The Presence of God

Years ago, my husband David was sick, I was traveling back and forth from Alexandria for work, and my kids were very young. Meagan wasn’t even a year old, and David was in and out of hospital for months. I was deflated and really beaten down. My parents and David’s parents were getting my kids from daycare for me, and I would grab them late at night and try to spend an hour with them before putting them to bed, only to repeat it all again the next day. I would go to the hospital each evening to spend time with David. It was a tough time for all of us. One day while at work I got a bouquet of flowers from a friend with the verse of “come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest.”   It was something I had known in my heart and yet I had allowed my circumstances to make me lose sight of that.

Early 2021 my mother-in-law was in the hospital fighting covid and was losing her battle. Ultimately, she passed away and the day before her funeral, I tested positive. I was isolated from my family (like so many others) and living alone for a week while David was having to deal with his mom’s death. It was a down time for me and for him. And yet I was truly ok through all of it. I felt better through this than I did in the time years before with David being sick. My joy is richer, deeper now than it was back in those early years. My faith is stronger - probably because of the trials we had been through. 

Fast forward to 2022 and I lost my husband after a lifelong battle with kidney failure. While it was the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced, I faced it with a joy and peace that I can’t even begin to describe. At the end of the graveside service, David’s cousin sang “I’ll fly away” and I sang with joy in my heart that my husband was in the presence of God, and we were singing one of his favorite songs. I had joy in the midst of the absolute worst season I’ve ever walked, and am still in that season.

What is the difference? How does joy play into a time of terrible circumstance – even death?

Go back and think through some of your storms and assess whether you were in a place to praise God in the midst of it. It isn’t whether you are happy or not happy but how you handle your down that determines if Joy is present.

Joy comes as a spiritual gift from believing and trusting Christ. So often Christians are walking around without joy in their lives because they are basing it on if there is anything bad going on in their lives. They base joy as if they have the things they want, their lifestyle and what they own. The true source of joy is found in a relationship with Christ. Romans 15:13 – May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The joy you are experiencing in your life right now is not measured by your circumstances. It is measured by your walk with God.

 John 7:37-38 “On the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out, saying, “If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. 38 He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”

“Joy is not necessarily the absence of suffering; it is the presence of God.” There are lots of sources of that quote on the internet, so I’m not sure exactly where it originated but the oldest I could find was that it came from Tielhard de Jardin.  Joy is not the absence of suffering but the presence of God. Are you defining it incorrectly? Do you define joy as not having anything bad in your life? If that’s the case, then joy goes away when suffering happens. Sisters, the joy that the Bible speaks of doesn’t go away. This joy is the kind that stays with you through the suffering. It allows you to smile in the tears knowing that God is there with you.

So many people interchange joy with happiness. Happiness is a feeling in a moment. It is dependent on the circumstance of the day. Joy, however, is an overall attitude that says I am at peace regardless of the circumstance of the day. Paul wrote to the Philippians 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice!” He did so from prison and facing being killed. In Acts 12 Peter was facing execution and an angel of the Lord found him sleeping soundly. How did these guys face execution with peace and rejoicing? Because the source of their joy was in their relationship with Christ, and that relationship would continue beyond death. Christ is the reason we can praise in our storms.

When I look back at the hardest times of my life, I remember being at peace because I trusted God to see me through. My joy came from Him and not from my circumstances. Friend, true joy sustains you when you face any circumstance, even death.

After the graveside service and singing, a friend came and told me he had felt the presence of God in the service. I told him that I knew God was there because He carried me.  

James 1:2-4 “Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, 3 knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.”