Sometimes we work so hard at enjoying our lives – we end up absolutely exhausted. Stress, tiredness, overwork are epidemics in our society. And you can’t enjoy life, when you’re always exhausted.

I have a confession to make, I'm an addict but fortunately the thing that I'm addicted to is well, it's something good. It's called "the joy of the Lord". God's joy is what I'm addicted to. I have to tell you, in my book there is nothing, absolutely nothing that compares to the joy that I have in my relationship with Jesus Christ and the reason is that it's this joy that’s changed my life. It is such a wondrous experience that I don't want to do anything that interrupts the fellowship, the relationship I have with God.

And so what happens is that, that good things flow out of my life into the lives of other people, it's an overflow of the joy of the Lord. Now please don't get me wrong, I'm definitely not perfect, far from it but as I enjoy Jesus each day, from that enjoyment flow the good works that He uses to bless other people but what I've discovered is that its hard, I mean it's really hard to live in that joy when I'm exhausted. Exhaustion robs me of joy and that's important to know.

Maybe you've been listening over these last couple of weeks to me talking about the joy of the Lord and maybe you think, "augh, it's just a bit unrealistic talking about joy all the time." Maybe you have this impression that I'm walking around on cloud 9 every, every minute of the day. Not at all, we all experience setbacks, disappointments, hurts, our emotions and feelings go up and down.

You know sometimes I might have a bad nights sleep and on top of that something doesn't go quite the way I want it to and then someone treats me badly and, and I might experience the emotion of disappointment or hurt or even anger. We all go through that stuff; there are no "super spiritual people" on this planet who are immune from those things in life.

The apostle Paul, who wrote almost half the books in the New Testament, writes this. He says in 2 Corinthians chapter 4:

We are hard pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in us.

You see that's the reality of life. Paul was just used so powerfully by God in the first century to plant so many Churches, to write all these bits in the New Testament, the Bible which we read 2,000 years on but he had to deal with the realities of life but all the way through that stuff we, like him, can experience a deep joy because we know that Jesus is in that place with us. Like when Paul was in prison on death row and he writes a letter to the Church at Philippi and he says:

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I'll say rejoice, let your gentleness be known to all the Lord is near. Don't be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving. Let God know what you need and the peace of God which passes all understanding will guard you heart and your mind in Christ Jesus.

See that joy that he was experiencing on death row in that dungeon was unnatural. That's because it was super natural, it was a joy that came to him, not in of himself but through the spirit of God. God lit a fire in his heart that circumstances just couldn't quench.

For Paul it was all about what was happening on the inside, sure on the outside he was in chains, he was on death row, he was uncomfortable in this cold, dark dungeon but in that dungeon a fire was raging, a fire in Paul’s heart which was the joy of the Lord. But as I said at the beginning of the program one of the things that can truly rob us of the joy of the Lord is exhaustion.

Last year I had a particularly hectic year. I was involved in full time ministry producing these programs and we saw the number of stations around the world taking these programs double, we saw Gods blessing in incredible growth, millions of more people hearing the word of God, it was awesome. But of course, with all of that comes a lot of work by our team here at the ministry.

And at the same time I was still doing some Information Technology consulting work, just a hangover from my consulting firm, a really big project that I just couldn't walk away from and that took a lot of time and effort and I knew it was for a season, I knew it was the Lords provision but I have to tell you, it was brutal and it was exhausting, I mean I had to work long hours.

Now there are three parts to who we are; body, soul and spirit. Our body's pretty obvious, our soul is our mind and will and emotions and our spirit is that deep part of who we are where God touches us and these parts of who we are; body, soul and spirit are linked. They're not separate somehow but together they make up who we are and so my body and my soul were absolutely exhausted.

Now there can be a good type of exhaustion, you get to the end of something and you're tired but you know that it was good and you look back on it with this, this exhausted satisfaction but when I was in the middle of those incredibly long hours and long days last year, one of the things that I discovered was that it was really hard to experience the joy of the Lord because joy is something that tends to elude you when you're so tired that you fall asleep while you're praying.

I wanted to share that with you because it's so easy in the 21st century to get our lives out of balance. God made us body, soul and spirit, He knows us and He knows we need rest. Psalm 127 says this:

Unless the Lord builds the house, its builders labour in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city the watchmen stand guard in vain. In vain you rise up early and stay up late toiling for food to eat for He grants sleep to those whom He loves.

You rest, it's in the Bible. Rest is incredibly important because rest lets us enjoy the fruits of our toil, it lets us recover. Listen to this account of how God created the universe. In fact, actually I want to pick it up at the bit where He just finished creating the universe, the last part. It says:

God saw all that He had made ...

Comes from the first chapter of the Bible, Genesis chapter one.

God saw all that He had made and it was very good and there was evening and there was morning. It was the sixth day and so the heavens and the earth were completed in all their vast array. By the seventh day God had finished the work He'd been doing so on the seventh day He rested from all His work and God blessed the seventh day and made it holy because on it He rested from all the work of creating that He had done.

Now God doesn't get tired, God doesn't get exhausted but He sat back and He saw all that He had done and behold it was very good. He had a chance, He stopped, He paused and rested and enjoyed what He had done.

On top of that you and I get tired and when that tiredness robs us of our joy we lose our strength and then the devil has a foot hold. We seriously need to balance our work and our rest because exhaustion is the enemy of the joy of the Lord. It's really important to know: In vain you rise up early and stay up late toiling for food because God grants sleep to those who He loves.

Now that we know about it, we've got to do something about it.