The Word and Joy

I'd like to share my personal notes from  with you.

Joy is linked to the indwelling of the HS which we receive when we're saved. (John 17:7) So our joy is found by being filled with the Spirit & living by His guidance and power. A Spirit filled life is the only way to experience the abundant joy Christ has for us & comes from being in harmony with Him. Since He's no longer with us, He sent His Spirit & gave us His Word so we could be in harmony with Him. The more we abide in His Spirit & Word, the more the world loses it's attractiveness & the more committed to Him we become. This causes the world to hate us as we expose it's lies, false values,folly & take away their excuses. We're a constant reminder of this to them, so they hate us.

Our joy doesn't replace or remove sorrow but comes in the midst of it. If we didn't experience sorrow we wouldn't grow. Jesus shares His joy, John 17:13, love John 15:9 & peace John 14:27 with us. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy & peace... Gal 5:22. Our joy deepens as our relationship with Jesus does; as we learn more about Him and ourselves. As we learn about ourselves, we see more & more of our needs, & as we learn more about Him, we see how only He can fill those needs. We learn more about Jesus through His Word, which also reveals to us what this world is really like. It exposes all it's lies & illusions. His Word gives us His love, joy, peace, & power so we too can overcome the world.

His joy gives us the inward strength we need to overcome the world (Neh 8:10) & we get it through His Word. We receive all He has for us through His Word, prayer, & His Spirit. We never get our joy in the world but only from His Word. His joy isn't fleeting, but is abiding. It's what gave Him the strength to go to the cross for us. (Heb 12:2) It doesn't depend on circumstances, but on the spiritual resources He gives us in His Word.

John 17:14 tells us that we're different because Jesus gave us His Word and that's why the world hates us. The Word teaches us about ourselves and sin and convicts us of sin through the HS, and we in turn convict the world of it's sin, exposing it's lies, illusions and excuses. We are constant reminders of this to them which is why they hate us. (that's illogical to hate whats in your best interest. John 17:15 shows that Satan is behind this which helps explain why it's so illogical.) We are left on the earth to be in it, but not part of it. We're to be above them, representing our World to them, and not allow ourselves to become soiled by the world, even though we're in it and touching it. (just like Jesus who was surrounded by sinners, demons etc and touched people to help them, but was never sullied by any of it). The only way we can do this is by abiding in Him & His Word.

Jesus gives us joy through transformation, while the world offers it through substitution. For example, when a child cries because they broke their toy, the mother gives the child another toy to play with and the child is happy again. She's replacing the pain of the broken toy with another toy to bring the child pleasure or joy. We do the same thing as adults, it's just that our toys are different. We replace our sorrow, anxiety, fear, worry etc, with a few drinks, some TV or a book, sex, spending money, doing drugs, cleaning house, etc. That's all joy through substitution which is what the world has always taught us. This in turn teaches us to be self centered and immature because we never learn how to really deal with sorrow, pain and disappointment.

Jesus on the other hand, teaches us to have joy in the midst of our sorrow, pain and problems. In John 16:20–22 Jesus shows us what joy through transformation looks like in every day life. He gives the example of a woman having a baby. When she's in labor, she's in a great deal of pain and no one enjoys that. When the baby is born however, her pain changes to joy, as she sees the results of her hard labor.  It's transformed to joy by the same baby that caused her pain. 

Jesus never tells us that our sorrow and problems will be replaced by joy, He says they'll be turned to joy. When the apostles suffered beatings and being whipped, it hurt and nothing replaced that hurt, but their pain was turned to joy because they chose to focus on the fact that they'd been chosen to suffer for Christ. (Acts 5:41)  All through the bible we see instances of people choosing to turn their sorrow or pain to joy by focusing on the things of God instead of their pain or problems. In the NT, they also constantly reminded themselves that soon they would see Jesus again, and focused on the joy they knew that would bring. They knew that one day God would literally transform their pain & sorrow into joy. They didn't know if it would be in this life or at the start of their real life, but knowing it will happen, gave them hope and joy.  (just like knowing that Christmas is coming gives children joy)

As we learn to transform our sorrow or pain into joy we grow in faith and also in our character.  Neither our faith nor our character can ever be taken away from us.  Since the Joy of the Lord is our strength, the more we grow, the stronger we get.