JULY 11, 2025

  “Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.” 

― Jalaluddin Rumi

PSALM 4-6

6Many, Lord, are asking, “Who will bring us prosperity?”

Let the light of your face shine on us.

7Fill my heart with joy

when their grain and new wine abound.

8In peace I will lie down and sleep,

for you alone, Lord,

make me dwell in safety.(4:6-8)

ACTS 16:16-40

22The crowd joined in the attack against Paul and Silas, and the magistrates ordered them to be stripped and beaten with rods. 23After they had been severely flogged, they were thrown into prison, and the jailer was commanded to guard them carefully. 24When he received these orders, he put them in the inner cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.

25About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them.(16:22-25)

JOURNAL 

David understands that true joy only comes from relationship with God. Paul and Silas are wrongly accused and then “beaten severely”… and still, from the center of a prison, they’re praying and singing hymns. Here is the evidence of a life transformed.

Falsely accused. Publicly beaten. Thrown in the innermost cell. Their feet in stocks. And still—joy.

Let’s pause there.

Because I rarely rejoice and sing when things are going great, much less when everything’s falling apart. But they’re in the darkest place possible, and their response is worship.

I look around at my life and realize how often I sulk. I don’t always say it out loud, but my thoughts betray me. I stew in disappointment. I judge my circumstances against my expectations, and when they don’t match, I withdraw. I pout. I wonder where God is, even though He’s never left.

But Paul? Paul sings.

How?

How can he face beating after beating, imprisonment after imprisonment, and still get back up, still speak boldly, still rejoice?

The only explanation is that the Spirit of God was alive in him. That same Spirit that raised Jesus from the dead lived in Paul—strengthening, empowering, comforting. Giving joy even in a prison cell.

This proves it: the root of joy is not in freedom, or comfort, or ease—it’s in God. Everything else is a mirage. Chasing joy outside of Him is like digging wells in dry sand. True, sustaining joy is found in being fully known, fully loved, and fully filled by God Himself.

And the beauty is… sorrow prepares the way for it.

As Rumi wrote, sorrow clears the house for joy. It shakes loose the dead things so that something alive can take root. It’s painful, yes—but purposeful. Without the shaking, there would be no space for the new.

14For this reason I kneel before the Father, 15from whom every family^a in heaven and on earth derives its name. 16I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, 17so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, 18may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, 19and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

20Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, 21to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.

EPHESIANS 3:14-21