I know what it's like to lose your joy. It's not pretty and it hurts to the very core. You lose interest in life and you really don't want to be around people - especially the joyful ones.
This passage takes place right after the Jews had returned from 70 years of captivity in Babylon.
During that time they had limited access to God's Word. In fact, they had forgotten far more than they remembered about God. They were in sorrow and had lost their joy. Nehemiah then reminds them that The Joy Of The Lord Is Their Strength.
We tend to equate “happiness” with joy but they are two totally different ideas because they each spring from a different source. One comes from the world around me. The other originates directly from the Spirit of the Living God.
Happiness is conditioned by and often dependent upon what is “happening” to me. If people treat me good, if things are going well in my life, then I’m happy. If my circumstances aren’t favorable, then I’m unhappy – that describes me as I was flying over the back of that dangerous dragon!
Joy, on the other hand, throbs throughout Scripture as a profound, compelling quality of life that transcends the events and disasters which may dog God’s people. Joy is a divine dimension of living that is not shackled by circumstances.
The Hebrew word means, “to leap or spin around with pleasure.” In the New Testament the word refers to “gladness, bliss and celebration.”
To have the fruit of joy ripen in our lives is to recognize the journey involved in getting there. It takes time, diligence, patience, and hard work to make a grapevine produce grapes. Fruit is not instantaneous because it has to overcome weather, bugs, weeds, poor soil and neglect.
Likewise, in our journey to joy we’re faced with the waves of apathy, the currents of pessimism, the deluge of doubt and the waterfalls of despair. There is no way we can manufacture this fruit on our own.
If we want to see this fruit ripen in our lives, we desperately need the Holy Spirit to prune away whatever it is that hinders our joy and then empower us to make some choices that move us closer to a lifestyle of rejoicing.
We need to guard against three common Joy Busters and we need to cultivate some Joy Builders into our lives.
Joy Busters
Before Paul wrote to the church at Galatia about the Fruit of the Spirit in chapter 5, he asked a very penetrating question in Galatians 4:15: “What has happened to all your joy…”
That question needs to be asked in the church today. What has happened to all my joy? What has happened to all your joy?
William Barclay has said that “a gloomy Christian is a contradiction in terms, and nothing in all religious history has done Christianity more harm than its connection with black clothes and long faces.”
Let’s look at three common joy stealers that often give us long faces.
1. Unsatisfied expectations.
Do you ever feel like you’re just going through some joyless routines in life? If the truth were known some of us are discontent with the way our lives are progressing. It could be that your expectations for your marriage have not been met. Or, maybe your kids aren’t living like they should. Perhaps you don’t have everything you want – a bigger house, a nicer car, and a better job.
I’m convinced that a spirit of discontentment can rob many of us of joy.
Listen to how Paul discovered the secret of being content with what God had given him in Philippians 4:12: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
2. Unresolved conflict.
Our joy evaporates when we allow conflict between ourselves and another person to go on. When someone’s offense against us occupies our mental and emotional attention, we have little left over for the Lord. Anger clouds the eyes of our heart and obscures our view of God, draining away our joy.
Hebrews 12:14-15 challenges us to “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”
3. Unconfessed sin.
This third joy buster is perhaps responsible for chasing more joy out of lives than any other. Guilt can gut your joy faster than anything I know. Sin can send joy far away.
David understood this very well when he attempted to ignore the promptings of the Spirit.
Take a look at Psalm 32:1-5: “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD’ -- and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”
I love how this Psalm ends. After David owns his sin, his joy returns. Notice verse 11: “Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!”
Did you catch that? He was not able to rejoice and experience the joy of the Lord until he confessed his sins!
That’s very similar to what David wrote in Psalm 51:7-8: “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.”
Joy Builders
Billy Sunday once said, “The trouble with many men is that they have got just enough religion to make them miserable. If there is not joy in religion, you’ve got a leak in your religion.”
God not only wants to restore our lost joy, He also wants us to cultivate those things that will build lasting joy into our lives so that we don’t have any leaks in our religion. The Bible gives us at least six ways to experience this joy.
1. Recognize God as joyful.
We can be helped greatly in our journey towards joy if we learn to see the Almighty not as a taskmaster, but as the God of the Universe with a smile on His face.
Zephaniah 3:17 “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” [Read again]
God delights in you and breaks out into song when He thinks about you! That’s hard to believe, isn’t it? I love how the Living Bible paraphrases this verse: “Is that a joyous choir I hear? No, it is the Lord himself exulting over you in happy song.”
2. Rehearse God’s attributes in worship.
God delights in us and finds great joy in His creation – then when we celebrate His attributes in worship we allow our joy to flow back to Him. The Westminster Confession states it well: our chief end is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. We’ve been designed to respond in worship through both reverence and rejoicing.
Psalm 66:1-4: “Shout with joy to God, all the earth! Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious! Say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds! So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you. All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing praise to your name.’”
Our collective worship of God on Sundays should be the culmination of our individual and private worship during the week. It should usher us into His joy for another week.
3. Reaffirm your commitment to others.
As I connect with you and you connect with me, our joy will overflow. We need each other. If we’re not attending church on a regular basis, or coming and not interacting with others, we could be jeopardizing the joy of other people.
When we live in loving relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ, we’ll be more joyful and we’ll be helping others jack up their joy.
4. Reignite your passion for evangelism.
One of the best ways to build joy into your life is by talking to others about Jesus. Philemon 6: “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.”
5. Release your problems to the Lord.
One of the hallmarks of Christian joy is that it can be experienced in the midst of intense sorrow and loss. Often we define happiness as the absence of something undesirable, such as pain, suffering, or disappointment. But Christian joy is the proper response to the presence of something desirable: God Himself.
Matthew Henry, a Bible scholar from the 1700’s wrote in his diary after some thieves robbed him and took his wallet: “Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because, although they took my wallet, they did not take my life; third, because, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourth, because, it was I who was robbed, not I who robbed.”
The only way to have an attitude like this is to release our problems to the Lord. Because He’s in charge we can have joy – no matter what happens.
Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 7:4: “…in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds.” James 1:2 challenges us to “consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds.”
This takes a conscious decision. We’re commanded to work at it. While we can’t manufacture joy we can give our problems to the Lord by leaning on Him with everything we’ve got.
6. Remain close to Jesus.
John 15:10-11 puts it this way: “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
If we want the kind of joy that is complete, lacking nothing, then we must remain close to Jesus. Apart from Him we can bear no fruit.
Jesus said it clearly in John 15:4: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”
If you have lost your joy - may God grant you His great peace that your joy might also be complete in your life in all that you do.
Original Sermon by Brian Bill
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