THE FATHER'S BUSINESS - SYLVIA GUNTER

[MIRIAM JACOB]

FRUIT OF JOY

Beloved child of God, listen to your Father's heart and his ways for you in Galatians 5:22-23,25. "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control... Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit."


Listen to God's Word for you in Nehemiah 8:10. "The joy of the Lord is your strength."



God's purpose in his creation was his own pleasure. He rejoices in all his works (Ps. 104:31). Job 38:7 says that God laid the foundations of the earth and marked off its dimensions and did all his work of creation while the morning stars sang together and all the angels shouted for joy. Imagine the same joy of God when he created you! Your Father is joy, and he plants his joy inside you in the person of his Son. Jesus lives in joy in you.



Be blessed to drink deeply of the joy that God your Father has in you as his beloved. Be blessed with his understanding of joy, not the world's fickle happiness. Be blessed to know the joy of the Lord that gives you the strength to go forward, to press on, to endure hardship. Be blessed with the oil of joy that flows from heaven. God commands for you the blessing of life in his joy, defeating depression, destruction, and death.



Joy is the quiet, inner sense of well-being in Jesus, but it also can be intense motion. Be blessed with rejoicing with intensity that words cannot fully express. Be blessed with Christ's overflowing joy that bubbles up in you to flow out of you (Phil. 1:26). He promises joy that nobody and nothing can take away (John 16:22). Be blessed as you are filled with the joy that the Holy Spirit imparts in your place in the kingdom (Rom. 14:17).



Joy can also be a daily decision and a battle. You can count it all joy in trials of any kind, when you know that your Father does all things well for you. Be blessed as you pursue Jesus who is joy. He came so that you can have this kind of joy. It is his gift to you (Rom. 15:13). Be blessed in the incomparable joy of Jesus (Heb. 12:2). Be blessed to be energized for each new day and each new challenge with joy that comes from him.



Have you ever been blessed to watch someone laugh? You laughed too, for no other reason than that they were joyful. Be contagious with joy in gratitude that you share in the inheritance of his holy people who live in his light (Col. 1:11-12). Be blessed to be an ambassador of joy in a world filled with stress and sadness. Be blessed as you spread joy wherever you touch the lives of others. Be blessed to lighten the load of others and strengthen weary hearts with the joy of Jesus. Be blessed to brighten and refresh the weary spirits of others with joyful confidence in Jesus.



Be blessed with the joy that the Spirit of joy produces in you,

your response to his joy (Gal. 5:22).

Taken from the Fruit of the Spirit section, You Are Blessed In The Names Of God, page 76. © 2008 by Sylvia Gunter.

Available at www.thefathersbusiness.com.

[MIRIAM JACOB]

The Father's Business

Holy Exchange

Listen to the Word of God for you in Isaiah 61:1-3. "The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me... to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair."

Be blessed with the holy exchange of Jesys. In Luke 4:21 after Jesus quoted Isaiah 61, he said, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." Jesus offers you an exchange of his life for yours, his sinlessness for your sin, his life for your death, his power for your weakness, his freedom for your bondage, his comfort for your grief, his beauty for your ashes, his gladness for your mourning, and his praise for your despair. He said that it is fulfilled today in him, and your life is hidden in him (Col 3:3). Be blessed to receive the connection he gives you from your Father's tender heart, and exchange his peace for your clamor, chaos, and confusion. Receive from him his comfort, love and joy, just because you are his. He offers you his vision and his hope in exchange for your disappointment, because he sees so much more than you do.

God crowns you with glory and honor, instead of heaviness, and hopelessness. You sparkle as a jewel in the crown of beauty of the Lord Jesus Christ. He gives you a new dawn in his rising glory. Be blessed as a powerful growing testimony of his presence, freedom, and grace. Be blessed as you are enlarged in all of who Jesus is in you and what he does for you.

Listen to the Word of God for you in Isaiah 43:4. "Since you are precious and honored in my sight, and because I love you, I will give men in exchange for you, and people in exchange for your life." You are honored and loved by God. The smile of his eyes validates you. That's your unshakable identity and legitimacy. Two Hebrew words in this verse have the idea of weight. You are a "heavyweight" in God's eyes. You are precious, and Jesus is the weight of glory in you. Be blessed as you are centered in the honor of your own preciousness, significance, and worth, as he does awesome things in you.

Because of this, God promises in Isaiah 43:4 that that he will give people in exchange for your life. You are laying down your life to live Jesus in front of some people. You are being a testimony of Jesus to them, ministering Jesus to them, representing Jesus to them. As you do that, God will exchange everything he has allowed in your life, every trial and hurt you have endured, every victory you have won - he will exchange all that for healing and freedom in the lives of others. He will reproduce your victories in others. Be blessed as his restoration comes full circle, as you pass on what you have received. He who promised is faithful, and he will do it.


Be blessed in the name of your Faithful God (Heb 10:23).

© Sylvia Gunter

[MIRIAM JACOB]

The Father's Business
Seeking God

Listen to the Word of God and be blessed with the passionate cry of the psalmist in Psalm 63:1. "O God, you are my God, earnestly I seek you; my soul thirsts for you, my body longs for you." And in Psalm 42:1. "As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, O God."

Be blessed to live from that deep cry of seeking God in your innermost being, longing for more of him, digging in to know him more intimately. Your Father desires constant communion of your spirit with his Spirit. Be blessed with directing the thirst of your soul to communion with him. Be blessed with getting out of your head and into your spirit, meeting God personally and profoundly.

Be blessed to know that God is who he said he is, and he can do and will do what he says he can do and will do, and he can presently do it in your life. He is the I Am to do it in you today. He is personal and powerful, and he alone satisfies. Jesus is standing and knocking at your heart's door, waiting for you to open up to him for satisfying fellowship (Rev 3:20). Jesus invites you to a table set for two. He wants your love, and he will be satisfied when you fulfill his heart by opening up to him.

Be blessed with knowing your covenant-keeping God of promise as you seek him and keep company with him in Spirit and in truth. Be blessed with more of his Spirit, not more how-to's to make you feel guilty or more religious. Be blessed to discover him more as his Spirit lives in you to fulfill your deepest cries. Be blessed to encounter him in such dimensions that you feel as if you have never breathed spiritually before.


Be blessed in his name Rewarder of those who earnestly seek him
(Heb 11:6).

Taken from You Are Blessed In The Names Of God, page 117 © by Sylvia Gunter, 2008.
Available at www.thefathersbusiness.com.