Recently I’ve been learning a lot about the importance of joy to a Christian, and what it looks actually looks like. Fortunately for me, I was asked to lead a devotion for my co-workers at HPPC. I say “fortunate” because while the request did evoke the normal amount of panic that comes any time I’m asked to teach, it did force me to get my thoughts in order on the subject. Presented below are my thoughts on joy, taken from the notes I used to prepare for that devotional. I apologize if these notes don’t live up to my already low standards for writing, I used this as a set of talking points and spoke from my notes, I did not prepare this to go out as an essay.:

Joy isn’t a natural reaction of mine, or at least it isn’t one I experience too often. I also rarely feel sadness, or any extreme emotion for that matter. As far as my personality goes I’m fairly stoic unless I intentionally let myself go. Joy isn’t an emotion I often feel in my day to day life. I feel like a very logical person and I believe that this gets in the way all of the relationships in my life, but I think it impacts my faith the most. I want to put everything in to “to-do lists” with nice bullet points, but I keep re-learning that my faith doesn’t work like that. It seems like much of the joy we receive as Christians comes from our intangible relationship with Christ.

We are commanded to have joy.

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice”
Philippians 4:4

“Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”
Psalm 37:4

Enjoying God and taking pleasure in God is obviously a biblical foundational part of our faith.

In spite of this, I often find it hard to just be joyful in my faith. I believe in Christ as my Lord and Savior, but at times I often feel like I’m missing out on a deeper level of relation with Christ that can be summed up in the word “joy”.

“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 a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” C.S. Lewis

Here Lewis is explaining that God contains the ultimate joy we can experience, but we settle for things that are temporal and less satisfying and fall short of the joy that we could be experiencing.

I often loose sight of this and pursue joy in other significantly less satisfying areas. Pretty much every sin I commit can boil down to this, and settling for lesser joy can be summed up just by examining how I spend my free time. It is clear to me that I am often not making a big enough effort to take joy in Christ.

Not only are we commanded to take joy in and delight in God, the joy that there is to be had it in is greater than anything else in this world. It’s the greatest joy their is!

This joy should be in all aspects of our life, including if not especially our ministry.

“To the elders among you, I appeal as a fellow elder, a witness of Christ’s sufferings and one who also will share in the glory to be revealed: Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, serving as overseers—not because you must, but because you are willing, as God wants you to be; not greedy for money, but eager to serve;”
1 Peter 5:1-2

in Piper’s words “God loves a cheerful pastor”. We need to be eager to serve God and to do it joyfully, under no force but our own desire to serve God.

A quote from one such cheerful pastor is below:
“I think, again, that it is essential to the preacher’s success that he should thoroughly enjoy his work. I mean in the actual doing of it, and not only in its idea. No man to whom the details of his task are repulsive can do his task well constantly, however full he may be of its spirit. He may make one bold dash at it and carry it over all his disgusts, but he cannot wok on at it year after year, day after day. Therefor count it not merely a perfectly legitimate pleasure, count it an essential element as a minister, in the fervor of writing, in the glow of speaking, in the standing before men and moving them, in contact with the young. The more thoroughly you enjoy, the better you will do at it” … “this is true of all preaching. Its highest joy is in the great ambition that is set before it, the glorifying of the Lord and saving of the souls of men. No other joy on earth compares with that. the ministry that does not feel that joy is dead” Phillips Brooks, episcopalian pastor in Boston in the late 1800s.

Even when when things that can potential discourage us in the communications ministry we need to remain joyful! These things are always small when compared to what we are striving to do: make disciples of Jesus Christ.

I hope you can be joyful about working in ministry, we need to enjoy it and take joy in it to do well in our ministry here, we are commanded to be joyful in Christ, and it is a side effect of living a life that depends on God. Take joy in the work God is doing through us!