Joy to the World

Okay so even though the title of this blog is a Christmas song, this blog is not about Christmas. It is however, about joy; true joy. This has been something that God heavily convicted me of just today. I was spending time with my family and i realised that I was really not joyful at all. Then I realised the sad truth. That is the way I am around them often. It's not that I don't love them and want to be around them. It's just that I don't ever relax with them and just have fun being with them and spending time with them. I realised that they could see it. I realised that they wonder why I am this happy go lucky person only when they are not around. Why I hardly ever smile when I'm with them. I really don't have a simple answer for it. I do know this much; I need the joy of the Lord.
Habakkuk 3:17-19 says this: "Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, 18 yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. 19 God, the Lord is my strength; He makes my feet like the deer's; He makes me tread on my high places..."
I read that passage and it is a slap in the face. I never have a reason not to have joy and rejoice in the Lord. No matter what I am going through, no matter how I am feeling at the time; God is good. I realised that people need to see this joy overflowing in my life. All the time too, not just sometimes. So this is just a simple, small, but challenging truth that I ask you to keep me accountable to.