Welcome to the Feminine Podcast. This is Nancy Wilson. Thanks for joining me today.

Today seems like a good day to talk about joy. There's not a bad day to talk about joy,

but rather than beginning with the positive blessing of rejoicing the Lord,

I thought I would start with what happens when we refuse to be joyful.

For all the good that the Lord has done us, then we'll move on to the flip side.

So start with Deuteronomy 28, 47, and 48. Listen to this.

Because thou service not the Lord thy God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart

for the abundance of all things, therefore shout thou serve nine enemies,

which the Lord shall send against thee in hunger and in thirst and in nakedness

and in want of all things. And he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck until he

have destroyed thee. Well, this doesn't sound like a very cheerful podcast, does it?

Hopefully, we're going to get to the joyful part in a minute, but really note this.

The first several verses of Deuteronomy 28 includes a list of all the many blessings

that Israelites are going to enjoy if they obey the Lord.

Blessing after blessing after blessing is listed in. I can just commend them if you want to go

and read through that section. If thou shalt heart indiligently and to the voice of the

Lord thy God to observe and to do all his commandments, which I command thee this day,

that the Lord thy God will set thee on high above all nations of the earth. There it is,

if you heart indiligently, and this is followed by the long list of blessings. So chapters

divided into two, first are the blessings, and then are all the many curses. So verse 15 begins with

butt. All right, and the rest of the chapter, all the way to 68 lists all the curses that are

going to follow, and it's a very grim list. So in other words, we start out with blessings,

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