Joy, Joy, Joy - Count It All Joy!! (Part 4)

Previously, we completed the discussion of the importance of joy as it relates to the connection to our better self and our Creator. This message also included the development and challenges of accessing, appreciating and cultivating joy. In today’s final installment, we will look at the expression of joy, sharing joy with others and the Spirit’s role in various aspects of joy. Finally, we will wrap up this series with a summary of this awesome gift of God.

Many blessings and heartfelt thanks to all of your who have stayed with me throughout this series. Your support is truly appreciated!

Expression

Do we have to learn how to receive joy? Chances are, we have no real memory of our first joyful encounter. What happens with that memory, I would propose, is that it is stored away along with the other memories along the way of life. We have the capacity to remember all kinds of things – especially emotions that soothe our soul. We might not remember the event exactly, but our soul remembers the emotion. It is not completely forgotten. Not only that, but I would also suggest that our soul craves this feeling and looks for opportunities to express it again. Especially when we are downtrodden, I believe our soul is lifted by the possibility that our mourning will be changed to dancing.

Joy is not to be taken for granted. We would be lost indeed if we should lose our joy. All the money and material possession in the world would fall woefully short in replacing the joy of our Lord! Since joy is a gift from our Creator, we can’t make it and we certainly can’t fake it. No one else can take it from you. It’s yours for the receiving and if you lose sight of it, you just might lose it. If we lose our joy, it is because we have lost our connection with the giver of that joy – our Creator. When we fall out of sync with His laws and become disobedient, this is fertile ground for the loss of real, true joy.

Spirit

Joy connects us with the Spirit. The joy of God, this fruit of the Spirit is a gift from God that comes forth through the Holy Spirit. Like other gifts from our Creator, it is up to us to receive and accept it. We must first recognize what it is in its most basic and genuine form.

Even if we don’t know what God is doing, we know the nature of our Lord. He would not do anything that is not aligned with His promises to always care for us, love us and never leave us. We also know that God does not lie. He hears our prayers and answers them according to His will in a manner that is in our best interests. Even in our most complex adversities, having a God who will be there, guide us and work out our every situation should be something that truly brings us joy. His joy is built into us as His creations.

It is human nature to think that we must keep what we have for ourselves, or we just might run out of that thing, whatever it is. Alternatively, seeing ourselves as creations of the Sprit, we can confidently access Spirit offerings that are inexhaustible, endless. We also know that when we have an abundance of anything, we are more apt to feel the need to share. Joy is like that. This how we must approach the spirit of joy. We must cultivate this fruit, prune that vine to produce more joy and that in abundance. When our joy is spilling over and we have much more that we will ever need, it naturally will flow to others. We want to share the good things that we have found, especially when we have so much of that good thing that there is no way that we can keep it to ourselves.

We have to become accustomed to whipping out joy in all circumstances of life. The more we prune the tree from which this fruit comes, the more second nature it will be to respond to life in this way. In order for this fruit to manifest itself in our lives in the way that will be most beneficial, we have to abound in joy. Fruit ripens and the tree can no longer hold it. Even a neglected orchard will bear fruit for a time. That fruit will become ripened or over-ripened on the tree or vine and either wither or drop to the ground. What type of fruit is it, though? Is it the type of fruit that you might purchase from the local grocery store, wholesale retailer, farmer’s market or Whole Foods type establishment? If that fruit has not been cultivated, tended to by pruning, watering, fertilizing, and harvesting, chances are it will not be the kind of fruit that would find its way into your grocery cart. The same is true for the fruit of the Spirit. We cannot allow joy to just lay idle in our spirit. We must cultivate it. Work it out through our interactions with others as well as internal responses to life.

Many times, joy finds us when we least expect it. The same could be said for happiness. One thing that these emotions have in common, especially since one is a derivative of the other, is that we cannot manufacture the emotion out of thin air. When you consider a time when you were blissfully happy, how was this experience manifested? Were you, as the title of a Will Smith movie, in the pursuit of happiness? That might sound a bit odd. We generally do not go after happiness. We chase down those things that might ultimately bring us happiness but not the feeling itself. We might say, I just want to be happy. For each one of us, that means something else. With the undeniable factors that come into play with every situation, even if we attempted to create an event that would end in our happiness, would we have any guarantees that we could pull it off? So, where would we find the satisfaction of this human need? Our Creator wants all of His children to be glad, to experience happiness, to share in the joy of the Lord. His fruit is ours for the taking. When we totally surrender to his will, there is no way that we will not experience joy and even some happy. I believe that the Lord smiles on our happy moments, knowing what they mean to us. He follows that up with pearls of joy to keep us connected to Him and remind us that as fleeting as happiness might be, His joy is ours forever.

Summary

Are you happy? Should we expect to be happy? Is it OK to be happy? Absolutely! He gives us the measure of happiness that we can handle based on our human limitations, but He knows that happiness is fleeting. It is what we can conjure up for ourselves and is based on our circumstances at any moment. His gift of joy is something that is rooted in our soul and can be cultivated and grown throughout our lives. Perhaps joy is God’s way of giving us something greater – a chance to connect with the Spirit that lives within us.

Joy allows the heart to imagine itself with the hopeful expectation, awe and gratitude of a child without any concerns around vulnerability. Joy allows our lives to visualize outcomes before seeing them, to have expectations of success though none seems in sight and move through life as if the matter is already resolved. Knowing that our Lord is the only real source for this euphoria, come what may, we are able to rejoice. This does not mean that we are oblivious to the cares of the world. It does mean that these cares do not rock our world and extinguish our joy. Only God in His omnipotence has the authority to really rock us. God has already promised to be with us, to never leave us and not forsake us, and He wants the best for us. Living from this space and place is, possibly, the joy of life!

The gifts that God gives us are perfect. The way we use them could cause them to become defiled, much less that the perfect package that we received. If/when things get to the point where we feel that what God has given us is not what we wanted, we should consider that the thing that is troubling us was not in God’s plan. We sometimes go out on our own and acquire that which He never would have given us. In His infinite wisdom, He just might allow us these experiences to develop our spiritual maturity. We have all heard that God doesn’t make junk and/or God doesn’t make mistakes. That leads then to the conclusion that if something turns out to be junk or a mistake, perhaps God wasn’t in it!

And so it is with joy, that internal state that is not driven by whatever might be happening in our environment. Joy is something that is God-given, whose very foundation comes from God, and cannot be marred or maligned by the current state of affairs – personal, professional, societal, etc. Should we find that a certain something or someone is not conducive to promoting a joyful state for us, chances are we need to get away from it with all haste. Move on to your joy away from this thing that is dragging your spirit down. Seize your joy that comes from whose and what you are. You are a child of God who is blessed with every perfect gift to live a joyful life here on this earth.

When it looks as if all is lost and we have gone astray, we might ask God what He is doing in this season? The question really is what are we going to do? Are we going to tap into the source that gives us strength, direction and clarity while maintaining our joy? Adversely, will we abandon the joy that was imbedded in us for the despondency caused by the dark forces of this world? The challenge is not knowing; the challenge is doing, responding in a way that brings joy to us and glory to the Father.

None of this happens outside of the confines of our foundation as creation beings. We are called to trust and believe the joy that was embedded in us at the inception of our creation. If we truly believe that the God who created us intended for us to have joy in our hearts, our souls, our minds, and our spirits, we will have it. In this season, let us remember the gift of joy as we celebrate the birth of our Savior who personified human perfection in many ways, including love, peace and joy.

Joy to the World, for our Lord has come!!

Prayer

Our God who is in heaven. We thank you this day for giving us your Son as we celebrate His birth during this season. We thank you that you are the God of creation who created us in your image. You have made your creations to serve and honor you, and we thank you for this privilege. We are humbled at the thought of being called by you to be included in the body of Christ. We thank you for the joy that we are reminded to embrace. We pray that we would gratefully receive and share the joy that you gave us when we were created. We pray that we would be better stewards of your gift of joy. We pray that we would be able to reflect this joy and not be distracted and defeated by the issues of this world. There is nothing that we can do on our own, and we ask that you strengthen us with your power to wrap ourselves in the comforting blanket of your joy in all circumstances. Father, we give you all the honor, the glory and the praise. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.