by: Kaylee Morgan

Wandering through a valley is never easy. It’s a journey that can leave us feeling alone, hopeless, and defeated. It is so easy to get stuck in this place of bondage, but we must continue to fight for our freedom. In order to do this, we must be able to find joy in the valley.

In this fight for freedom, it is important to know who we are fighting against. That’s right, not what...but WHO. I’m not talking about the people who hurt you or the situations that have frustrated you. No, I’m talking about the one we cannot see, yet his handiwork is everywhere, Satan himself. In our fight for freedom, his whole mission is to steal our joy, kill our confidence, and destroy our hope so we stop fighting and remain in the valley forever.

So, when Satan attempts to:

STEAL OUR JOY:
We must remember, as believers, we have the Holy Spirit. They are parallel, joy and the Holy Spirit. Because joy is a fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) technically you can’t have the Holy Spirit without having joy nor can you have the joy without having the Holy Spirit. The two go hand in hand.

KILL OUR CONFIDENCE:
We must believe we were chosen. Only when we understand that we were chosen to be God’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20) to bring reconciliation, will we be able to reclaim our joy. We must believe God called us, chose us, and created us to be free of any and all bondage.

DESTROY OUR HOPE:
We must embrace the good news of the Gospel. We can reclaim our joy in the valley, if we believe and trust in God’s message to the world (John 3:16), and that death was defeated so we could be unified with God, and each other, through Jesus Christ (John 17:20-26).

So, where do we find joy in the valley? Inside of us. We already possess it, it’s ours. How? The Holy Spirit.

See, the enemy isn’t preventing us from having joy; he’s attempting to steal the joy we inherited from God. And so often, we let him. We must reclaim and call forth the joy God has gifted us in order to keep fighting and venture out of the valley and into freedom.