What Is Joy?

Joy----so many people equate joy with happiness and they are two totally different entities. Happiness is a human emotion that goes up and down with the circumstances in which we find ourselves. Joy is a steadfast quality of God that never changes, regardless of what is happening to us. Joy is a force that flows out of us. Joy is God. God is the very expression of joy. Actually His joy is an expression of His nature, His Presence. It is an out-plosion of His glory. You will notice that I have coined a new word. I don’t have any other way of saying it and the Holy Spirit just gave me that word to describe the joy of God Himself. It is one of the fruit of the spirit.

In Romans 14:17 we are told that the Kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. Joy is part of God; it is part of His domain; it is part of His realm; it is the way He lives. It flows forth from Him all the time. He is the essence of joy. Joy comes from choosing to see God in everything and knowing that He will take care of us, regardless of how desperate a situation may appear to us. Joy will carry us through when nothing else will.

So what is this joy? And how do we get it? And how do we maintain it?
Well, first of all, joy is a fruit of the spirit that is part of the nature of God Who comes to dwell in us in the person of the Holy Spirit when we get born again. Joy is expectation of good and enjoyment. It is to choose to delight in. It is a choice, like all of the other fruit. It is a choice we make to yield to joy. We choose to delight in the Lord, even when we don’t feel like it. We choose to expect good, even when we don’t think there is any good. We choose to expect to enjoy our day, even when we don’t see anything to enjoy in that day.

What are we saying? God is full of joy. It is our choice to yield to Him and to His joy in the midst of what may not exactly be a joyful place in our lives. When money is tight, when disease seems to be resistant to our prayers, when children seem to go the opposite of what the Word says, when our marriages seem to be less than what we want, when all appears to be contrary to the way God said it was to be in His Word, we choose to rejoice in Him and in His Word and in His Presence. Remember, in His presence is fullness of joy.

So how do we maintain the joy we have been given at our new birth? We maintain it by staying real close to God. Why should we do that? In His Presence is fullness of joy----fullness. Did you catch that? Fullness. F-u-l-l-n-e-s-s. Fullness of what? Fullness of joy. What is that again?
J-O-Y! JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY, JOY!

Repeat after me:
I have the joy of the Lord.
His joy came to me when I got born again.
His joy is in me right now. It is a fruit of my reborn spirit.
I yield to His joy right now.
His joy is mine right now.
I refuse to see anything but good in my life and rejoice in the Lord my God.
He is my joy.
In His Presence is fullness of Joy.
I choose to stay in His Presence.

Keep saying that and meditating on the fact that you have joy, until it becomes a reality in your life, not just today, but every day.

God fills you and me with joy. His joy is fullness of life, His life, in me. We are to stay focused on being filled with joy. There is nothing satan hates worse than to see a joyful person, who loves life and loves God. He can’t stand it, so go ahead and give him fits. Make him so disgusted with you that he leaves you alone and goes looking for a gloomy Christian somewhere else. He thrives on doom and gloom and dread and misery. That is the perfect environment for his schemes to hatch. Get over in the God environment where love and joy and peace and all the other fruit are working. Let God’s environment of light overtake satan’s environment of darkness. Rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.