Filed under: a buttery garlic sauce.
Too often, we lose our joy.
It’s pretty easy when a new semester starts, when people around you are hurting, when it is so very cold outside. Joy seems like a phase that comes and goes too quickly; it becomes momentary, and even then, the moments are so brief, you are barely grasping onto it before it takes off again. It seems that you are being dealt a hand that you don’t know how to handle…and its all because there is a lack of joy.
In the next chapter of Isaiah, chapter 12, consisting of only six verses and the simplest of ideas, we are encouraged to remember that God and His promises hold within them the epitome of joy. Joy is one of those things that we don’t often understand. We hear it from our youth, but we never entirely grasp the concept of what it is to be joyful. The idea of joy is expressed throughout the Bible, but dictionary.com is the first tool we will go to…because it is the source of least importance.
dictionary.com states:
joy: intense and especially ecstatic or exultant happiness; the expression or manifestation of such feeling.
Intense, exultant happiness. My theory is this: true joy is only found in the Lord or things of the Lord. What else should honestly cause us to be exultant?
Off the soap box…Joy is found throughout the Bible:
Nehemiah 8:10b – “…And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
Psalm 43:4 - Then I will go to the altar of God, to God my exceeding joy, and I will praise you with the lyre, O God, my God.
1 Thessalonians 1:6 – And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit.
Isaiah 12 says this:
You will say in that day: “I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.” With joy, you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: “Give thanks to the lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be made known in all the earth. Shout, and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”
The first time I read completely through the book of Isaiah, I went back and read this chapter a few times. It mentions joy, yes, but it lays out the entire reason for why we find joy in the Lord and His works. Verse by verse…
1- “…for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, that you might comfort me.”
We do so much to disgust God, honestly. We cause anger to fire up within Him. But His compassion overwhelms the flame of His righteous anger, because even though He is angry, He puts His anger aside to comfort us in our deepest, darkest hurts. That is cause for joy. An intense, exultant happiness.
2- “Behold, God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song, and he has become my salvation.”
We are completely undeserving of any sort of salvation, but God still sent His son, a human manifestation of Himself, to sacrificially atone for our sins. God, Himself, IS the salvation at the same time that He bestows the gift of salvation upon us. God is also strong enough to handle our hurts and our depravity, so we can trust and not be afraid of an almighty God. That is cause for joy. An intense, exultant happiness.
3- With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.
In this, I automatically think of living water. We literally draw living water from the wells of salvation, giving us eternal life and creating within us, a dark and disgusting vessel, a dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. That is cause for joy. An intense, exultant happiness.
4- “Give thanks to the Lord, call upon his name, make known his deeds among the peoples, proclaim that his name is exalted.”
Exactly how high and holy is this God? Beyond imagination. We give thanks to Him for all He has done. Through His grace and sovereign plan for us, He has brought us through darkness and conquered death for us. In an Old Testament sense, He had delivered His people countless times from every ailment, every enemy…He more than came through for them. And we can draw near to a God that is to be exalted. That is cause for joy. An intense, exultant happiness.
5- “Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously.”
A God of glorious works. That is cause for joy. An intense, exultant happiness.
6- “Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitant of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.”
We are inhabitants of Zion, and the One who redeems us is in our midst. That is cause for joy. An intense, exultant happiness.
Don’t you see? Everything about the nature of God, the person of Christ, the presence of the Holy Spirit, is cause for joy. So here’s the big question: Where along the way do we lose our joy?
Tonight, I realized that it is simply a matter of discipline. We write off the deeds of God too easily. We ignore the fact that He is at constant work (and His work is GOOD), and take matters into our own hands. We pour out and pour out of our own spirit, when in reality, apart from God, we have absolutely nothing to offer. We must discipline ourselves to rejoice in every circumstance. Jesus describes the nature of this true, disciplined joy in His ministry on earth and the gospel of John dictates it this way:
John 16:20-22: “Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.”
Our joy, when disciplined, is Future-Focused. It’s zoomed out and gazing at the bigger picture…big enough to keep in mind the Second Coming of Christ. Why are we looking at the world through a keyhole?
Even in the Old Testament, those who really knew the Lord and knew of His coming salvation, understood that their joy was to be Future-Focused. For example, Habukkuk the prophet ends his book and his prayer with this statement…
Habukkuk 3:17-19: “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. God, the Lord, is my strength; he makes my feet like the deer’s; he makes me tread on my high places.”
When we discipline our joy to be Future-focused, we are conscious of the fact that despite all circumstances, God is still the joy we grasp onto. How can we lose our joy when it is as big as God?
-CFG
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