The Word as Pathway to Joy

Had a double GI medical procedure today and am utterly grateful to the Lord for carrying me through it. It was definitely not a pleasant experience including the day of preparation. Pathology report is yet to come and I am learning again to trust in and wait upon the Lord as I did with my surgery 4 months ago.

I am halfway through Piper's book "When I don't desire God--How to fight for joy" and it has been a tremendous blessing. Last night, I read about how the Word of God can become our pathway to joy. Piper said the writer in Psalm 119 "not only prayed and meditated over the Word of God in order to understand it--he also suffered in order to understand it. The Psalmist says, '... It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statues' (Psalm 119:71)." God also instrumentally placed the book of Psalms in my current bible reading schedule and His Word has been ever so real to me during these months of physical ailments. I can echo with the psalmist in his honesty with God during the dark times and am grateful that these afflictions bring me to "see the meaning of God's Word as never before." Though I still struggle with the sin of anxiety and overly focus on my own sufferings which pale far in comparison to those of many others', His Word has been my anchor, and I trust that knowing and seeing it is the pathway to true joy. I have a long way to go but "He is as near as [my] own breathing and is infinitely merciful and mighty." Blessed be the name of the Lord.