection with fellow believers? Can you truthfully answer that one for yourself?
With our adoption it has been a leap of faith and getting over some of our fear. My greatest fear is that I won't be able to rejoice in "the bad times, suffering", that I won't be able to persevere. Aren't we all afraid of 'bad things happening' and messing up our 'perfect lives'? This is sin! It is not leaning on God but trying to do it all on our own, and we can't. It is having to trust God, that he does have our best interest in mind. God is sovereign, He knew us before we were born, He will continue to work in us until the day we are more like Christ!
Psalm 100:5 For the Lord is good, his steadfast love endures forever, and his faithfulness to all generations.
James 1:2 Count it all joy my brothers when you meet various trials of various kinds for you know the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.
Romans 5: 3-5 More than that, we rejoice in our suffering, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.
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