Likely we all know that portion of the verse by heart.
Then he [Nehemiah] said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions for those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our Lord. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Nehemiah 8:10 (NKJV)
It’s a great statement for embroidering on pillows and printing on mugs or even hanging on a plaque on the wall. But how much truth is in it these days. I mean really. Do we even know what the joy of the Lord truly is?
Much in this day and age is driven by emotionality. Now, I am not saying that emotions are a bad thing. We were created to have them. Throughout Scripture God is described in ways that attribute various emotions to Him and even when he walked the earth we are told, in the shortest verse of the Bible, that “Jesus wept.”
Feelings we get. They can often be the kind that scream at us, demanding attention- to be heard, acknowledged, and even given center stage. But joy?
As a kid we likely would have thought of joy as something of a higher level of happy. Happy on steroids, if you will. But that is not a Biblical understanding of what joy is.
Crosswalk.com offers the following definition for joy.
joy: an internal reservoir or well that bubbles up inside you eventually expressing itself in shouts of song, praise, and great delight.
Crosswalk.com
Jesus was most certainly looking to something other than feelings when, in Hebrews 12:2 it states “for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
True joy is not something that we can manufacture ourselves. We can try to fake it, sure, but only for so long.
But something that I find myself asking lately is whether we, in this day and age, actually truly know the joy of the Lord. We know of it, sure. We know that it is offered to us and that it is something that is expected of mature believers. But when we are alone with our own thoughts late at night, do we question whether or not there is more- if we are lacking something?
The world we experience today is in some ways, vastly different from the days in which the Scriptures were penned. In that day and age, people understood the agricultural cycle and grew much of their own food. What they didn’t grow, they would purchase from others in their communities. The idea of a grocery store and obtaining fruits year round regardless of the season, imported from other countries, was unthinkable. Yet here we are.
Not only have we been divorced from nearly all comprehension of what is involved with growing food, but we’ve also been presented with science experiments masquerading (μετασχηματίζεται anyone?) as food for decades. I’m not just talking about the GMOs though they most certainly are an issue worth discussing as it’s just another example of man rejecting God’s ways, and playing god, thinking that he knows better.
What I am talking about primarily is the sugar that has been added into everything.
With at least 56 different names by which it can de referenced on an ingredient list, it’s no wonder that we don’t always know what we are actually consuming. And that’s not even taking into account the sugar substitutes that have become all the rage for those that have gone the Keto route.
Sugar is something that, if we’re honest, we likely all have something of an addiction to. Whether it’s been a hard week, someone made a curt comment that hurt our feelings, or if the temperature is just too high for our comfort, there is always some kind of sweet temptation to sooth our weary soul.
But wait, I thought the joy of the Lord was to be our strength.
Sugar is a substance that once ingested, wrecks havoc on our entire body. There are studies that show that not only does it cause hormones and mineral levels to go out of whack, but it also causes inflammation throughout the body and can encourage the mutation of normal cells into cancerous ones and then feeds them. This all in addition to the more commonly known issues of causing insulin resistance and Type-2 Diabetes.
Add to this the fact that after we give into the temptation and have that sugary item, we want more. Sugar makes us crave more sugar. And not only ourselves, but this sugar addiction can also be passed down generationally.
Everyone, at one point in time or another, has suffered some kind of physical injury that made day-to-day functioning difficult at best. Whatever that injury was, it got in the way of our regular duties.
The problem with sugar is that the impact it has on our body is not a broken wrist or a sprained ankle that we are aware of and can therefore treat as needed to allow for proper healing. The effects are hidden and oftentimes entirely unknown.
So with our bodies under nearly constant attack by what we’re eating, we then compound the situation by adding caffeine to the mix because understandably, we feel as though we’re not at our best and need something to help get us going because our bodies are inflamed.
Caffeine increases the levels of the feel-good hormone dopamine by working to slow the reabsorption and even blocks the adenosine receptors in your brain that work to regain equilibrium within your system. Additionally, caffeine triggers the release of adrenaline, putting your body into fight or flight mode.
So now our bodies, which are to be temples of the living God, are now inflamed, robbed of mineral nutrients required for the healing process, hormonally off balance, and hopped up on a legal stimulant.
And we wonder why we have trouble concentrating in prayer.
If the joy of the Lord is our strength, how can we know what the actually is if we don’t know what our bodies are to actually feel like?
There was recently an event that I was helping with behind the scenes for which prayer and fasting was a given. Due to my current living arrangement my usual knee-jerk reaction of, ‘clearly I’m fasting food,’ was not an option. So leading up to the 50 and then 40-day marks, I was praying about what my fast was to look like and trusting for the Lord to reveal to me what He wished for me to give up for that time.
I was actually surprised when, at the 50-day mark, the answer was given as, “coffee.”
I’m one of those people that in High School, had a coffee pot on my desk at home and could drink and entire pot of French roast coffee, (with sugar of course,) at night and then go right to sleep. There have been times where I have been known to brew a pot of coffee, add my creamer directly to the carafe and stick a straw into it, carrying the entire carafe back to my desk.
But just the same, there have been other times when I have gone days on end without a single drop of coffee, all because I knew that I had been consuming too much and I did not want to become a slave to an addiction.
So surely 50 days without coffee wouldn’t be a problem. Afterall, I could still drink tea.
Irish breakfast tea became my go-to beverage during those days.
After the event though, God began to reveal to me what He had been preparing me for over those 50 days where my caffeine intake had been decreased; it was time to stop the caffeine entirely.
I had one small cup of coffee on the drive home and knew very clearly, that it was to be my last, for at least a while.
While I had already begun to look into what sugar is actually doing to our bodies, it was after that that I began to actually take a look at the effects of caffeine as well. It was during that research that I began to realize that if our minds are always in a false euphoric state, it could potentially become difficult to recognize the joy of the Lord, or even that peace that passes understanding (Philippians 4:7).
I know this journey is not for everyone, nor do I expect this to be taken as a, “you must drop all sugar and caffeine” indictment. What I do want you to hear from me is that, when the Lord places something on your heart yes, pray about it, but also investigate.
For months, the Lord had been working on me about my sugar intake. Each time I gave in to the craving, I knew that it was something that I shouldn’t do and I felt the consequences for my choice. But, I told myself, there’s no Scripture that says, “thou shalt not consume sugar.”
Yes, there are clearly Biblical principles that can be applied to our eating habits, but an admonition against sugar entirely? The first verse we looked at, Nehemiah 8:10 gives permission to drink the sweet.
But as I investigated more, I found more and more reasons to acknowledge that perhaps what that Little Voice was trying to get me to do all along was not to make me suffer a dull life, but rather, was for my good.
At this time, I am still investigating and still walking this out. I don’t know what this will look like two weeks, or a month down the road. But what I do know is that if sugar and caffeine were interfering with my ability to pray and hear from the Lord, and in order to maintain an open line of communication behind enemy lines in this day and age I must never touch either again, I will do so gladly.
Is there something that the Lord has been impressing upon you that needs to change and you’ve been fighting it? I’d encourage you to stop fighting and trust Him. Just as the cartoon depicts, whatever He is asking pales in comparison to what He wishes to give us if we will simply obey.
coffee powered believer 