The Secret of The Joyful Life
Often the most powerful words in the English language are the shortest. For example, the word ‘joy’. What is joy? The dictionary defines joy as “a feeling of great pleasure and happiness”. But joy is more than happiness. Sometimes it is not happiness at all. We can experience joy in the midst of physical or emotional suffering, deprivation, loss, shame, and grief. Jesus, “the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before Him, endured the cross, scorning its shame” (Hebrews 12: 2 NIV). Jesus, nailed to the cross, naked and alone, lifted up high for all who passed by to see, understood the meaning of this strange word joy.
It is a strange word because to understand joy means to understand the deepest meaning and purpose of life – to see deeply into the heart of God. Joy comes from aligning our life — our thoughts, words, actions, and beliefs — with God’s purpose and plan for our life. We experience joy, in the fullest sense, not when we are comfortable, well fed, prosperous, healthy, accepted, or admired, but when we have so fused our ‘inner being’ with God’s that His glory, flowing through us like water through a pipe, illuminates every aspect of our life. We know true joy when we commit all we have and all we are to Him, His purposes, and His mission, come “hell or high water”. I will experience true joy when every part of me — spirit, mind, will, heart, and body — becomes so one with Jesus that His will, His heart, and His mind are indistinguishable from my own. Paul captured joy, this ‘fusing’ of my personality with Jesus’, in his second letter to the Corinthians:
“Whenever, though, they turn to face God as Moses did, God removes the veil and there they are – face to face! They suddenly recognize that God is a living, personal presence, not a piece of chiseled stone. And when God is personally present, a living Spirit, that old, constricting legislation is recognized as obsolete. We’re free of it! All of us! Nothing between us and God, our faces shining with the brightness of His face. And so we are transfigured, much like the Messiah, our lives gradually becoming brighter and more beautiful as God enters our lives and we become like Him” (2 Corinthians 3: 16-18, MSG).
“Our faces shining with the brightness of His face” – His glory, the outstreaming manifestation of His beauty – illuminating our faces; His heart and mind fusing with ours so that we gradually (over a lifetime) become brighter and more beautiful as God progressively enters into our hearts, healing us and making us whole, so that we become like Him – Jesus! That overwhelming sense of His presence, His character, and His power in our lives is joy.
Joy is not an emotion for me to experience; it is a person — Jesus. And it begins with the ‘sudden’ revelation that God is not a piece of chiseled stone, but a living, personal Presence, living with me and within me – as I wrote in my last post, a deep, unshakable sense that “I Am with you”.
Scripture tells us that out of this alignment or ‘fusing’ comes great blessing, even material blessing, including comfort and happiness. But we tend to think of the material blessings as the source of the joy, rather than as the byproduct. And so to many of us, joy means the opposite of what it means to Jesus. The secret of the joyful life lies not in the blessings. The secret of the joyful life lies in repentance and surrender – the secret of the joyful life lies in willingly and freely, although not without pain, giving up my needs, wants, and desires of the flesh – my self – to find this deeper sense of fulfillment and relationship, to satisfy this deeper longing for union with something, really someone, greater than myself.
King David understood joy. He shared the ‘secret of the joyful life’ with us in Psalm 16, written thousands of years ago, but just a relevant today as it was in the Iron Age when he lived. Here is Psalm 16 from the Amplified Bible:
“Keep and protect me, O God, for in You I have found refuge, and in You do I put my trust and hide myself.
I say to the Lord, You are my Lord: I have no god beside or beyond you. As for the godly (the saints) who are in the land, they are the excellent, the noble, and the glorious, in whom is all my delight.
Their sorrows shall be multiplied who choose another god; their drink offerings of blood will I not offer or take their names upon my lips.
The Lord is my chosen and assigned portion, my cup; you hold and maintain my lot.
The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; yes I have a good inheritance.
I will bless the Lord, Who has given me counsel; yes, my heart instructs me in the night seasons.
I have set the Lord continually before me; because He is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.
Therefore my heart is glad and my glory, my inner self, rejoices; my body too shall rest and confidently dwell in safety.
For you will not abandon me to Sheol (the place of the dead), neither will you suffer Your holy one to see corruption.
You will show me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy, at your right hand there are pleasures forevermore.”
The Lord is present with David – “for in You I have found refuge, and in You do I put my trust and hide myself”. David has chosen God to be his ultimate source of value and acceptance – no idols. David blesses the Lord as in “bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless His Holy Name” (Psalm 103). David shall not be shaken or moved. God speaks to David, and instructs him in his times of prayer at night. And then, for me, the verse that summarizes all that came before: “I have set the Lord continually before me”.
Not only is God present in David’s life, but David chooses to set God in a place of prominence – before him. And is doing this continually. This probably means several things: David is always aware of the Lord’s presence, he seeks God’s counsel on everything, he is always following after God, David prays without ceasing, and God is not his insurance policy, God is always in the forefront of his thoughts, actions, and words.
My cell phone is always with me. I keep it in my pocket almost all of the time while awake. I reach for it for many reasons – to communicate, to learn, to find my location, and to get directions. But it is not ‘before me’. It is a tool – at best I would say it is ‘beside me’. I think many of us see God the same way. When we need Him, He is with us. Too often the words “I Am with you” mean that He is beside us, available when we need Him, but not before us. I suspect that for most of us we are not aware of Him continually throughout the day, and certainly not at night.
Then David writes “Therefore —”. Of course he is saying “as a result of all of the above – “my heart is glad and my glory, my inner self, rejoices”. His joy comes from everything he has just written, but especially from “keeping God continually before him”. David is filled with joy because he knows he is loved by God the Father, God is continually present with him, and he has made the choice to worship God continually by keeping God always before him.
There is one final element to David’s (and our) joy. There are benefits in his relationship with God, which all together are part of why he rejoices: his body shall be at rest and David is confident of his safety; God will not abandon him and his future salvation is secure; the path of David’s life will not be in doubt; in God’s presence David will have an abundant life marked by “fullness of joy”; and at God’s right hand, where David lives, “There are pleasures forevermore.”
On the day of Pentecost Peter lectured the men of Jerusalem. In his speech to them, Peter speaks about Psalm 16 and David’s encounter with Jesus. “For David says in regard to Him (Jesus), I saw the Lord constantly before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken or overthrown or cast down from my secure and happy state.
Therefore my heart rejoiced . . . You have made known to me the ways of life; diffusing my soul with joy with and in your presence” (Acts 2: 25 – 28 AMP).
I can sort of get the elements of joy that David writes about in Psalm 16 before he writes “Therefore”. But I have a harder time with all of these blessings, which are really the result of sanctification. Really God? You are going to do all of these things? I don’t doubt that God can do all these things for me. I am suspicious that He will do them. I suppose deep in my heart there is this suspicion that this good news is too good to be true. At least, for me.
In his book ‘If You Will Ask’, Oswald Chambers says this about suspicion:
“The very nature of the old disposition is an incurable suspicion that Jesus Christ cannot do what He came to do. Have you the tiniest suspicion that God cannot sanctify you in His Almighty way? Then you need to let the God of peace slip His great calm all through your insidious unbelief till all is quiet and there is one thing only – God and your soul; not the peace of a conscience at rest only, but the very peace of God which will keep you rightly related to God. . . When once you let the God of peace grip you by salvation and squeeze the suspicion out of you till you are quiet before Him, the believing attitude is born, there is no more suspicion, you are in moral agreement with God about everything He wants to do.”
As should be obvious by now, I cannot decide in my own power to live a joyful life or to be joyful person. Joy is a gift and the consequence of God’s power, but coupled with my choices. David said in Psalm 16 “I set the Lord continually before me”. God did not do it, David did it. Of course, in the presence and with the power of God. We cannot manufacture joy. We can choose joy, but joy will only flow into our lives as we open our hearts to Jesus in repentance, surrender, and humility. The Rich Young Man, who could not surrender his wealth to follow Jesus, left Jesus sorrowfully. Blind Bartimaeus, who gave up everything he had, followed Jesus immediately on the road, filled with joy.
Oswald in ‘If You Will Ask’ makes this point:
“One of the things which we need to be cured of by the God of peace is the petulant struggle of doing things for ourselves – “I can sanctify myself; if I cut off this and that and the other I shall be all right”. . . If we are to be sanctified, it must be by the God of peace Himself. The power that makes the life of the saint does not come from our efforts at all, it comes from the heart of the God of peace.”
Although Oswald is writing about sanctification, sanctification and joy are interrelated. And although I cannot make myself joyful, I must participate with God in the process. As I have written before “God will do it, but I must do it with Him”. But ultimately, the work is His.
Our culture has trivialized joy and equated it with happiness and pleasure. Joy is much deeper than that. It is the condition of our hearts – reaching into the deepest places of emotion and character. It is not ours to form and shape. It is an atmosphere, an all-encompassing, pervasive state of being. While joy is rooted within us, it is obvious to the outside world. We carry joy with us wherever we go. It is the calling card of a follower of Jesus — the aroma, the sweet fragrance of Christ. Like the unoffendable heart, joy marks us as Kingdom people.
What a God, what a Savior! Hallelujah!!
Asking God for more joy,
John