The Joy Thief

"However, if you suffer as a Christian, do not be ashamed, but praise God that you bear that name." - 1 Peter 4:16 (NIV)

For the last two weeks I’ve been working the swing shift at work (3:00pm – 2:00am). I found out tonight that I was going to have to come in at 6:00am tomorrow morning and be here all day then through my normal swing shift. So in laymen’s terms, I’ll get home tonight at 2:00am, have to be back to work at 6:00am (that’ll be after only 3 hours of sleep) and then work from 6:00am until 2:00am and then finally get to go home. So, on three hours of sleep I’ll have to work a twenty hour work day.

Anyway, I was getting a bit down about the whole ordeal, and I’ll have to admit a bit irritable, when I realized, being angry was not helping my situation one bit. Why should I let my boss’s steal my joy?

Some times things get hard and out of our control. We cannot let these things get us down, because that’s when the devil get’s to us. When we become angry and irritable, we become quick to speak and slow to listen. We become defensive and sometimes down-right mean, and letting our frustrations out on others is bad for the Christian witness.

This can be a hard thing for a lot of Christians to get through, and why is that? Part of the reason, we don’t spend enough time praising God in the good times. If we never praise him in the good times, how will we remember to praise him in the bad? This is a question that we all need to ask ourselves, “Have I thanked God today for loving me and giving me the gift of salvation?” Thank God every day for giving you another day to achieve the purpose that he called each and every one of us to, being his children.

Rodney