Joy

If you watch Duck Dynasty, you’ll see footage of our property as they fly the camera over hundreds of acres of our land. About six hundred of those acres used to be covered with bitter pecan trees. Have you ever tasted a bitter pecan? If not, you can take my word for it—Don’t! I did . . . and my lips stayed puckered for two hours. When I say bitter, I mean even a squirrel won’t eat ’em unless they’re the last thing between him and starvation.

When I bought the land, the forester told me, “Robertson, your land is 65 percent covered by those raggedy-looking bitter pecan trees.” To me, this meant that 65 percent of my land was basically worthless. Without the right kind of trees, we’d never attract the deer, ducks, and squirrels we like to hunt for food. Willie, Jase, and I agreed: sometimes you got to cut it all down and start over. So that’s what we did. I had the loggers cut ’em down, every last one of them, and I sold the wood to somebody who used it to make caskets. Then I planted oak trees, spacing them out so they wouldn’t stress each other as they grew.

Soon enough, even though the bitter pecans had been chopped down, they started growing back. They grew much faster than the oak trees and threatened to choke the life out of those poor oaks. I called my friend and told him my plan: I’d cut down the new bitter pecan saplings, and he’d spray the ground where they’d grown with weed killer.

We walked back and forth over every inch of that square mile. I wanted to eradicate those trees for good—they weren’t bearing good fruit. In the end, it took me a total of three years, but I finally got them all. Now the oaks are coming in and the acorns are hitting the ground, and duck hunting is way better. Ditto that for deer hunting. The oak trees provide life down in the woods for all those animals.

Just as the worthless bitter pecans were choking out the growth of the good oak trees, we can allow things into our lives that choke out joy. Oftentimes those things are sinful choices, which take root in our hearts and produce bitterness, anger, hate—the opposite of the joy that should be taking root in the believer.

When the psalmist says “restore to me the joy of Your salvation” (Psalm 51:12), he’s inviting the Almighty to strip away everything that’s not producing the fruit of joy in his life. Isn’t that how the restoration process works? If you’re gonna restore a piece of furniture, you’ve gotta strip it down to the bare wood. . . . Likewise, to restore your joy, you’ve gotta strip away “the sin which so easily ensnares us” (Hebrews 12:1) by bringing it before Jesus and asking for forgiveness.

Taken from The Duck Commander Faith and Family Bible