Fruit of the Spirit - Joy

FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT – JOY

Joy is a part of God’s character, He is the God of all joy and it His desire for us to have His joy in our lives.

Like love I do not think the world’s description of joy as a feeling of great happiness is what Paul refers to as the fruit of the Spirit.  Joy is not the same as happiness. Their source is different, the Joy of the Lord is produced in us by the Holy Spirit, (John 14:14), happiness on the other hand is a feeling dependent upon our circumstances.

Life is filled with struggles, sickness, suffering and tragedy, so it stands to reason happiness is not something we continually experience.

Happiness comes from the outside while joy comes from the inside. The Bible says

Philippians 4.4:   Rejoice in the Lord always, again I say rejoice.'' And

1 Thess 5.16, ''Rejoice always?''  

And what about having ''joy, joy, joy, joy down in your heart?''  (I know that’s not a Bible verse! ) Joy is ours to have every day in every circumstance because its tied to Jesus within us.

In 1 Thessolonians 5:16 the verb is in the present tense which means it literally says, ''always rejoice and keep on rejoicing.'' This joy is always present in us, no matter what is going on around us. Nothing can take it from us, it can’t be stolen, deleted or diminished.

In Acts 16:25  But at midnight, Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God…     from chains in a prison cell.

Nehemiah 8:10 says, "The joy of the Lord is your strength." It was a day of grief and repentance, the day the scribe Ezra read “the Book of the Law of God” in the hearing of the assembly. A generation of Israelites suddenly realized what many previous generations had forsaken—a covenant of love with the great and mighty God. And, according to Nehemiah, they wept.

God meets us in our weakness and He exalts the humble. His joy takes us from weakness to strength because God’s power—His very presence—is greatest when we are most visibly vulnerable.

A friend of mine shared this story with me recently. When she was starting her family she suffered a miscarriage, while she was at the hospital she felt this overwhelming sense of wanting to cry but she didn’t. Over the next hours and into the following days although she was grieving she had this wonderful sense of joy that made her just want to praise God.  She said she actually felt guilty and wondered what others thought about her because she was just praising God. In that sad and tragic circumstance of her life the joy of the Lord was most certainly her strength, it came from within and nothing could take it from her.

(permission to share this story in this blog has been given)

As one of the older ladies in my church sings so often “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart”.

Joy fruit of the Spirit- is it evident in your life?