A Prayer for Joy

Father, I've noticed something missing, and it's joy.

Not happiness, exactly. Happiness comes and goes with the news of the day — good coffee, good weather, good report, and it's here; one hard phone call and it's gone. I'm asking for the deeper thing. The kind of joy that doesn't check the circumstances first.

Your Word says the joy of the Lord is my strength. Not my mood. My strength. The thing that holds a person upright in a hard season — that lets someone sing in a storm, not because the storm is good, but because You are in the boat.

So fill me from Your well, Lord, not my own. Mine runs dry. Yours never has.

Give me joy in what is actually true: that I am forgiven, that I am Yours, that nothing today can un-love me from You. Let those facts reach my face once in a while.

Open my eyes to the small glad things I've been walking past — the ordinary mercies stacked up in an ordinary day. Teach me to say thank You quickly, before the moment goes.

And where sorrow and joy have to share the same heart — because some seasons ask that of us — let them sit together honestly. Your joy has never required pretending.

Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, Lord. Make it my strength again.

In Jesus' name, Amen.

When to Pray This

Pray this when life is fine on paper but flat in your heart, or in a hard stretch when you need strength that doesn't depend on things improving first. Praying it alongside a short list of thanksgivings — even three items — has a way of priming the well.

A Verse to Hold On To

"Neither be ye sorry; for the joy of the LORD is your strength." — Nehemiah 8:10 (KJV)