How Does Joy Give You Strength?
When I come home, my dog is always waiting at the door wagging her little tail, anxious to jump on my lap and smother me with kisses. She is so excited. It is pure joy. When my kids wake up oh-so-early on Christmas morning they can hardly wait to run out and open their Christmas presents. Their eyes are twinkling with excitement. When I get to watch a glorious explosion of color in the sky as God paints a magnificent sunset my heart is filled with joy. Joy. It is a word that is often used when we are feeling extreme jubilance. Happiness is not enough. Joy sparkles. What is joy? It is something the Bible says is the strength of the Christ follower. How does joy give you strength? Let’s discuss.
Well, Faith Habit Friends. Welcome. I’m so very glad you are joining me today because we are beginning talking about JOY. I love when I see people filled with joy. I want to be a person filled with joy. Right of the bat I want to give you a little gift of joy. It is free ten phone screen savers of joy. They are some of my favorite Bible verses with joy in them. You can put these on your phone or your can download them and share them on social media in your stories to help spread the joy of the Lord. You can access this at lisatoney.com/joy.
I know you are probably thinking, Lisa, it is easy for you to talk about joy because you are an optimistic, happy person. True that. I am an optimist. I like to find the good in others and believe the best in a situation. Positivity runs in my blood.
But that is not the main reason that I want to talk about joy today. Joy is something that the Bible tells us is strength for us when we are weak.
Nehemiah 8:10 The Joy of the Lord Is My Strength
I’ve always loved this verse. Rend Collective sings one of my favorite songs, Joy of The Lord that centers around this theme. I will link to it in the show notes so you can jam out to it with me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcG9HApTC_Q
How is there strength in joy? Well let’s talk first about what joy is. Joy has a lot of different definitions. Usually they are associated with happiness and delight. Some people make a hug differentiation between happiness and joy. I don’t think the main point is to say that people of faith experience JOY rather than HAPPINESS. They are both good emotions. But the Bible talks about joy 242 times and happiness only 20. Joy is usually talked about in the Bible as a means of not just outward happiness but inner happiness that is connected to your spiritual life.
It is a heart that is filled with cheer and because of that, it leads to cheerful behavior. This is why joy is listed as one of the Fruit of the Spirit. It is connected to our awareness of Holy Spirit and the work that Holy Spirit is doing in our life. My favorite definition of joy comes from theologian F.B. Meyer that said JOY IS PEACE DANCING and PEACE IS JOY AT REST.
Joy can fill your heart with hope and thankfulness even when you are in a season of challenge, or loss, or hurt. There is a promise that we stay connected to God and seek Him even in the midst of tears and mourning, that He will help us find joy again.
Psalm 30:5 Weeping may last for the night, But a shout of joy comes in the morning
Joy truly is a gift that is given by God. It is also a promise that the joy of the Lord is our strength. This verse in Nehemiah is so very dear to me.
One of my daughters was born nearly blind in one eye. We didn’t know that for the first two and half years of her life. Talk about feeling like a bad mom! When she started complaining that her eye hurt I didn’t even take her seriously. After all she had three older siblings, and it was summer with chlorine, sunscreen, mosquitos, and beaches. It could have been anything! But after her pediatrician decided to send her to a specialist we found out that she had multiple cataracts in her eye that they think had been there from birth. Pretty rare for a little one to have cataracts. Our amazing surgeon that God led us had us scheduled for surgery within two weeks of diagnosis. It was a race against the clock to get those cataracts out and see if we could get her brain to recognize the eye. They were pretty sure they could get the eye healthy but we needed to get her brain to reconnect after rendering that eye useless for two and a half years. When they wheeled my little two and half year old into surgery, that was my theme song. The Joy Of The Lord Is My Strength.
It helped me because I was not feeling joy. I was feeling scared. I was feeling overwhelmed. I was feeling unsure of the future. I was even feeling uneasy trusting my daughter to complete strangers. But because I am a person of faith, I leaned into this promise. The joy of the Lord is my strength.
The foundation of this statement is that there is joy in Jesus. Our hearts become happy or glad around Jesus. With Jesus there is hope for a better future. With Jesus there is righting of wrongs. With Jesus there is love without conditions. Jesus is perfect peace. Jesus is all things true and good and pure. There is joy in Jesus because He is above and beyond anything this world can offer. There is joy in Jesus because there is more in Him than there is in me. But He wants to share. He wants to extend that joy to me. He gives it freely and that gives my weary heart hope….which makes it beat a little stronger. It quickens my heart to believe for another day. It gives me a smile that I have access to something that no one can take away or destroy. They tried to take Jesus away. They tried to destroy him. But that empty grave is PROOF that they cannot. No one can destory Jesus. Because He lives, and I have put my faith in Him. He shares His entire being - all His Goodness with us - which is the JOY of the Lord.
Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus endured the cross “for the joy set before Him”
Jesus went through the torture of the cross. The embarrassment of the trial. The betrayal of friends. The excruciating exhaustion of physical pain and emotional trauma. And this verse says that Jesus endured it all for JOY that was set before Him. Do you know what that joy was? A relationship with you and I. That is the ultimate joy of God to get to know us and us to know God. Friendship with Jesus.
The Faith Habit of a friendship with Jesus brings joy when you need it most. It roots our hearts in someone outside of our circumstances to put our confidence in. Jesus is working all things for good. Jesus will right all wrongs. There is power in that. There is strength in that.
Happiness can come from a lot of external things. Icecream. An epic vacation. Winning a prize. Getting a good grade. Buying a new car. But joy, at it’s very core is a gift from God because it is happiness at a soul level. Joy starts internally rather than externally. It can lead your reaction to a situation. It can give you confidence even when you do not know the outcome.
My daughter’s surgery went very well. We had a lot of work to do after the surgery for years to get that eye and brain connected. But I knew no matter what happened, we had Jesus to help us. My faith was not dependent on the outcome of the surgery. My faith was dependent on Jesus. That is why I knew there was strength in the joy of the Lord. Jesus is the same yesterday today and forever and my circumstances change all the time. My emotions change all the time. My reactions to situations change all the time. But when I can center myself in the joy of the Lord, then I am building a Faith Habit to live as a person of JOY.
So as we finish up today, I want to invite you into the Faith Habit of Joy. One way for us to build that faith habit is to proclaim the promises of joy that God had for this. I have ten joy verses to give you today that is going to set you in the right direction to do just that. You can save them on your phone to remind your braind and your heart when you are in the middle of it. Stare at that verse, pray that verse. Claim it as your truth. It is. It is God’s truth for you.
Head on over to lisatoney.com/joy and get your ten free joy verses that you can use as Screen Savers on your phone or even share them in your stories on IG or FB to spread some joy.
Alrighty friends, thanks for joining me today. May the JOY OF THE LORD be your strength as you stand firm in your faith.
The joy of the Lord is your strength. Nehemiah 8:10
The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full. John 10:10
This word “abundant” in the Greek is perisson - extraordinary, uncommon, remarkable
