I saw a three-pack of stockings, each with a different letter
on them, spelling J-O-Y. With the Christmas season coming up, you are about to
hear the word “joy” a lot. So what is joy? Is it the largest box under the
Christmas tree with your name on it? Is it spending Christmas with your family
that you rarely see? Or could joy possibly be something that we get as a result
of our relationship with God? Perhaps you have never experienced joy, and this
is all Spanish to you, but bear with me here. Or maybe you think you’ve found joy, but in actuality, you have never actually
had joy. Joy is defined as great happiness or something that brings happiness.
Before
plunging into a quick overview of joy, I just wanted to put this quote in that
really sums up this entire article, “The Holy Spirit stirs in us a joy and peace when we are fixated on
Jesus, living by faith, and focused on the life to come.”1 I
stumbled upon this phrase in Francis Chan’s book Crazy Love, and thought it fit very well with the theme of this
article. As I considered how to write this article, I contemplated breaking
down this statement, but then again, as great as Chan is, he’s not God. So then
that led me to ask what Jesus said about joy. I just want to look at what Jesus
directly said about joy. Turn to John 16:20, and read it. Jesus says that joy
will come in heaven, so does that mean that we cannot have joy on earth? Keep
reading in verse 24. This is a popular verse in the Bible, but only the “Ask
and you shall receive” part is, and not the part that says “So that your joy
may be full”. So start a mental list of how and when we shall receive joy. 1. Asking God for things and receiving them
brings us joy.
Moving on
(I’m not doing this in chronological order, fyi), or moving back, to John
15:1-11. You probably already know this passage in the Bible, but read it
anyway. At the end of all of this, Jesus adds, “Oh yeah, I told you this so
that you may have joy” (Author’s paraphrase). I’ve found that sometimes you
have to read the Bible backwards as well as frontwards. Look back at what He
said should make us joyful. 2. The fact that
we are connected to the body of believers that are rooted in Christ should fill
us with joy. This is the second point of this article, and it is also the
main point of the article. Without being in a local church and growing
spiritually, there is NO JOY!
I just want
to add one more statement to this, so as to make this list easy to remember,
and this one is a little bit different from the others. Look at Luke 15:7-10.
Find the word joy in this passage and then try to figure out what we can glean
from it. The answer is not exactly clear, but it can be found by looking at
Romans 12:15, which says to, “Rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with
those who weep.” If you still have no idea how these verses fit together or
even how they coincide with joy, let’s break it down a bit. Jesus says that
there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents. Well, we’re not in heaven
are we? So how does this relate to the topic even slightly? We need to be like
the angels; finding joy in the joy of others. A man came home one night to find
a new car and a letter informing him of a large raise that he’d been given. In
his excitement, he called up his two best friends. The first friend was
overjoyed, because he knew that this man had fallen on some hard times
financially, and this would be a great help. The man’s other friend bitterly
congratulated the man and then hung up. His jealousy won over any feelings of
happiness for his friend. 3. We find joy
by rejoicing with those who are rejoicing.
That story
was fictional, but it showed the two different ways to react to something like
that. I think everyone knows what the correct response is, but jealousy often
overtakes us. I’ve found it incredibly hard to destroy whatever jealousy creeps
into my heart in times where others are rejoicing, but with God’s help, it can
be accomplished. So maybe this article could be called “Redefining Joy” because
in essence, that’s what I wanted to accomplish, because as Christmas
approaches, we receive false images of what joy is. Things on earth are often
pleasurable, but nothing, save Jesus Christ, can bring you complete joy. One
final thing before I end this article, if you have been searching for true joy,
maybe just jot down these four things:
1. Asking God for things and then receiving them brings us
joy
2. The fact that we are connected to a body of believers that
are rooted in Christ should fill us with joy
3. We find joy by rejoicing with those who are rejoicing
4. Complete and perfect joy comes in heaven
1 Francis Chan, Crazy Love (2008), pg. 109
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