Holy Tuesday: Joy

Life is unpredictable and challenging.

Sometimes it’s grim news from around the world. Other times it’s the monotony of work, struggles within your family, or setbacks in your health. During especially arduous seasons of life, it can feel like you are drowning and without hope. Finding joy can feel almost impossible.

And yet the Spirit desires to produce the fruit of joy within us in a way that is evident for us and others to experience and see. Joy is not happiness. It is not a sloppy smile in the face of angst and adversity. Tim Keller once described it as “an unsinkable ship that refuses to go under during a storm.” At the end of the day, joy is the fruit that keeps us buoyant throughout the currents of life. It keeps our heads above water so that we can breathe despite the fact that the torrents of life rage around us and seek to take us under.

In Nehemiah 8:10 we are reminded that “the joy of the Lord is our strength.” God’s joy is in us if we are in God. As His children we have a tremendous opportunity to not only connect with Him but also to tap into His joy. 

Jesus is someone who was harried by threats, violence, anger, and chaos. His entire journey to the Cross on our behalf was beset with antagonism. And yet we are told in Hebrews 12:2, “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” (ESV). Jesus found joy in going to the Cross. His love for us and His unflinching obedience to His Father kept His head above the waterline and gave Him strength to fulfill His mission.

A great hindrance to the fruit of  joy in our lives is our propensity to settle for lesser joys. In John 15:1 Jesus reminds us that He is the “true Vine.” Later He tells us in John 15:11 that He desires that “my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” If He is the “true” Vine then there are “false” vines. Oftentimes we look to faulty and finite things to give us lasting joy. Marriage. Ministry. Family. Careers. Health. Retirement. All of these false vines produce lesser joys. They will always fall short and leave us empty at best and drowning at worst. They cannot give us lasting buoyancy.

Part of the production of joy in our lives entails allowing the Spirit to identify and prune away our attachment to false vines so that we can be even more attached to Jesus as the true Vine. Then, by default, we experience His joy that will fill us to the brim.