Joy

Galatians 5:22

“But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness”

Test and trials of life will come to beat down upon you and steal things that are rightfully yours by way of Jesus Christ. Understand that I am not talking about money nor any material thing but, more promising I am speaking of things given to us by connection to the Holy Spirit. In fact, let’s look at JOY. 

In the focal scripture, it tells us that joy is a fruit of the spirit. Meaning that it originates from the Spirit. So how is it that we have allowed our joy to become a fickle part of our life? One day we can be oozing with so much joy that everyone around us has no choice but to become giddy from our presence. The next we are so devoid of joy that we become a power drain to those that we come in contact with. I can say this personally because I fall victim to it also. Well, Joy is a fruit of the spirit so are we just not as connected as we like to think? Well maybe but, there is a deeper and simpler problem. Are we being lukewarm in our pursuit of a Christian life? No, I do not think that is the big problem either. The major problem is our understanding of Joy, what it is and what it means for us as believers of Christ. We must first understand that our joy, our gladness, is not the result of things that we have or can see around us. No the joy of the Lord is the result of reliance on the Spirit of God that is living within you as it guides you throughout life giving you instruction and understanding of things past, present and to come. It is also a release of feeling like you have to make everything happen. As the spirit speaks to you things that would have stressed you out and stolen your joy are now put to rest by God’s understanding and perspective. It lightens you. The material things, however, is what most of us allow to dictate how joyful we present ourselves. Need proof? Check your meter of cheerfulness before and after payday. Or before and after the new car. Joy was never meant to be given by those things. In fact, material gifts cannot produce joy. They can only produce happiness which is a fleeting feeling and can only be sustained with a constant chase. 

Another thing to see in this scripture is that nothing listed as a fruit of the spirit is a feeling. Yet we confuse the Joy talked about in scripture with a feeling. True joy is not a feeling. Understanding that changes the way we look at what it means to be joyful. When it is authentic it doesn’t matter what goes on in our life because the author of our joy is the spirit of Jesus that is living within us. This makes your ability to be joyful easy because it rests on the premise that Jesus has saved you from a life of sin and one day is coming back to live with you in Heaven. Not on the fact of how much you have or do not have.

The last major point to pull out of this text is that this is a FRUIT given by the Holy Spirit. Natural fruit when left unguarded gets devoured by birds and other pests before you are able to enjoy the results of your labor. The same is true in the spirit. If you are not careful to guard the Joy that is given to you daily then people and things will come to steal it from you. Make sure that you are setting things in place to protect your joy from being spoiled by the pulls and demands of life. Give yourself time to acknowledge the fruit that God has given you and do not allow anything to come and steal that from you. 

So we pray. Abba, we thank you for the joy that you give to us daily. We thank you for the Holy Spirit that you have given us and we ask that you give us the discipline to be more guarded of our joy. We pray that you would pick us up out of the pit of despair and show us the hope and vision that you first gave us. Speak to every heart that opens this blog. Cover every area of their lives. Areas of pain, areas of brokenness and areas where we are disappointed. We thank you for covering us and for watching over us hour by hour. We love you Father. In Jesus Christ name we pray. Amen.