A glad heart makes a happy face; a broken heart crushes the spirit. - Proverbs 15:13
A smile in your heart means a smile on your face. When your heart has Jesus as its guest, it smiles. How can it do anything else? Even when you are called to suffer, you may be sad, but you needn’t be sour, because you discover that you have been saved to sing!
“But,” you may object, “how can I even smile when I’m suffering, much less sing about it?” Look at Jesus! Can you look at Jesus and remain sour? When I’m in trouble, I meet him in the secret place asking him for some medicine to mend my heart. And he gives me that medicine—his joy. Then I can help mend others. He sets my heart singing!
Guilt is another reason we need God’s medicine. Guilt doesn’t know any songs. It is very hard to crack a smile when we are beating ourselves over a bad mistake we’ve made. We can be so ashamed over sinful behavior that we dare not even look to Jesus because we know he won’t be smiling about that particular sin. God offers forgiveness that mends our memories, and he smiles when he catches our whispered “sorrys” and turns them into joy. God’s medicine is always available—just a prayer away. God’s joy medicine cures the guilt so we can move on to share his medicine with others.
There is joy in serving Jesus, and when merry missionaries and contented Christians dispense God’s joyous medicine to an unsmiling world, we are in business.
For Further Study: Proverbs 15:1-16
Excerpted from The One Year Devotions for Women, Copyright ©2000 by Jill Briscoe. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers. All rights reserved.
For more from Jill Briscoe, please visit TellingtheTruth.org.
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