“For behold, he who forms the mountains and creates the wind,
and declares to man what is his thought,
who makes the morning darkness,
and treads on the heights of the earth—
the Lord, the God of hosts, is his name!”
– Amos 4:13

It’s a good habit to sit back and simply think about God. When you do, don’t just think about Him in the particular way you typically picture Him. Be intentional to think about Him in the many different ways that the Bible describes. Like a beautiful diamond with many glittering facets, God has infinitely many beautiful facets to think about. Contemplating any of them should be enough to bring us to worship our Creator!

Here in Amos, God proclaims His Almighty power and authority. This is certainly worth thinking about and worshiping Him for! God is the creator of this world and everything within it. He formed the beautiful and majestic mountains – the Rockies, the Alps, and the Himalayas. He’s bigger, grander, and more beautiful than the most massive, jaw-dropping, beautiful snow-capped peak. God creates the wind, which has such power, yet is generally invisible (much like God Himself).

God knows your every thought, spoken and unspoken. He makes night and day, light and darkness. He reigns in authority above all things on earth. He is the Lord! YHWH is His covenant name and He is the God of all of heaven’s armies of angels. God is absolutely, utterly sovereign over all things. He’s all-powerful, all-knowing, and ever-present. Nonetheless, He cares enough to know your every thought. Joyfully worship and give praise to Almighty God, knowing that He loves you very much!

“So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” – John 16:22

Try to imagine the feelings of those first followers of Jesus. Try to feel what they must have felt. Jesus, their friend and teacher, whom they had literally been following around 24×7 for years would soon be brutally executed. He would be betrayed by one of their own, arrested, tried unjustly, humiliated, and tortured. Soon He would be dead and buried.

What sorrow they must have felt. What a loss of purpose and focus for their lives. What a sense of waste must have crept into their hearts. Unable, as they were, to understand what Jesus was predicting they had to have felt like failures and fools. Their pain had to be enormous. Try to imagine and feel the depths of despair they felt.

Then feel the joy that came from seeing Jesus again! He was alive! On the third day He rose from the dead and appeared to them. They touched Him, talked to Him, and ate with Him. Once again, He was with them and taught them. Their joy had to be beyond imagination! Feel their joy…

This joy, the certain knowledge that Jesus had conquered death, sin, and Satan, the confidence that they saw Him go up to heaven with their own eyes, this joy never ended. The joy of knowing the risen Christ fueled their ministry for the rest of their lives. This joy overcame every kind of opposition and persecution imaginable.

You too hopefully know and believe that Jesus is alive and ruling from heaven. Rejoice in that! Try to feel the joy those first followers felt. Let the joy of having a Lord Who is victorious over everything that threatens you fill your heat and fuel your passion to make disciples of Jesus Christ.

“These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” – John 15:11

Most people want joy. You probably do too. The good news is that Jesus wants that for you! Jesus wants every follower to have complete, full joy in Him. He offers joy that surpasses all human understanding because it’s His divine, holy, eternal joy in the Lord.

However, if you want to experience that lasting, utterly satisfying joy, you need to read carefully the verses that came before this one. The full, glorious joy Jesus offers doesn’t come from having lots of money, having a great job, having a big house, having a fast car, having a beautiful family, winning awards, or being perfectly comfortable and safe. Those things don’t provide lasting joy. Period.

Here’s what provides true joy, according in to Jesus:

• Believing in Him and knowing that you’re truly, perfectly clean and loved by God because of His sacrifice for you on the cross (John 15:3).
• Abiding in Jesus. Keeping your eyes and hearts focused on Him, walking with Him, worshiping Him, praying with Him (John 15:4-7).
• Abiding in the love of Jesus. Thinking often of how much He loves you, what He sacrificed for you, and how He’s always with you (John 15:9).
• Bearing fruit for Him in His power. Doing the work of the Kingdom as your top priority. Making disciples (followers of Jesus) who make disciples [John 15:4-5, 8].
• Being pruned by God for greater fruitfulness. Giving up bad things, neutral things, and even good things that hold you back from great things and maximum impact for God’s Kingdom (John 15:2)
• Obeying Christ’s commands. All of them. The ones you like and the ones you don’t like. The easy ones and the difficult ones (John 15:10).

As you do these things more and more you’ll experience the true and ultimate joy available to us as creatures made in God’s image. You’ll be filled with the joy and presence of Christ and your joy will be made perfect and complete. Stop looking for joy in other places. Stop looking for shortcuts to joy. Look to Jesus and do what He says and you’ll experience joy forever and ever!

“Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.” – John 15:3

Do you believe this? Deep within your heart and soul, do you truly believe this about yourself? Do you believe that you are clean? If you’ve embraced Jesus as your Lord then this is true and you need to let this truth soak into your soul.

Though we can readily agree that we’re saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus Christ and admit that we contribute nothing to our salvation, we can still struggle to fully embrace this truth. Many Christians do. Though we can intellectually agree that we’re new creations in Christ when we believe in Him, we can struggle to really understand and accept how God sees us. We can waste our lives beating ourselves up about our past, held back by our self-image as filthy, ashamed, and unworthy. Though we can say and sing of how the blood of Jesus washes us clean of sin, we often still think of ourselves as dirty because we vividly remember our past mistakes, sins, guilt, and shame.

If you’ve embraced Christ, then your past is truly washed clean. You really are a new creation in Him. You really are clean in God’s eyes. You won’t make yourself more clean or more worthy by continuing to think or speak badly of yourself because of that past that Jesus died to wipe clean. Embrace this truth. Speak this truth to yourself every time you start to think harshly about yourself. Meditate on all that Jesus did for you on the cross to make you fully, completely, absolutely clean.

As you come to more fully believe and understand that you really are clean, this truth will fill your soul with joy and delight in God’s amazing grace that makes you clean. Accepting the cleanness you already have in Christ will set you free from the self-administered prison of the past that you may have locked yourself in. Accepting the cleanness you already have in Christ empowers you to live a life of extraordinary fruitfulness in Christ Who made you clean. So, honestly, do you KNOW that you’re clean because of Christ?

“Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.” – John 14:27

Jesus doesn’t operate the same way everyone and everything else does in this world. He doesn’t operate the way you might expect Him to. He doesn’t give in the selfish, transactional, manipulative way the world usually gives. He gives His followers peace and it’s far different from what and how the world gives. The world imagines peace as the absence of conflict, difficulty, or stress and Christians often accept that definition to their detriment. Such peace is elusive and illusory because we live in a fallen world that is ravaged by human sin. We keep chasing the world’s peace but it doesn’t come or it doesn’t last very long.

Jesus gives His followers peace in their hearts despite the presence of conflict, difficulty, and stress in the world. He knows we live in a fallen world. Just as Jesus overcame the world, He empowers His followers to overcome the chaos, trials, violence, and suffering of the world even when they continue. He gives us the ability to follow Him in perfect peace no matter what’s going on around us or in our lives. He can calm our racing hearts and soothe our weary and anxious minds.

However, we must let Him. We must choose to draw nearer to Jesus – in reading and meditation on Scripture, in public and private worship, and in prayer throughout the day and night. This command (and it is a command) not to let our hearts be troubled or afraid implies we have a role to play. We must choose to accept Christ’s peace. We must choose to turn our eyes, hearts, and minds away from the evil of the world and toward Him. We must learn to pray for and embrace His peace, to walk in His Spirit, and to refuse to let fear rule within us no matter what’s going on around us. We can do this because Jesus is present with us and in us at all times. We can do this because He will give us His peace if we’re willing to accept it.