The joy of the Lord is your strength

Nehemiah 8:10 “…the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

This is a very long story, and I’m going to make it very short. I married a beautiful woman who lived in west Hollywood, CA, just a block off the Sunset Strip. After a few years of life in Hollywood, we decided to move back east.

The apartment we were living in was upstairs, and in the back corner of the building. So moving day came, and while my wife packed stuff in the apartment, and I would carry everything down a flight of stairs, around the pool courtyard, down 6 more stairs, down the alley to the street, and into our 24-foot car hauling trailer.

The trailer was way overloaded. I estimated I single-handedly carried about 3 tons of stuff that day. I was absolutely exhausted, worse than the day I had run the Chicago marathon. I actually lost 19 pounds that weekend. No joke. I worked harder than I think I ever have before or since.

As the sun was setting, I stopped, because I could feel myself getting really exhausted, angry and actually depressed, which is extremely unusual for me. I stopped and sat down beside the pool, and the only thing I could do was pray. I said “Please, Lord, I’m in a really bad mood, I’m about to take it out on my wife even though she has nothing to do with this, and I need some joy in my life right now.”

I suddenly had new strength. Literally. Physically. It was instantaneous, and I was not tired anymore, even after having packed 3 tons of stuff into the trailer. We worked until about 10:00 that evening, then we had to drive an hour and a half to a friend’s house to spend the night before starting the 24-hour drive to Louisiana.

“The joy of the Lord is my strength.” I learned that this is literally true. It was an absolute miracle. I could feel the strength surge, and I was actually able to finish the job with a happy heart. That trip was not uneventful. My old, tired Toyota Tundra pulled that overloaded trailer through 118 degree Arizona heat, and because it was so heavy, the trailer blew two tires during the trip, one at 2:00 a.m. in the middle of Texas, somewhere near Midland or Odessa.

But that trip was memorable, it was a new start, it was actually fun (most of the time), and it led us to our existing home, in which we’ve already built a ton of new, happy memories.

The joy of the Lord is your strength. Literally. Trust in it. There is a point where His spiritual reality crosses over the border between the unseen and the seen, and his energy can provide new life to the physical matter that makes up your flesh and bones.

Try it sometime. And let me know what happens…