March 30

Psalm 21:6 (NIV)
6 Surely you have granted him eternal blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence.

There are several kinds of eternal blessings. Of course eternity is an eternal blessing. Living forever sounds great especially when you consider the alternative! The older I get the more I thirst to live forever. He truly has put eternity in our hearts.

There is another kind of eternal blessing, the blessing that runs from here to eternity. Those blessings that are from the very throne of God like joy that are an eternal reality. The joy in heaven cannot be accurately written about because of its immensity. There is a vein of this joy that we can experience on this earth and it runs all the way to eternity. The Psalmist talks about the king being glad because of the joy that God is giving him. The joy is found in God’s presence! Why all the talk lately about His presence? Part of it is found right here.

If we long for the eternal things rather than the temporal things, one of the things we long for is the joy of the Lord which is not like a fleeting happiness that is dependent of the circumstances. This joy is found in His presence and we will see more evidence of this as we read through the Psalms and as we get in His presence. What we need is found in Him and one of the things we MUST have is His joy because as Nehemiah tells us, “it is our strength.” You get the joy by being in His presence. It doesn’t come from “doing” anything, not even studying the Word of God. It comes from His presence.

Lest you end this devotion thinking that I just said that the Word of God isn’t effective, that is not what I said. When you use the Living Word of God as a text book, you hinder what God can minister to you through it. When you read and dwell IN it like you are looking for treasure and listening for God’s Word for you, His lesson for you, His life for you, then the Word will propel you INTO His presence.