Joy

Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. (Habakkuk 3:17-18, ESV)
. . . looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. (Hebrews 12:2, ESV)
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:13)
If there is any one thing that should mark the Christian in such a way that the world is amazed by it, it should be a sense of joy. Joy is not the same thing as happiness. The world seeks for happiness. Every commercial on TV is aimed at bringing the consumer happiness if he or she will simply buy the latest product, follow the latest fad or indulge in the latest craze. Happiness is a word that is connected to “happenstance.” If something happens and I feel that I like it, I am happy. If something happens and I feel that I don’t like it, I feel bad. That’s happiness. Joy, on the other hand, has a far deeper meaning. If you are filled with joy, you can be compared to a tea kettle: you can still whistle, even when you are up to your neck in hot water. (That is not original with me; I heard it first when I was twelve years old, when I was attending a gospel meeting.) The prophet Habakkuk states it very clearly; joy does not depend on everything going my way. He paints a very dismal outlook, a landscape that smacks of famine. Even so, he says, he will still rejoice in the Lord. “I will take joy in the God of my salvation.” That doesn’t sound like happiness.
The Christian is a person who is filled with joy just knowing the Lord. Do you ever tell God that you love Him? We have a hard enough time telling our family members that we love them, let alone telling our Father in Heaven that we do. Can you just say, “Father, I love you. Jesus, I love you.” Did I forget to mention the Holy Spirit? Well, He’s busy interpreting everything we say to God into words that God can completely understand. He even does that with groaning, according to the writer of Romans. I have heard Christians groan and I have done a bit of that myself, to be honest. But my groans don’t begin to compare with the groans that the Holy Spirit utters on my behalf before the Father. Do you love God?
Can you love God when the world around you seems to be falling apart? Do you love Him when you lose your job or your house (more and more a reality these days)? Do you love Him when a loved one falls ill and life suddenly changes? Do you love Him when He takes a loved one from this earth? Those events don’t sound like the harbingers of happiness, do they? But we should be filled with joy. Why? Because Habakkuk says He is the God of our salvation. Habakkuk even says he will rejoice in the Lord. Rejoice means to have joy again. In Matthew, chapter 5, Jesus said this to His disciples: "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matthew 5:11-12, ESV) I don’t know about you, but I find it very difficult to rejoice, to be filled with joy again, when people say terrible things about me. I have had people say nasty things about me because I am a Christian. I have mostly lived in areas of the world where being a Christian is not culturally acceptable. And this is increasingly the situation in North America. Even governments get in on the action. There are those in power who would like to strip preachers of the right to perform marriages or penalize them monetarily should the preachers refuse to perform weddings for same-sex couples. Cities pass by-laws prohibiting the building of new church buildings. We do not live in the blissful era of days gone by when Christianity was considered the major moral force for society.
Christians must learn to be filled with joy in every event, in every situation. It is when we learn, as Jesus did, to be obedient, even unto death, that we will begin to understand the cross. It is when we are willing to live our lives incarnadine, as though we were on our way to execution, that the message of the cross and our Savior Jesus Christ will shine so brightly that the world will be utterly amazed. If first century Christians were accused of “turning the world upside down,” it is because they were willing to die for what they believed. And they counted it all joy to do so. Are we up to the test? Where will we stand? A dying world needs to hear a living message, the sweet news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the One who died for everyone in the world.