JULY 11, 2026

 “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 understood that prosperity is not the source of joy because he had discovered something far greater. "Fill my heart with joy," he writes, not because his circumstances had changed, but because God's presence had become his treasure. Then Acts presents an even more astonishing picture. Paul and Silas are falsely accused, publicly humiliated, severely beaten with rods, chained in the deepest part of a prison, and yet at midnight they are praying and singing hymns to God.

Who sings after being beaten? Who worships while bleeding? Who responds to injustice with praise instead of bitterness?

I know my own heart well enough to admit that I often struggle to rejoice when life is comfortable. A delayed plan, an unmet expectation, a disappointment, or an inconvenience can quietly steal my peace. I may not always complain aloud, but my thoughts often reveal that I have measured God's goodness by my circumstances instead of His presence. I judge life against my desires, and when they do not align, discouragement quietly settles in.

Paul's life destroys that illusion. There is simply no natural explanation for his response. Positive thinking cannot produce songs in a prison. Human determination cannot manufacture joy after a beating. Psychology can explain endurance for a while, but it cannot explain worship in the middle of suffering. Something beyond human strength was alive within him. This is one of the greatest evidences for the reality of God's Spirit.

Rumi wrote that sorrow sweeps out the old so that something better can grow. He observed a beautiful truth, but Scripture reveals why that transformation happens. Suffering creates space where the Spirit of God can take deeper root. God does not waste pain. He uses it to loosen our grip on lesser things so that His love can become our deepest source of life. The joy that emerges is not denial of suffering. It is the unmistakable evidence that God Himself is present.

That is what I long for. Not a life free from hardship, but a heart so rooted in God's love that no hardship can steal its joy. A spirit so surrendered that suffering becomes another opportunity for His power to be revealed. If joy survives prison, persecution, loss, and disappointment, then its source cannot be earthly. It must come from somewhere beyond this world. It must come from the Spirit of God dwelling within His people.

That is the invitation before me today. To stop searching for joy in success, comfort, approval, or favorable circumstances, and instead to receive the love of God so completely that His Spirit becomes the wellspring of everything I do. Then courage is no longer something I create. Peace is no longer something I chase. Joy is no longer something I protect. They become the natural fruit of God's life growing within me.

Father, strengthen me through Your Spirit in my inner being. Root me so deeply in Your love that my circumstances lose their power to define my joy. Let every disappointment become an opportunity for deeper surrender, every hardship become fertile soil for Your life to grow, and every victory point back to You alone. May people look at my life and see evidence that cannot be explained by human effort, but only by Your presence. Fill me with Your Spirit until Your power, Your love, and Your joy overflow into the lives of everyone around me. Amen.

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