Radiate Joy

I just love God Calling. Within it, A. J. Russell edits the words of Two Listeners; two aged and impoverished women from England who began writing the words God gave to them in December 1932. If the two were not together, there were no words, but when together, God used them as messengers, to a hurt and dying world.

My first copy of this book were given to me in 1987 by someone I’d become close to in an apartment complex where we both lived in Lubbock. Brenda was starting a new life in Galveston as a physicians’ assistant student, and I would be leaving in February 1988 for Basic Training in the United States Army.

While I was in Basic Training, my Aunt Linda Dale mailed me a copy to Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Words that can come only from a loving God are rich within these pages. The messages of our God through these two women, undoubtedly with their Creator as I write today, encouraged me through Basic Training, and I’ve missed very few days since that time reading one copy or another.

While Steve was in Iraq, we read identical words, two of us together. For those who don’t have a copy, here is today’s God Calling.

Radiate Joy

Not only must you rejoice, but your Joy must be made manifest. “Known unto all men.” A candle must not be set under a bushel, but on a candlestick, that it may give light to all who are in the house.

Men must see and know your Joy, and seeing it, know, without any doubt, that it springs from trust in Me, from living with Me.

The hard dull way of resignation is not My Way. When I entered Jerusalem, knowing well that scorn and reviling and death awaited Me, it was with cries of Hosanna, and with a triumphal procession. Not just a few “Lost Cause” followers creeping with Me into the city. There was no note of sadness in My Last Supper Talk with My disciples, and “when we had sung an hymn” we went out unto the Mount of Olives.

So trust, so conquer, so joy. Love colours the way. Love takes the sting out of the wind of adversity.

Love. Love. Love of Me. The consciousness of My Presence, and that of My Father, we are one, and He—God—is Love.