On the Virtue of Joy, Part 2: The Animated Response to God’s Presence in all Stages of Life.
The Church has always succeeded in her task throughout the centuries because she rejoiced again and again. She rejoiced in the most perilous moments of her existence.
Any church culture should desire to combine the beauty of liturgy with abundant hearts, voices, and joy. The liturgy should be a balm to those in sorrow, a shot of hope to those distressed, and a caffeinated boost of jolliness.
Biblical liturgy is right worship, but if everything we do on Sunday morning does not produce joyful Christians, then the liturgy is not producing what God demands.
Paul says in Galatians that the fruit of the Spirit is love and joy…In Philippians, he says, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice.” Simple words, but hard practice. The word kara, which means joy, and Kairo, which means joyful, comes from the same family. They have an entirely identical biblical purpose.
I Have the Joy, Joy, Joy Down In My Heart
Interestingly, Paul uses kara, which means joy, only once in Galatians. He develops his view of joy elsewhere, but it plays a prominent role in this catalog of virtues.
The word “rejoice” is not a word we use often in our daily vocabulary. The word is closely aligned with a greeting in the ancient culture. The Early Christians would use this to welcome one another into their homes. The Christian is called to greet one another with a charge to rejoice. The classic biblical greeting, “The Lord be with you,” is an exhortation to joy. When greeted in this manner, you are invited to taste joy, so you respond with, “And also with you,” which is your desire that the other tastes of this joy also.
Thus, the imperative “to rejoice” or “produce joy” as a Spirit-empowered saint carries much more meaning than we imagine. The apostle was not saying, “Put on a happy smile;” he said, “Rejoice in your hope.” The argument of Galatians is that the way to avoid a false Gospel is to produce these fruits in our lives. The Galatians are fighting for their lives. So, joy is a fight for orthodoxy; it’s not something we simply possess, it’s a gift we must pursue in season and out of season.
You can be an incredibly knowledgeable Christian with a charismatic personality, well-read, well-versed in classical literature, and rhetorically gifted, but if you have no joy or don’t fight for joy, Paul says you are not hungering for the Tree of Life.
Joy is not some random display of smiles, a parade of giggles, a marathon of hahahas, a plethora of funny emojis, or an unending display of selfies; to have joy “down in your heart” requires the Gospel of Jesus Christ running through your veins in sickness and in health, in life or in death.
We fight by the power of the Holy Spirit, the author of joy. The Spirit who inspired the biblical authors is consistent throughout the whole Bible, which is a consistent display of this theme of joy. In the Old Testament, there is a call to be renewed by joy, strengthened by joy, to celebrate the joy of our salvation, to rejoice in the works of God, to sing a song of joy, and on and on. The Third Person of the Godhead empowers joy.
Is God Silent?
But then we come to this inevitable question in our fight for joy: "Where is God in our grief?” How can he make such a demand on our lives when there are seasons of absolute chaos? How can God, maker of all things, giver and taker, Lord and King, the source of joy, demand our joy when nothing around me seems to evoke such a response? Or does he want us to see our pain as joy, too? Flannery O’Connor once said: “I can, with one eye squinted, take it all as a blessing.”[1] Is this what we should do? Fake it until you make it? Maybe “take it until you make it” sounds better. You take the exhortation of joy until joy becomes your natural disposition.
After all, this is the experience of the psalms of lament. We don’t know where we are. We feel isolated. We feel disoriented. We sense an abandonment from the very one we thought was always with us and would never forsake us.
“Where are you, Lord?” the psalmist asks.
The psalmist answers his own question wonderfully: “When my tears drench the bed, when I am in Sheol, when everyone is against me, thou art there.” So, the psalmist is not asking questions that cannot be answered. The Psalmist knows the answer but also knows there is a process to arrive at the answer.
Pronouncement and Process
There is a difference between pronouncement and process. The preacher pronounces but also knows that a process is involved in the pursuit of joy.[2] Healing rarely happens overnight. Paul doesn’t treat joy as something simple to pursue--he says it is the Fruit of the Spirit; it is the outworking of time and faithfulness. The longer you stay from faithfulness—drunkenness, outbursts of anger, selfish ambition—the longer the process will be to find joy. The fruit of the Spirit is joy, but the sanctification in joy is a continual work of grace. This maturation in joy is worth fighting for! This is what we are called to be and to do. And because joy is worth fighting, we must be bold about its pursuit. We need a sung joy:
“But let all who take refuge in you rejoice; let them ever sing for joy. (Ps. 5:11)
“Let those who delight in my righteousness shout for joy and be glad and say evermore, “Great is Yahweh, who delights in the welfare of his servant.” (Ps. 35:7)
The world is usually in such pain that God says to sing out loud so they may hear and perhaps smile. No wonder Paul says to rejoice in the plural.[3] Joy requires consolation, but it also involves community. Rejoicing is clearly expressed as a community exercise. Rejoicing alone seems almost bizarre to Paul. Rejoice together. Let joy overflow among you. Let it be known to all! Sing for joy, all ye peoples! Shout for joy! Don’t let the world see us without seeing our joy.
Joy Defined
But let me be more precise in defining joy. Joy is the animated response to God’s presence in all stages of life. Every time heaven breaks through our daily lives, it is a reason for joy. God’s presence breaks through with tremendous regularity in significant events, like the birth of a child, the provision of our financial needs, healing from surgery, and surviving an accident; we need faith to know God’s presence is there. But heaven also breaks through in many little things, like the amens of little children in worship, the beauty of a sunny day at the beach, the note or word of encouragement from a friend, and the hug and handshake of reconciliation after turmoil. Do we have an animated response to God’s presence in all these things?
It is common for people to report sad details of other people’s lives; it is not so common to rejoice in the happy details of other people’s lives. We need more of that. We need to be genuinely joyful over the joy of others. Instead of lamenting their joy, let us rejoice in their well-being. Our lack of joy may stem from our lack of joy for other people’s joy.
The one who does not rejoice with and in one another is not living in humility before God. He will not have an animated response to God’s presence because he will view God’s presence as distant. But you were created for joy; to know that Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
You were created to imitate the God who laughs and rejoices over you. You were created to consume the fruit of joy.
The Church has always succeeded in her task throughout the centuries because she rejoiced again and again. She rejoiced in the most perilous moments of her existence. She rejoiced in trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword. She gave an animated response because she knew God was with her.
Fighting for Joy
What is keeping us from joy? What actions prevent us from expressing that supreme virtue that needs to be a key characteristic of our renewed humanity in Jesus?
Apart from circumstantial matters that may involve physical problems that may genuinely affect someone’s mental disposition for a time, the reality is that most Christians are simply refusing to listen to God’s word when it comes to this fruit of the Spirit. Joy is an imperative, and sometimes Christians do not know joy because they do not seek it.
How is it to be found? Where can we practice our joy? How can we mature in joy? The quickest answer is in the common activities of the Christian. You cannot heed Paul’s word to rejoice unless you are united to a community that makes joy central to their testimony to the world. Have you ever asked, “Why do I not have joy?” If you do not have joy, can it be because you are not surrounding yourself with those who make true joy a part of their daily vocabulary?
A joyless faith is a weak faith; one that cannot sustain itself when pain occurs.
But there is also a sense in which we do not have joy because we have not enjoyed what God has given us. Paul says that all things are given for our enjoyment, but we tend to say that all things are given so that we may properly avoid them as a test of our faith.
Many in the church have turned gifts into temptation traps; blessings into legalistic self-expressions. Why do we at times lack joy? Because we have told the Creator that what he gives he can have it back.
Christian joy comes from the most unlikely places, but it begins when we acknowledge that God is the giver of joy and that we should not despise his good gifts.
Joy is not laughing at the face of pain. Joy sometimes may not be laughing at all. Joy is understanding that even in pain, hope prevails. Joy is understanding that though he slay me, yet will I trust in him. Joy is not laughing amid pain, joy is going through pain and still honoring God.
What is joy? Joy is the animated response to God’s presence in all stages of life. Rejoice and again I say rejoice, for God’s presence is with us.
[1] Flannery O'Connor, The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
[2] For pastors interested in this topic, see Marshall Shelley’s fantastic work on “Dragons in the Church.”
[3] Second person plural.
Lenten Blessings from Blue Ridge, Georgia
Uriesou Brito