I’ve been a joy seeker from an early age. As a child, before life’s troubles crusted my heart, I tasted joy: Christmas smells and lights, waking up to freshly fallen snow, strawberries from my grandfather’s garden, family vacations in Vermont.
These whiffs awakened desires for lasting joy built into me by my Creator. I went searching for more, but lost the scent along the way, traveling many wrong roads.
- Lasting joy isn’t found in buying your first car or going on your first date in said car.
- Lasting joy doesn’t happen when you leave home and go to college. Nor does it happen when you finally graduate.
- Lasting joy doesn’t come from drugs, sex and rock and roll.
- Lasting joy doesn’t come from pleasing people or accumulating possessions
- Lasting joy doesn’t happen when you get married and have children of your own.
- Lasting joy doesn’t come from trying to be a great husband or father.
- Lasting joy doesn’t happen when you’re successful in your career, when you pay downs debts and build up your 401K.
- Lasting joy doesn’t come from trying to live a life free from troubles and striving after smooth circumstances.
God doesn’t want us settling for finite pleasures to fulfill our need for eternal joy. He made us for much more. As C.S. Lewis wrote, “It would seem that our Lord finds our desire not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday the sea. We are too far to easily pleased.”[1]
Joy isn’t automatically realized when you give your life to Christ and invite Him to indwell you by His Holy Spirit. But this is where the journey begins.
Wrong pursuits of joy require painful redirection of passions, making room for more Jesus in our lives. He is Joy Personified. “In Your Presence is Fullness of Joy;”[2]
On the night before He died, Jesus laid out in clear, unmistakable terms, our path to complete Joy:
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.(John 15:9-12 NIV)
Verse 9 – A declaration of undeserved Love and a command to Remain
Verse 10 – A conditional for staying in the love of Jesus
Verse 12– A specific command, fulfilling the condition and becoming the true goal of every day
Verse 11– The astounding result of loving sacrificially – Complete Joy
Lord, help us receive Your love and give it away. How brilliant that the way we stay in Your love and experience Your Joy is by loving others the way you’ve loved us. This can only happen as we abide in You. Day by day guide us to those You want to love though us. Fill us with the Joy of Your presence as we love.
[1] The Weight of Glory, C.S.Lewis
[2] Psalm 16:11b NASB
Joy in the Journey is about the gladness of God’s nearness in the midst of life’s adventures. Subscribe below to get email notifications of new posts. We post once a week. Thank you for reading.
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