More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
In particular, we often confuse joy with happiness.
the word happy in our culture has been sentimentalized and trivialized. As a result, it connotes a certain superficiality.
However, the Greek word used in the Beatitudes is best translated as blessed, as it communicates not only the idea of happiness but also profound peace, comfort, stability, and great joy.
We tend to think of happiness as something passive, something that happens to us and over which we have no control. It is involuntary. Yes, we desire it and want to experience it, but we are convinced that we cannot create it by an act of the will.
Over and over again in the pages of the New Testament, the idea of joy is communicated as an imperative, as an obligation. Based on the biblical teaching, I would go so far as to say that it is the Christian’s duty, his moral obligation, to be joyful. That means that the failure of a Christian to be joyful is a sin, that unhappiness and a lack of joy are, in a certain way, manifestations of the flesh.
The heart of the New Testament concept is this: a person can have biblical joy even when he is mourning, suffering, or undergoing difficult circumstances.
The key to the Christian’s joy is its source, which is the Lord. If Christ is in me and I am in Him, that relationship is not a sometimes experience. The Christian is always in the Lord and the Lord is always in the Christian, and that is always a reason for joy. Even if the Christian cannot rejoice in his circumstances, if he finds himself passing through pain, sorrow, or grief, he still can rejoice in Christ. We rejoice in the Lord, and since He never leaves us or forsakes us, we can rejoice always.
We must not forget that the fruit of the Holy Spirit is not the same as the gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Every Christian is to manifest all of the fruit of the Spirit, and the more we grow in grace, the further we progress in our sanctification, the more gentle we should be, the more patient we should be, the more faithful we should be, and, obviously, the more joyful we should be.
Christians should be the most joyous people in the world because we have so much to be joyous about.
The most basic method is to focus our attention on the ground of our joy, the source of our joy.
When we find ourselves depressed, down, irritated, annoyed, or otherwise unhappy, we need to return to the source of our joy, and then we will see those circumstances that are sapping our joy in perspective. The circumstances of this life will pale into insignificance when compared to that which we have received from God.
What is the great enemy of joy? In the New Testament, it seems to be not so much sorrow or grief as anxiety.
It is anxiety that robs us of our joy. And what is anxiety but fear? Fear is the enemy of joy. It is hard to be joyful when we are afraid.
In other words, tribulation, pain, and suffering work patience within us, so something good happens to us even in the midst of trials. By remembering that truth, as we pass through trials, as difficult as they may be to bear, we will understand that they are not an exercise in futility, but that God has a purpose in them, and His purpose is always good.
Paul’s counsel, as we go through those periods, is to remember that God has put a time limit on our pain, and that after that time we will enter a condition wherein pain will be no more.
After all, the Bible tells us, “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep” (Rom. 12:15). That is one of the key principles of joy. It teaches us that our joy is not to be restricted to our own circumstances or our own achievements, but that we ought to be able to feel joy for other people, for their achievements, for their successes, and for their bounty.
It certainly takes grace to able to find joy in our hearts when people are experiencing joy over a gain that is, in some way, our loss.
Joy is often elusive because we put ourselves first and Jesus last. When that happens, we are trying to spell joy as y-o-j, and we need to rearrange our priorities.
Still, even though Jesus was a man of sorrows, I believe He was the most joyful human being who ever lived, because He knew the Father better than any other human being. Also, He was more attuned to the will of God than any other human being and was utterly obedient to it, and obedience brings joy to the soul. Not even the pain and torment He had to endure was able to rob Him of joy.
Our joy is to come from the assurance that we have redemption in Christ. The greatest joy that a person can have is to know that his name is written in the Lamb’s Book of Life, that he is saved and will live forever with Christ.
Knowing that one’s sins are forgiven provides a tremendous relief. All of the burden of guilt is gone. Guilt is fundamentally a depressant. It squelches any feeling of well-being. It robs us of peace. It torments our souls. It is probably the most significant barrier to real joy. Thus, when our guilt is removed, joy floods our souls.
There is a difference between guilt and guilt feelings. Guilt is objective. Real guilt is incurred any time we violate or transgress the law of God. However, our feelings are not always in touch with reality. There are people in the criminal-justice system who are described as sociopaths or psychopaths because they can commit heinous crimes without feeling any remorse whatsoever. Still, their lack of feelings does not alter the reality of their guilt. Guilt is determined not by how we feel but by what we do. Nevertheless, there is often a close relationship between the objective and subjective
...more
But then I discovered that the more pleasure I acquired, the less joy I possessed, because I was seeking pleasure in things that required that I disobey God. That is the attraction of sin. We sin because it is pleasurable. The enticement of sin is that we think it will make us happy. We think it will give us joy and personal fulfillment. But it merely gives us guilt, which undermines and destroys authentic joy.
As we seek forgiveness from God on a day-to-day basis, we return to the beginning of our joy—the day we discovered that our names are written in heaven.
First, the joy that Jesus wants to see in us is His joy.
Where does the Christian’s peace come from? It comes from Him; in fact, it is His peace. In like manner, His own joy is available to us, and He wants to see it abiding in us.
Second, He wants His joy to remain in us. He wants us to have a permanent joy, not a roller-coaster ride of moods shifting between joy and misery. If we want to be consistently joyful, we need to abide in Him.
