"and everlasting joy will be yours..." (Isaiah 61:7)
Everlasting joy will be yours. This joy is not happiness dependent on circumstances that is there in a moment and gone in the next. This is a promise that will mark out all who the Lord rescues. In Isaiah 35:10, we read ‘and those the LORD has rescued will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads. Gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.’ Joy will be the garment that crowns the heads of all believers.
To the captives, it is a promise of an amazing exchange where sorrow and sadness will flee away and gladness and joy overtake them. Nothing could accomplish this promise other than the saving power of Jesus; through his birth, death and resurrection. All who were captives to sin are now free and restored to right relationship with God. This is eternal joy. The joyful state of God’s people based on the truth that God is good always and heaven is real.
The knowledge that God is good all the time and heaven is real shifts our perspective. It means that we can know joy despite the circumstances that we are faced with. As the truth of this promise permeates our day to day we realise everything we face now is temporary but joy is an eternal, everlasting truth of the kingdom. This joy will last longer than any years of captivity, longer than any suffering, longer than any sorrow. Mother Teresa puts it like this, “In light of heaven, the worst suffering on earth, a life full of the most atrocious tortures on earth, will be seen to be no more serious than one night in an inconvenient hotel.”
Everlasting joy is yours in Jesus and that joy can not be taken away from you. How can you clothe yourself in everlasting joy today?
We invite you to join us as we journey slowly and prayerfully through Isaiah 61 - line by line over forty days.
