{"id":1507,"date":"2018-11-24T19:45:31","date_gmt":"2018-11-24T19:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/?p=1507"},"modified":"2018-11-24T19:45:31","modified_gmt":"2018-11-24T19:45:31","slug":"the-lord-is-our-portion-our-exceeding-joy-even-when-life-crumbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/?p=1507","title":{"rendered":"The Lord is Our Portion, Our Exceeding Joy, Even When Life Crumbles."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>&#8220;The Lord is my portion,&#8221; says my soul, &#8220;Therefore, I have hope in Him.&#8221; <strong>Lamentations 3:24<\/strong><\/em> (New American Standard Bible <strong>NASB<\/strong>)<\/p>\n<p>Lamentations is not typically a section of scripture you might think of turning to for encouragement. Jeremiah, who wrote it, was known as the &#8216;weeping prophet&#8217;. However, I found myself in chapter 3 on a night I needed encouragement to find my spiritual footing.<\/p>\n<p>In a whirlwind of holiday activities, I&#8217;d lost the sense of God&#8217;s nearness. My heart had latched on to the temporal again and I needed to be reminded the Lord Himself is my Exceeding Joy (Psalm 43:4.)<\/p>\n<p>The chapter starts off gloomy; with descriptions of affliction, darkness, broken bones, bitterness, hardship, forgotten happiness, and rejected peace.<\/p>\n<p>But in verses 22-24, hope is reignited:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The Lord&#8217;s lovingkindness never ends<\/li>\n<li>\u00a0His compassions never fail, they&#8217;re new every morning<\/li>\n<li>His faithfulness is great<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Then I read, <em>&#8220;The Lord is my portion&#8221;, says my soul, &#8220;Therefore I have hope in Him.&#8221; <strong>Lamentations 3:24 <\/strong>(NASB)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>In spite of how he was feeling, Jeremiah found an anchor for his soul. In being reminded God is His portion, Jeremiah found hope in Him?<\/p>\n<p>But what does this really mean?<\/p>\n<h5>The Lord is Our Portion<\/h5>\n<p>Is the Lord as our portion like a piece of Thanksgiving pie?<\/p>\n<p>Not at all.<\/p>\n<p>God is never just a part. When we have Him, we have Him all. And in Him, we are complete, filled to the brim, fully satisfied.<\/p>\n<p>In spite of what goes on around us and in us, The Lord Himself is our full part, our share, our award.<\/p>\n<p>God said to Abram, <em>&#8220;Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your very great reward.&#8221; <strong>Genesis 15:1 (NIV)<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n<p>God, Our Very Great Reward. What else do we need? Even if we lose something very dear to us, we can be okay. We don&#8217;t lose hope. His nearness is our Good. (Psalm 73:28)<\/p>\n<p>We always have our Pearl of Great Value, worthy of our all. (Matthew 13:45-46)<\/p>\n<p><strong>Challenge:<\/strong> What temporal trial has stolen your joy? What worldly condition must be good for you to be okay? Is there an area of your life which has crumpled? Like Jeremiah, do you feel darkness, affliction and desolation?<\/p>\n<p>Through it all, the Lord is our Portion, our Possession, our Part. No matter what happens here, He remains. He is our All, whether we know it or not.\u00a0 He wants our whole, surrendered hearts and He won&#8217;t relent until He has it. He doesn&#8217;t want us settling for happiness when we can have Him.<\/p>\n<p><span id=\"en-NASB-28876\" class=\"text 2Cor-4-16\"><sup class=\"versenum\">\u00a0<\/sup><\/span><span id=\"en-TPT-2198\" class=\"text Ps-139-23\"><strong>Prayer:<\/strong> <em>&#8220;God, I invite your searching gaze into my heart.<\/em><\/span><br \/>\n<em><span class=\"indent-1\"><span class=\"indent-1-breaks\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"text Ps-139-23\">Examine me through and through;<\/span><\/span><\/em><br \/>\n<em><span class=\"indent-1\"><span class=\"indent-1-breaks\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"text Ps-139-23\">find out everything that may be hidden within me.<\/span><\/span><\/em><br \/>\n<em><span class=\"indent-1\"><span class=\"indent-1-breaks\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"text Ps-139-23\">Put me to the test and sift through all my anxious cares.<\/span><\/span><\/em><br \/>\n<em><span id=\"en-TPT-2199\" class=\"text Ps-139-24\"><sup class=\"versenum\">\u00a0<\/sup>See if there is any path of pain I\u2019m walking on,<\/span><\/em><br \/>\n<em><span class=\"indent-1\"><span class=\"indent-1-breaks\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"text Ps-139-24\">and lead me back to your glorious, everlasting ways\u2014<\/span><\/span><\/em><br \/>\n<em><span class=\"indent-1\"><span class=\"indent-1-breaks\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><span class=\"text Ps-139-24\">the path that brings me back to you.&#8221; <strong>Psalm 139:23-24 (TPT &#8211; The Passion Translation)<\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What does it mean for God to be our portion? Is a portion like a piece of pie, or far more?<\/p>\n<p>How can we experience the Lord as our Great Reward, our Exceeding Joy, even when life crumples?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1522,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[752,750],"tags":[763,766,765,764,760,31,754,772,768,773,108,762,767,779,781,770,756,755,777,776,780,759,774,769,778,771,753,634,775,757,758,761],"class_list":["post-1507","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-our-portion-and-exceeding-joy","category-the-lord-is-all-we-need","tag-affliction","tag-bitterness","tag-broken-bones","tag-darkness","tag-encouragement","tag-exceeding-great-reward","tag-exceeding-joy","tag-filled-to-the-brim","tag-forgotten-happiness","tag-fully-satisfied","tag-genesis-151","tag-gloomy","tag-hardship","tag-he-is-our-all","tag-he-wont-relent","tag-hope-in-the-lord","tag-jeremiah","tag-lamentations-324","tag-matthew-1345-46","tag-pearl-of-great-value","tag-psalm-13923-24","tag-psalm-434","tag-psalm-7328","tag-rejected-peace","tag-stolen-joy","tag-the-lord-completes-us","tag-the-lord-is-my-portion","tag-the-lords-nearness","tag-the-lords-nearness-is-my-good","tag-the-weeping-prophet","tag-when-life-crumples","tag-whirwind-of-activities"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1507"}],"version-history":[{"count":19,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1527,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1507\/revisions\/1527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1507"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1507"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joy-in-the-journey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1507"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}