Steps To Overcoming Despair And Finding Joy

Below is the transcript from the video above.

Hey, I hope that everyone’s doing well. Happy spring and I wanted to share some things that God has been doing that has been a really difficult path for me the last couple weeks. I’ve had some things taken away that have been really difficult and have found myself in despair. And, and I don’t know if anyone else out there is suffering and feeling like they’ve lost their joy, but that’s where I’ve been. And it’s, it has been really, really difficult. And so, I have to say that God has just been amazing in the way that he is teaching me some things that I obviously needed to learn. 

You’d think that someone who has been a Christian as long as I have and is as old as I am, would not have such a struggle with something so basic as joy. But the fact is that our battle is real and it never gets any easier. We just have to learn how to continue to seek God and to be that warrior that continues to turn to him for everything. And unfortunately, I struggle with my independence from God. So often it takes me longer than most people to learn lessons. So anyway, as I’ve really struggled with this issue of joy and feeling just abject despair, the last couple weeks, uh, to the point that I really didn’t even wanna go anywhere or do anything, which is really pathetic, I finally cried out to God and just said, and I have been for the last few days just saying, God, just help me. Help me understand, help me to learn, help me to get back the joy of my salvation. 

You know, God is just so faithful. He really is. He brought me to the Bible this morning in the book of Nehemiah 8:10, where it says, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”  And I thought, well, okay, that’s good. What does that even mean? Because God, you know, that sometimes the Bible just sounds so esoteric to me. It’s like, oh, that’s nice. You know, what does that really mean? What, how do I make, how do I find joy in you? And how does that become my strength? What does that look like? 

And of course, God’s patient with me, he’s like, oh, little one, you know, come alongside. I’ll show you. This means if you really wanna know. And I really did wanna know. So God broke it down to me, kind of simple cuz he knows I’m really simple and reminded me of the things that bring me joy. And, you know, God uses the physical realm a lot of times to teach us in the spiritual realm because we do need things broken down simply. Because our natural man does not understand the spiritual realm. 

And so he reminded me of the things that have given me joy and thus given me strength so I could understand the connection. So, for example when my children were born, you know, that was a great sense of joy for me. And I felt like I was on top of the world. When I won my first case and graduated from law school, I felt like I was invincible. When I fell in love, you know, I felt so wow, you know, this is just making me so powerful. And I felt like the world was a wonderful place and I had this great joy and nothing could steal it away from me because I gained strength from those joyful experiences. 

But then what happens? Those things fade, right? I mean, those things, they disappoint us. Whether it’s love or whether it’s accomplishments or even wealth, our jobs, we become less joyful about those things. They keep, it’s almost like they keep us hungry because we’ve misplaced our joy in those things. I don’t know. But anyways, I’m studying this and I’m like, okay, God, I got it. So I put my joy in the wrong things .Not that God doesn’t want us to have joy in those things, he certainly does. But I thought, well, you know, maybe I need to read this book of Nehemiah and figure it out, to get some clarity about this. 

And so I did. I’ll tell you what God has taught me is it’s something I should have already known. But I think his words are vast, deep and wide, so we can learn lessons all over again when we forget them. And I wanna tell you the story in Nehemiah, not just because some of you may not have heard it, but it is God’s word, and is worth retelling. It is worth studying over and over again. And so, in a nutshell,

The book of Nehemiah begins with Israel in captivity because they had turned away from God. And King Nene had taken them into captivity and destroyed Jerusalem. And the king that was currently ruling at this point in history was King Artis, Xi’s, and Nehemiah was his cupbearer. One day Nehemiah is in his court serving wine to the king. And the king notices that he is bummed out and he says, ‘What’s going on? Nehemiah, your soul looks like it’s disturbed.’ And Nehemiah is like, ‘Oh, should I tell him? You know,’ and he’s having this conversation, this sidebar with God. And God just gives him the words. And he says, ‘Yeah, I am bummed out. My city, the place where my whole family is buried, that was my ancestral home, it lies in ruins and I’m a slave.’ And so he puts it to him pretty bluntly. And the king’s like, ‘Well, why don’t you go and rebuild it?’ And Nehemiah is like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is really happening.’ And so Nehemiah, inspired by God, I’m sure, gets bold and says, ‘Well, I need letters so that nobody attacks me because I’m a Jew and everybody hates the Jews, right? And I need some lumber. Can I get some lumber from your forest, the king’s forest?’ And to his surprise, the king says, ‘Sure. I’ll get you squared away.

So he sends Nehemiah with a bunch of people to protect him, his own captain’s guard, back to Jerusalem. And long story short, this ragtag group of Jews get together and rebuild the wall around Jerusalem in under 55 days. I think it was 52 days. And there they have all kinds of people who are trying to discourage them.A couple dudes by the name of Sam Ball and Tobias, who are just like, ah, you know what? You’re just feeble Jews. You come out to the desert and meet with us.They were trying to discourage the whole process. But Nehemiah responded with “we are sent of God and he did it well.” So fast forward, they’ve rebuilt the wall the people are in there and the priests decide they’re gonna read the Book of God, the book of the law to the Jews. As they’re reading it, the people are like, oh my gosh, we have no wonder we’ve been slaves. We have rebelled against God. And as they were reading the book of the law, it was like a mirror being shined into their soul. And, it was God’s.

And that’s why God gave us a lot to reveal our sin, obviously. And they were going, oh, we’ve sinned against God. We’re the reason that we’ve been slaves. And they’re just repenting. They’re just like, they’re sad and they’re just like, oh God, we’re sorry. You know, we wanna come back. We wanna be your people.

Nehemiah responds in chapter eight with this—And he says, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. And do not mourn nor weep. He says, go your way. Eat the fat, drink the sweet wine. Send portions to those who don’t have anything prepared, for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” And wow. I was like, okay, God, it’s starting to become a little clearer to me why this was written. 

Then I kept reading in chapter nine. Chapter nine is the priests and Levis basically recounting all the blessings in the history of Israel from the calling of Abraham to the promise of God that he would bless them with a nation that outnumbered the stars, calling them out of Egypt and defeating Pharaoh, parting the Red Sea, providing so that their clothes wouldn’t wear out and their shoes wouldn’t wear out when they were wandering the desert to giving them this great kingdom.

And then to all the rebellion. They are recounting the rebellion, how they built the calf in the wilderness to worship it instead of worshiping God.How they were stiff necked is what the Bible says. They’re stiff necked, which is an interesting term. It’s, you know, a term of very rebellious, you know, you’re not gonna go this way. And how they rebel against God. And time after time after time when they disobeyed God,

God had mercy on them and brought them back. And indeed this building of the wall, this miraculous, incredible event where the king, the kingdom that that had made them slaves was actually helping them to rebuild. The wall of Jerusalem had happened. And it’s then that they, it’s like the light came on and they were like, oh my goodness, this is it. This is a miracle of God’s mercy. 

And I wanna read what they said in chapter 9:36. He says, “behold, we are slaves this day in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts. We are slaves and its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule our bodies, they rule over our livestock, and we are in great distress.” 

And wow, I was just like, okay, their joy had been robbed by their sin, right? And their strength had been taken from them. Their idol had made them a slave in their own promised land, their idols follow after other gods following anyone. But God had enslaved them. They were in chains in their own promised land. They were recognizing that, and they recognized God had mercifully set them free because the wall had been rebuilt. And that was like the first step in their freedom. And they said, we’re gonna make a firm covenant. This is the last verse.

“We’re gonna make a firm covenant. We’re gonna put it in writing. We’re not gonna follow any other God but you Lord.” So as I was thinking about that and what’s crazy is a couple chapters later in the last chapter, they start following other gods again. They, they put this dude in charge of the temple. That’s a complete charlatan.

And so Nehemiah comes back and it’s actually a pretty funny chapter, You should read it. But he starts doing some things. He’s like, “What is wrong with you guys? You know, here, God does this great miracle for you, and then you’re letting this infiltrator come in and take you away from God again. And we just rebuilt the wall. The whole point really is that this battle that we have with putting other gods before you. 

The great commandment that was in the Old Testament, “Don’t love any God more than you love the one true living God.”

And I’m summarizing of course, but if you think about the 10 Commandments, they can all be summarized as if you break any of the other nine. You’re actually breaking the first one because obviously if you’re stealing right, that means that you’re loving stuff instead of God. When Jesus said the first great commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul and your mind. And then the second is like unto it, love your neighbor as yourself. And that sums up all the law and the prophets.

Well if you think about it, what were the Israelites here in Nehemiah, chapter nine they were saying is we are slaves. We are slaves. We have made ourselves slaves because of our sin. Because we have had other gods that we have loved more than you Lord. And we have become slaves in the promised land, You have given us. I don’t think we are any different.

As I was reading this, it was like the Holy Spirit came on me and said, ”Kim, the reason you’re in despair is because you have made yourself a slave in the promised land. You have had the god of work that you have depended upon and you have worshiped at the throne of money because you have put such great  importance on making money. It consumes you. You have had the slave of romantic love as your idol. You have put your faith, your hope, your great desire in a man instead of me. You have enslaved yourself with worry and fear.

You know I read the news and I just go, oh God, What are we gonna do? You know, God I know you’ve got this, I know you’ve got this, you are bigger than any government. I mean, look at this story, Nehemiah, he took King Artes who was a heathen king and used him to build the temple. I mean, build the walls. Excuse me. 

And God doesn’t have, you know, he can use anything or anybody to accomplish his purpose. But the problem is when we get our focus off of him, we make these other things our God, whether it’s our health, it’s our worry. It’s, um, the way we look, it’s what we have, whatever it is, when we make those things more important than God. Then we become slaves in the Promised Land. When I say the promised land, I am not talking about, you know, the acreage that I possess. I’m talking about the acreage of my heart. 

And you know, God, when he redeemed me, when I received Jesus Christ as my savior, Christ came to live in me. I have his genetics in my spirit. And when God looks at my spirit, he sees his son and he sees that great righteousness but my body still wants to do the wrong thing. It really does.

And my soul wars between the two, you know? But we have to train ourselves like warriors. We have to get up every day. I have to get up every day and say,  “God, what is it that you want me to do for your glory today? Let my light shine. Let me be your servant. Let me show people what your love looks like.”

If I don’t do that, then I am probably worshiping something else. If I get up and immediately start worrying about the day, then worry. Yes, My God, or whatever I’m worrying about is my God. Cuz whatever we think about the most, that’s our God. That’s what controls us. And the fact is we have to work really hard to keep God’s word hidden in our heart. That’s a daily process. And you know, you can even get up and read God’s word every morning but not yield your heart.

Cuz that’s what I’ve been kind of doing. I’ve been like, okay, I’ll get up and have my quiet time, but then I walk away and get into the world and forget what I read or I’ll forget my purpose. I don’t keep God right here focused in my heart. And so this whole idea of making the joy of the Lord our Strength, it’s powerful because when, when something is our joy, that means it’s what we think about. It’s what we plan for. It’s what our goals are centered around. That’s where our joy is. When God is that, when God is our greatest joy, then we are strong.

We’re so strong that nothing can get us down. And I mean nothing like Paul the Apostle, you know, He wrote the book of Philippians, which is the joy, the joy book from a stinking prison. Okay? And, and you know, We have so many blessings. I was thinking, okay, God, what’s a practical way for me to continue to have this joy? And you know, I just thought, I just need to count my blessings. And that’s what they were doing. They were like, oh wow. God did all these things for us and yet we continue to make somebody else our god. 

He made me sit down and start counting my blessings. I live in a great country that has so much freedom. I have a wonderful job. I have amazing Christian friends. I have a ministry in my law practice. I have a ministry with foster kids. I have a great church. I mean, I have amazing resources, great health. And I could go on , butI did sit down and make a list cuz I wanna hang it on the wall. I think I can remember these things. So I think we just forget.

But most of all, I have a God who loves me more than anyone in the whole world has ever loved me. He loved me before the foundations of the world. And he thought I was worth the death of his son. And that’s so humbling. And you know, I have to read this quote about understanding “the joy of the Lord is our strength” requires study, it requires exercise. Just like building good muscle tone requires time in the gym.

Understanding our strength in God requires that we study, that we exercise it. And I love what Charles Virgin wrote.

“This was written in December, New Year’s Eve, 1871, and he was talking of the person who possesses the strength of God’s joy. He said his inner light makes him independent of the outward sun. His secret Ries make him independent of the outer harvest, his inward fountains, place him beyond the dread that the brook will dry up. He is independent of men and angels and fearless of devils. All creatures may turn against him if they please. But since God himself is his exceeding joy, he will not miss their love or mourn their hate.”

 Isn’t that beautiful? I read that and I just laughed. I was like, God, wow. I want to grow in my joy. I want to enjoy you. I want to make you the central aspect of joy in my life. And the only way I can do that is by purposely doing that. Well, you know, when you fall in love with somebody, you purpose to spend time with them, you purpose to do the things that they enjoy you, purpose to please them. And when we fall in love with God, that’s exactly what we do.

And you know, I have had experiences of falling in love with God and being in love with him. But sometimes we just, we just go after those idols and, and you know, they’re all around us and the world tells us these things are good. We can’t listen to that. We have to listen to the Holy Spirit. We have to listen to God’s love letter to us, his word, and dig deep. So if you’re struggling with despair, I would encourage you to fall in love with the God who loves you more than you love yourself.”

We would love to hear your thoughts about this devotional. Did God speak to you or challenge your daily walk with him? Or is there a topic that you would like Kimberly to cover or expound on? Please share with us in the comments below.

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