Solomon wrote Proverbs 17:22 (ESV), A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones. We all long for joy but all of us don’t have the same definition of what joy is. Even within Christendom there is a great diversity of definitions for the word. It is this confusion that sends Christ followers in different directions in their quest for what they believe joy to be. They have a strong tendency to be driven to seek joy from outside of themselves rather than within themselves. Like the old saying, “All that glitters is not gold!” A smart-watch I purchased looked attractive on paper, but it totally failed to meet the advertised specs and therefore brought me frustration instead of any form of pleasure.
The church has rightly advertised many Bible promises that say we can have a joy the world cannot give. Yet, so many Christians restlessly bounce from one church or ministry to another looking for something or someone to bring them joy. They even find excuses to emulate behaviors of unbelievers if what they do appears to offer them temporal joy. How can that be?
In Luke 10 Jesus appointed 72 disciples and sent them out to every town and place He was planning to go. Verse 17 says they returned with joy. Based on what they told Jesus, doing signs and wonders had become their source of joy. Jesus then rebuked them saying in verse 20 (ESV), “…do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” Jesus correcting them for doing what He had sent them to do must have left them a bit confused. Isn’t it normal to have a sense of exhilaration when the Holy Spirit uses you to do something supernatural. So WHY would Jesus redirect them as He did? He knew there was a fine line between the joy drawn from a relationship with Him and that drawn from doing His spiritual work! And unless He clarified that for them early on, Satan would later use it as a snare to defeat them. How so? Joy that comes from doing His work is temporal because it is based on external stimulation and therefore can be very addictive. That stimulus can then subtly lead a person to just using God instead of loving Him with all their being! I know because I have fallen into that snare more often than I care to admit.
Contrast that source of joy with what happened in Acts 16 when Paul and Silas were severely beaten and thrown in prison (a dungeon) when they had been doing God’s work. Sitting in prison with aching, bloodied bodies, instead of feeling sorry for themselves or wondering why God allowed them to go through that when doing His work, they were praying and singing hymns to God!! Obviously, the source of their joy was not on their circumstances or anything extrinsic. It was totally coming from their inner being and based upon their relationship with our Lord. They had His joy — a pervasive sense of well-being that brings great cheer regardless of circumstances or performance, not human joy that only temporarily stimulates the human senses — an ever so slight difference yet profoundly different. It seems it was this truth that motivated Jesus to redirect the 72 disciples from feasting on the extrinsically generated temporal joy, as good and noble as those deeds were, to a joy that would be far more enduring and energizing.
We don’t have to do anything except love Him with all that is within in order to enjoy His joy. Psalm 16:11 (ESV), You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That joy will result in right deeds but will not be the motivation for them. What have you been drawing your joy from? Has it been related to your performance or circumstances or to the intimacy of your relationship with your Creator?
I am reminded of Mark Batterson’s book Whisper and his chapter on Desires. Well done as you call us into relationship.
It is July 23rd and I just read this. Last week I was thinking about a comment someone had said to me earlier in the month about talking to people about Jesus. As I thought about it I thought about how we are to tell them they are “loved by Jesus.” At that moment a surge of Joy went through me. Our daughter, Barbara, has been having a lot of discouraging things happening of late, when that Joy went through me I knew I was to tell her “remember knowing that Jesus loves us should bring the Joy of the Lord. I sent her a text message with that simple message. Her reply was,”how did you know I needed that?” I to am learning to get my Joy from my relationship with the Triune (sp?) Being of God.