The Gospel of Joy

It is interesting that the word “happy” can be augmented to say “unhappy”, but “joy” cannot be changed from, “joy” to “unjoy” and be linguistically correct. I believe that there is both a divine and biblical reason why this is true. Take your pick. Joy is an attribute that is given to us by God. It is listed as one of the fruit of the Holy Spirit in Galatians 5:22&23.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.”

Happiness is conspicuously absent from that list.

Happiness is dependent on temporal things. The other day I went to get my car out of the shop. Let me pause and say, “God bless that old car.” When I looked at the bill I became temporarily unhappy; but when I got in the car and cranked it up and I felt the new power in the car that made me happy. After all, it is good to have the turn signals working again, it is good to have the car running smoothly even when I good over 50 miles per hour. Chuckle! Chuckle!

Most things in this life are temporal. I was happy about my father’s physical presence in this life but he has been gone since the Christmas of 1988 so I am sometimes unhappy about not being unable to physically see him, and unable to sit with him and have our cup of coffee. Thank God for the wonderful memories. He did teach me and my other siblings that we had a God to answer to and he particularly taught us boys that a man works to feed his family and care for others. Those memories bring me joy.

I was thinking during the Christmas season that the reason that it is possible for true Christians to always have joy is because its object is always present in our lives and that object is Jesus Christ. He abides, and joy abides. Joy will always be present in spite of and not because of things. Even though it is not always felt, nor apparent, it is always present despite life and its many disappointments.

I pray that everyone is happy during the Christmas season, but more than that, I pray that everyone has a season filled with joy. A relationship with Christ makes it so. My friend, Mike, who is now gone on, probably to glory, use to play his guitar and sing:

“I still have joy,

I still have joy,

After all the things I’ve been thru,

I still have Joy.

Romans 10:9&10 says:

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in thine heart that God raised Him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”

PS: Last year, I wasn’t going to put up the Christmas tree this year but I put it up anyway to make my wife happy. She already has joy, but I wanted her to have both. I want you to have both as well.

Merry Christmas!