The Fruit of the Spirit: Joy

We are learning together this summer about the Fruit of the Spirit. In the first week, we looked at the idea of “Abiding” with Jesus, and the fruit that grows in us as we do that. The second week, Doug Ferguson gave us that unforgettable picture of a little child abiding in God’s love—living in God’s love. Today, we’re going to talk about Joy.

What is the greatest day of your life? What is the best 24-hour unit of time you have experienced since you have been on the planet?

There have been some extraordinary days in your life. There was the day that you were born—the day when the clock of your life started ticking, and you sucked in your first lungful of breath, and the whole adventure, the whole miracle of your existence, began.

There was the day you took your first step. You were immobile, then mobile. You were a walker, and your world was never the same. And your mother’s world was never the same!

There was the day that you spoke your first word, and from that day on, you were a talker. Some of you started talking on that day, and you haven’t come up for air ever since!

There was the day that you learned how to read a book, and a whole new world opened up to you.

There was the day that you got your first job, the first time you got a payroll check with your name on it.

When Nancy and I started dating, we had firm boundaries about our physical relationship. We wanted to be committed to dealing with our sexuality in a God-honoring way. And I knew what would be the greatest day of my life! I used to pray that Jesus would not come back before my wedding night! I knew that would be the greatest day of my life. And I’ve got to say, it was pretty good!

There was the day that you fell in love, maybe . . . the day that your child was born, maybe . . . the day you met God, or discovered your giftedness, or experienced forgiveness. But I want to offer another candidate . . .

I believe that the case can be made that the greatest day of your life is this day right here: June 27, 2004. The greatest day of your life is right now—right now! Not that this day is going to be pleasant or easy or pain-free, because maybe it won’t be. Surely it won’t be for many. But because this day is the only day you’ve got. Every other day that has gone before it is irretrievably gone, and it will not come back.

There are people who spend their whole lives regretting something that happened on one of those days, or wishing that one of those days could come back again.

And these days, and all of the days that will follow it, they’re off in the future some place. And there are people who spend their whole lives waiting for what they think might happen on one of these days, or worrying about something they’re afraid is going to happen on one of these days. If you live there, you will lose your joy.

This day—this square right here on the calendar—this is God’s gift to you. Mostly, this is the day that counts, because if you’re going to meet with God at all, it will have to be in this day, right here, whatever else is going on.

Tomorrow is the day that the Lord will make. We’ll be glad and rejoice when tomorrow gets here.

I want to give you my favorite picture of what Joy looks like, just so you’ll have something to carry out with you.

Many years ago, I was giving a bath to our kids. As some of you know, we have three children. I had a custom of bathing all of them together as kind of a timesaving device. I knew that eventually I’d have to stop doing that—say when they hit high-school age or so—but, for the time being, it was efficient.

On this particular occasion, Laura was out getting ready for bed, Johnny was in the rinse cycle, and I was trying to get Mallory dried off. She was out of the water, but in no particular hurry as far as drying was concerned. In fact, she was doing what has come to be known around our house as the “Dee Da Day Dance.” This consisted of Mallory running around and around in circles chanting:

It’s a relatively simple dance. We think she invented it. It’s the Dance of Great Joy. She made up the words. Not “doo da day,” but “dee da day.” When she was unable to hold it in any longer—when her joy was just too great and nothing else would express it— she had to dance. And so, she’d do the “Dee Da Day Dance”

No, Mallory. That’s not what I mean. Stop with the “dee da day” stuff and get over here so I can dry you off. Hurry up!

She was four or five years old, and she looked up at me with her big, brown eyes and asked me a very profound question:

I had no answer. I had nothing to do. I had nowhere I had to go. I didn’t have something I had to write. I didn’t have some task that needed to be done. I had just gotten so addicted to hurry and rush, so preoccupied with my own little agenda that here was life—here was an invitation to dance right in front of me—and I was blind. I was just blind. The “Dee Da Day Era” doesn’t last forever. So I just put the towel down, and, in that little bathroom, I did the “Dee Da Day Dance” with Mallory.

I was reflecting on it later on, and I realized that I tend to divide my life up into two categories: Living and Waiting to Live.

standing in line, driving my kids some place in the car, trying to get through a meeting, trying to get done with a task, worrying about something bad that might happen in one of these days, being angry or regretful about something that did or did not happen in one of these days, but they’re gone. For Mallory, life was not that way. She was in this day. When she was getting a bath, that was a “Dee Dah Day” moment; and when she was getting dried off, that was another “Dee Dah Day” moment; and after she was dried off, that would be another “Dee Dah Day” moment. She was teaching me about Joy. Not that every moment is easy or pleasant or pain-free, because they’re not. But every moment is a gift.

This is the day! Joy is at the heart of God’s plan for your life. What strikes me as we’re studying the Fruit of the Spirit is that if you were to ask me to predict what fruit Paul would list, Love would be kind of a “no brainer” for Number One. We all know that Love is at the heart. Love God. Love people. That’s a pretty easy one. What’s striking is that Joy is number two on the list.

Part of what we’re learning in this series is that I can’t make the “Fruit of the Spirit” happen. It’s something that grows in me as I abide in God, because that’s the kind of person God is. When you read the “Fruit of the Spirit,” you’re reading a description of the Spirit of God. That’s what you’re reading.

Joy is at the heart of who God is, and we will never understand the significance of Joy in human life until we understand its importance to God!

I believe that most people seriously underestimate God’s infinite capacity for Joy. I want to read to you my favorite words on this written by a great Christian thinker and writer by the name of G. K. Chesterton.

In his book called Orthodoxy, Chesterton writes about how the joy that you see in a little kid is just a fraction of the joy that exists in the heart of God. At the end of this passage is one of the great sentences I have ever read in my life:

Because children have a bounding vitality, because they are in spirit fierce and free, therefore they want things repeated and unchanged. They always say, “Do it again.” And the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead, for grown up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony.

But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, “Do it again!” to the sun, and every evening, “Do it again!” to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike. It may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy, for we have sinned and grown old and our Father is younger than we.

Now, as an exercise in contrast, I want you to imagine for a few moments what the opening sentences of the Bible might have been like if God were not a supremely joyful Being. What might Genesis look like if God approached His work in the way that we human beings often approach ours? This is an exercise in contrast:

In the beginning, it was nine o’clock, so God had to go to work. He filled out a requisition to separate light from darkness. He considered making stars to beautify the night and planets to fill the skies, but thought it sounded like too much work, and “Besides,” thought God, “That’s not my job.” So He decided to knock off early and call it a day. And He looked at all He had done and said:

On the second day, God separated the waters from the dry land, and He made all the dry land flat, plain and functional so that behold the whole earth looked like Chicago. He thought about making mountains and valleys and glaciers and jungles and forests, but decided it wouldn’t be worth the effort. And God looked at what he had done that day and God said:

And God made a pigeon to fly in the air, and a carp to swim in the waters, and a cat to creep upon the dry ground. And God thought about making millions of other species of all sizes and shapes and colors, but he couldn’t drum up enough enthusiasm for any other animals. In fact, He wasn’t too crazy about the cat! So, God looked at all that he had done, and God said:

And at the end of the week, God was seriously burnt out, so He breathed a big sigh of relief and said:

Now of course, Genesis looks nothing like that. Instead, it’s a song that throbs with this refrain. This is what the opening chapters of Genesis are—they’re just God’s song:

God said, “Let there be light.” And there was light. And God saw that the light was good.

and the light did it again. And the second day was a “Dee Da Day.” And it was good. And God did a little dance.

and the light did it again. And God did a little dance again. And so it has gone every day from that day to this day. And so it is with God, but not with us:

We suffer from a disease and it could be called “Taking It for Granted.” Do you ever take something for granted? Every day the sun comes up. We just take it for granted . . . especially in a place like this. Not only does the sun come up every day, we get to see it every day. And it’s 73 degrees every day. And if it’s 71 or 75, we complain a little bit.

Every moment your heart beats, you take it for granted. That’s what a heart is supposed to do. Every moment your lungs fill up with air. And grass grows, and flowers bloom, and birds sing, and fish swim, and seasons change, and children grow, and cuts heal, and we say:

Been there. Done that. Now Wow me with something. Let me get a promotion. Let me get a new house or a new car.

I don’t know if it will impact anybody else. This blew my mind. Do you realize God has never taken anything for granted? God has seen everything there is to see. He knows everything there is to know. And every day, when the sun comes up, God gets excited like a little kid.

and if we’re not filled with awe and wonder and delight, it’s not because we’re sophisticated or intelligent. It’s because we’re broke.

You’ll not understand God until you understand this about Him, God is the happiest being in the universe.

God also knows sorrow. Jesus was remembered, among other things, as a “man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.” But the sorrow of God, like the anger of God, is His temporary response to a fallen world, and it will be banished forever from His heart on that day which will come when the world will be set right, for Joy is God’s basic character. Joy is God’s eternal destiny. God is the happiest being in the universe.

I have said these things to you. “I’ve taught you, I’ve been with you, I’ve modeled to you, I’ve shown you what life can be about, and I’ve done it for a reason. I’ve got a mission.” I have said these things to you so that my joy might be in you, and your joy might be filled up to the top.

Now, that makes a statement about the kind of a person Jesus was. You don’t say that kind of thing to people who know you best, if they think of you as a somber, unsmiling person.

Have any of you ever read Winnie the Pooh? There is one character in that story who’s always complaining and unhappy. Eeyore. If you are Eeyore, you don’t say:

Jesus was well known as being a happy, joyful man. He was well known for that. That’s part of the reason people loved to be around him. And his goal is for you to abide with him and be filled with authentic, God-honoring, truth embracing, pain-defying joy.

When I would watch my daughter do that “Dee Da Day Dance,” there was hardly anything in the world to make me any happier. I want my children’s lives to be filled with joy, not in a selfish way, not in a superficial way. I want them to be servants; I want them to be good; I want them to be focused on loving others. But I want them to dance.

Probably the single most famous statement from our heritage as a Presbyterian Church is this line:

Now, I can’t make myself be joyful. That is part of what we’re learning about spiritual life. I can’t make myself by joyful, but I can abide in God who is a joyful being. One of the ways that I abide in God’s joy is through my own favorite spiritual discipline. It’s the Discipline of Celebration - the spiritual discipline of Celebration.

In Celebration, I concentrate on my world and my life as God’s gift to me, and I express gratitude and delight. I realize that what often happens to people is that they think:

and they don’t connect them. In the Discipline of Celebration, I connect the dots.

Every good and perfect gift is from above . . . (every good and perfect gift, everything that brings you joy and delight and makes you go, “Wow!”) . . . coming down from the Father of lights.

This idea of Discipline of Celebration is part of why there was such an emphasis in the Old Testament placed on Feast Days. If you have ever read through the Old Testament, you know there are a lot of instructions about people coming together to eat food and to sing and to dance. Why? It’s kind of training for joy.

Now listen to this. In the Book of Deuteronomy, Moses is telling the people that they are supposed to take a certain portion of their income for this particular feast day:

Thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after. For oxen or for sheep or for wine or for strong drink or whatsoever thy soul desireth. And thou shalt eat there before the Lord thy God, and thou shalt rejoice. Thou and thy household and the Levite that is within thy gates.

Can you believe that this is in the Bible? I grew up in a Baptist church. We never read that part of the Bible in our church!

Understand this is not a license for substance abuse, which is a curse and causes great misery in our day. But it is an indication of the extent to which we need training for joy. Joylessness is a sin and quite a serious one. Joy really is commanded. Can you imagine what would happen in our world if the two primary characteristics that people associated with followers of Jesus were Love and Joy? Can you imagine?

There’s a time for mourning and weeping, but it’s not this day. They’re going to be about the discipline of celebration on this day.

(Do you know the Bible commands people to eat the fat? Way before the South Beach Diet, it’s right there in the Book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament:

Eat the fat and drink sweet wine. And then, send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy to the Lord our God. Do not be grieved for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

Without joy, spiritual life becomes drudgery and exhausting. Ministry becomes defeating.

About this time, if somebody’s thoughtful, they’re going to ask this question:

How can I embrace joy with all the pain going on around me? Is it even right to talk about joy in a world where there is suffering and hunger and violence?

It’s right here that we see the strange truth that it is often people who are closest to suffering who are filled with the most joy. People who lived with Mother Teresa said that in the middle of all that suffering, what was remarkable about her was not the way that she kept serving; it was the extraordinary capacity in which she brought joy.

David Myers, a Christian psychologist who has written extensively on this subject—he wrote a whole book about joy—notes that it is people who are consistently in negative moods, joyless people, who are most likely to be self-preoccupied, self-absorbed, relationally-withdrawn, least likely to serve, least likely to love. In experiment after experiment, people who are highest in joy are also the most likely to help people in need.

There is a reason why love and joy are connected the way that they are by Paul. In this world, if joy is to exist at all, it will have to be able to exist alongside of suffering. In fact, I think one of the tests of authentic joy as opposed to cheap, circumstantial happiness or pleasure:

I see a father whose son’s body is being destroyed by cancer. He sits by the side of his son’s bed and keeps stroking his son’s head and keeps saying the words:

to his son. Over and over and over, never knowing when it will be the last time his son will be able to hear those words. And in the midst of pain and agony and loss and confusion and anger, there is a little heartbeat of wonder and gratitude and delight in his son . . . like a flower that grows up through the crack in the sidewalk and you just can’t kill it.

You see it in a wife who loses her husband and then hears from God and from the people around her:

Don’t be afraid. When you pass through the waters, I’ll be with you. When you pass through the floods, you will not be consumed for you are precious in my sight, and I love you.

Joy is a defiant “Nevertheless!” From this day . . . “This is the day.” And where there is pain and suffering, pain is a defiant “Nevertheless I will rejoice.”

I don’t know what this means for you. I do not know. But I’ll tell you about me. I had an extended period of time to think about this over the last two weeks. I love this subject, and I feel deeply how God is this kind of God and wants this kind of life for us.

I thought about when I was a boy, and so many things would cut my joy. Just stupid little things:

How am I doing in school? Are my teachers pleased with me, or are they going to be mad at me? What if my parents find out? What if I get in trouble? And the things that would cut my joy most often were not altruistic concerns about other people or suffering and so on . . . just stupid stuff about me.

What are you worried about? Why would you let any of that stuff rob you of joy? Why don’t you shake things up? Why don’t you get in a little trouble once in a while? Why not just choose joy? That was a long time ago. I think about my life now. And I can still serve these gods that are called:

What Do Other People Think of Me? Am I Achieving Enough? Have I Done Enough? You know about those Gods:

Have I Climbed High Enough? Have I Got Enough? Am I Secure Enough? I want to tell you they are cruel gods. They will promise you joy, but they will not give you any.

I will seek with God’s help, as best I can, to live and teach and serve here in the joy of the Lord and help us be that kind of community. I will do whatever I need to do to accomplish that. I will die to what I need to die to. I wrote in my journal:

And I will call you to die to whatever you need to die to. And I will ask God every day for the power to live as a joyful servant of Him and others. And that’s it, because I want to dance. I have a little girl who taught me about dancing, and if I want to do it, I have to do it today!

When I was fifteen years old, I made my first and best friend. I was in high school. His name was Chuck. In the fall that year, we became best friends. We went all through high school together and went to college together. I was best man in his wedding, and he was in mine. We did life together.

About thirteen years ago, I was living in southern California, and Chuck was living in Atlanta. He called me on the phone to tell me that he had been diagnosed with cancer. It was of a kind where the prognosis is quite good. There were good grounds for optimism. He would have to go through chemotherapy.

Chuck’s a doctor and he knew what that would involve, so just to get a jump on things, he shaved the hair off of his head ahead of time, covered his head with glue, and then gold glitter dust. He put a towel into his shirt and ran around the house calling himself “Chemo-Man.” This kind of alarmed his patients and his kids, but that’s just Chuck. He’s kind of a goofy guy.

Every Saturday morning, he would call me to tell me how it was going. Chuck’s a real skinny guy, and he lost a lot of weight as often happens in chemo. He became emaciated, and then he got an infection. He had to be rushed to the emergency room, so sick that he wanted to die. But he made it through that and came out the other side. He finished his chemo treatments and that was a great day.

After one month, he went in for his first post-treatment test. The results came back. He called me that night to tell me that the cancer had returned, and that the markers were as high as they were before he started treatment. Chuck was a doctor. He knew that was a death sentence. I’ll never forget when he called me, and we walked through what had happened that day.

There was nothing to say. I can still remember this so vividly. I went to bed that night and I kept thinking,:

And then there’s this other little part of me—because psychology is my background—and I thought:

The next morning was Friday morning and Chuck called me at six thirty. It was nine thirty Atlanta time. He called. The lab had called him. Somebody in the lab had made a mistake and sent him the wrong results. The results were of a guy who had not gone through treatment yet, so he was going to go through treatment and be OK. Chuck went back for testing and his results were all good.

I went to bed that night, and I lay there and wept. He was going to live! For a day I had known he was going to die. And now he was going to live and maybe get to be an old man and see his wife become an old woman . . . watch his kids grow up. Then I knew for a little while —I knew all the way down to my bones— this day is a gift.

This day is just a gift! All the other days are gone, and they are never coming back. And all those tomorrows . . . we don’t know about them.

You are alive, and you are sucking in air! Your heart’s beating! This is your day. And the reason that it is—the reason that we can rejoice in this day even though horrible things are going on in our world—the reason is this:

One day, this man Jesus, who was the most joyful man the world had ever known . . . this man Jesus went to the cross, amazingly enough we are told, “for the joy that was set before him.” For the joy that is coming one day.

He endured the Cross, was scorned and shamed, was buried in a tomb, and everybody thought all their joy was buried with him. And then on the third day . . . on the third day after Jesus was buried, God said to the Son:

And Jesus got up and felt surprisingly good and did a little dance. And it was a “Dee Da Day!”

And every day since then has been a gift. Every day since. I don’t know what’s going on, but today’s a gift. And tomorrow will be a gift and the next day will be a gift, if you receive it.

Until that day comes—and it surely will come—when, in the words of the prophet, who was trying to express what no words could ever express:

You shall go out in joy and be led forth with peace and the mountains and the hills will break forth before you and all the trees in the field will clap their hands.

And God Himself will go with His people and he will wipe every tear from their eyes. And death and mourning and pain will be no more.

The 12 Fruits of the Holy Spirit are a result of the Virtues and the Gifts of the Holy Spirit working within us. The Fruits are: Charity, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Generosity, Gentleness (also called Benignity), Faithfulness, Modesty, Continence (Self-control) and Chastity.

If we water and tend a fruit tree we will enjoy the fruit when it matures. Similarly, the working of the Gifts of the Holy Spirit and their associated virtues within us produces “fruits” in our spirit, which console and encourage us to ever greater virtue and deeper surrender to God. Since the Fruits of the Holy Spirit are produced in the human spirit by the working of the Gifts, the greater the operation of the Gifts the more evident will be the Fruits.

PRAYER FOR THE SEVEN GIFTS OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

Christ Jesus, before ascending into heaven, You promised to send the Holy Spirit to Your apostles and disciples.
Grant that the same Spirit may perfect in our lives the work of Your grace and love.
Grant us the Spirit of Fear Of The Lord that we may be filled with a loving reverence toward You.
the Spirit of Piety that we may find peace and fulfillment in the service of God while serving others;
the Spirit of Fortitude that we may bear our cross with You and, with courage, overcome the obstacles that interfere with our salvation;
the Spirit of Knowledge that we may know You and know ourselves and grow in holiness;
the Spirit of Understanding to enlighten our minds with the light of Your truth;
the Spirit of Counsel that we may choose the surest way of doing Your will, seeking first the Kingdom;
Grant us the Spirit of Wisdom that we may aspire to the things that last forever;
Teach us to be Your faithful disciples and animate us in every way with Your Spirit.

Thou shalt bestow that money for whatsoever thy soul lusteth after. For oxen or for sheep or for wine or for strong drink or whatsoever thy soul desireth.

My goodness! Does this concur with my "favorite" scripture: 2 Cor. 8:9 [or was it 9:8?], FReeper??!

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