God is delighted to travel with you through life, and because of that, we get to journey into a place of delight in Him. It is really important for us to travel with God in joy, in laughter, in delight because He is faithful, powerful, and intentional.
Whatever we are facing in our life today, it is important that we face it with a real enjoyment of who God is for us.
It’s vital that we experience His joy in us because it’s a key source of strength.
Journeys are like adventures. They take us into places of paradox. A paradox is two apparently conflicting ideas contained in the same truth.
Life is always about extremes.
There will be mountain top highs as well as paths through valleys. Our journey may take us into vineyards of fruitfulness or it may take us into the desert where nothing grows—but God will be the same to you in both places, because He is unchanging.
It is in the different landscapes of our journey that we discover the beautiful constancy of God’s true nature towards us.
We will have the experience of walking with Him in the light and the dark. Sometimes God is a blazing light like the sun, and sometimes He is just like a candle in your hand.
There will be times where life takes you into places of battle and warfare, and you get to know the God who laughs at His enemies. In that moment, you will understand that His majesty can surround everything you are… and everything you are not.
His paths lead through places of refreshing where everything is new every day, and you live with a sense of abundance, majesty, and the supremacy of God in everyday life situations.
In every place—trial or blessing, tribulation or renewal—you will discover that while God remains unchanging, He will give you a different experience of Himself.
God is never the author of our difficulties. But He is a genius at walking with us through them so that we emerge knowing Him more than when we started.
That is the pleasure we have in walking with God. In all the different stages of life, on all the different parts of our journey—we get to discover who God is and who He wants to be for us in that situation.
When you understand that; it makes “rejoice always, and again I say rejoice,” totally plausible. How can you not rejoice when God is your keeper no matter what situation you are in?
How can you not give thanks when you know that regardless of what you are going to go through: He is with you, and He will keep you.
The God who walks into trouble with you will also bring you out. How can we not rejoice?
How can we not give thanks when every situation we encounter is about something glorious occurring?
The key is that we get to express our trust in an ever-present God whose delight is being with us becomes our joy in remaining in Him. We can then be still enough to know that He is the God who always has a plan, a purpose and an outcome that will astonish us.
PS) For more on what this process of traveling with God looks like, download your free MP3 of my teaching, God Is Your Constant, and learn how you can think and feel about your circumstances from a brilliant place in Jesus. Click here to get your copy now!