After the End (2)
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from Your presence and do not take Your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. Psalm 51:10-12 NASB
Joy – Is gladness missing from your life? Are you acutely aware of the absence of rejoicing? Perhaps your circumstances have discouraged you. Maybe you are struggling with a long-term difficulty. You started out with hope and confidence but now it has been a long time. Or maybe, like David, you have been living with an act of unrepentant disobedience. You thought you could put it aside and go on, but now you discover that your life has plummeted into the depths. Joy has disappeared. What are you going to do now?
David knows that the absence of sason is a sure sign of spiritual dysfunction. Joy, however, isn’t the same as happiness. Happiness is conditional. It depends entirely on my circumstances. I am happy when life is good. I am not happy when life is bad—for me! Paul found joy even in severe trials. Joy isn’t pleasure. David found pleasure in acts of disobedience. Just ask Bathsheba. Joy isn’t fulfillment. Unless my goals are God’s goals, fulfillment is merely a temporary achievement destined to become a memory. Joy isn’t peace. The absence of conflict is not a sign of joy. It might actually be a sign of spiritual disease. When the king’s prophets proclaimed “Peace,” God was actually declaring war. Shalom is not the same as the absence of conflict. shalom is related to sason as steam is related to heat. Sason can produce shalom, but they are not the same.
So what is joy (sason)? Deuteronomy 28:63 makes a very odd statement about God’s idea of joy. It says that God rejoiced (had joy) over Israel when they were obedient and will rejoice over Israel when He will destroy them for their disobedience. What? We certainly expect joy over obedience, but what do we do with joy over destroying. TWOT suggests that the word means “enthusiasm,” a passion for taking action, not necessarily an action that seems to us to have correct moral consequences. Perhaps joy is close to zealous delight. The object is inconsequential. The emotion is what matters.
Twelve-step participants often say that their addictions put color in their lives. The drinking, gambling, drugs, sex or eating turns lives of gray into vibrant Technicolor. Life without the addictive behavior was boring, passionless and bland. In a word, joyless. No enthusiasm. No fervent hopefulness. No fire. Perhaps that’s why addictions are so difficult to overcome. Life on the other side seems pathetically vapid. The key word here is “seems,” for the Scriptures tell us that in reality the Technicolor appeal of addiction is really the camouflage of death. Joy, that is, enthusiasm for life, must come from the true colors of God’s creation, not the artificial and deceptive colors of our concoction. Whatever else joy is, it is the emotional expression of life as God gives it. David asks for a restoration of the emotional enthusiasm of salvation. He is not talking about “going to heaven-sins forgiven” salvation. He is talking about deliverance; deliverance for the world of gray that descended upon him after his sin.
That’s the heart of the matter, isn’t it? Joy comes from deliverance. Without deliverance there is nothing more than gray or succumbing to not-gray. There might be color, but there is no joy. If you find yourself robbed of enthusiasm for life, the life that God gives, then maybe you are as color-blind as me, and maybe we both need deliverance.
Topical Index: joy, sason, Psalm 51:12, Deuteronomy 28:63, addiction, life
Good Word!
I have done a lot of chewing on the verse “The joy of the Lord is my strength.” I ran on my yetzer ha-ra until I ran out. What was I running on? What was that ‘strength’? Well, let me see. Um, pretty much adrenaline? The years I suspected I was a probable schitzophrenic, medical literature informed me that that condition was a severe imbalance of the neurotransmitters such as dopamine and possibly glutamate. As awful as it was, for a while it gave me an alternative to that unrelenting fear. Adrenaline is truly nasty stuff on a continual basis! That is a testimony! Dopamine can at least get you out of bed! As I got older and started having children, I began to realize that the ‘big’ people of the world were as bound and messed up as myself, and so I made a decision to stop ‘protecting’ myself by rebelling. The schitzo reaction also faded in like measure. Thank HaShem!
Joy. Listed as a fruit of the Ruach HaKodesh. An effect, then. Not a primary cause. It would ‘follow’, then, like the goodness and mercy of Psalm 23 do. Where does it come from? Is it ‘my’ joy? No. It is called the joy of the Lord. So I am directed to run on His joy. He “rejoices over me with singing”. I guess I should join in, then? I found that I “rejoice” when I harvest the sheaves. If I am re-joicing at harvest, then is the planting the time that I ‘joyed’ in the first place? Was the strength of joy what was being used to plant with? That makes sense.
I am built to run on love, and all its derivatives. Joy is one of those. I am strong when I line up with love. I feel good. The lights line up green all the way through town. It is nice to rock along correctly with reality. SO many years I did not! Frustration!
When I can share His delight with me, I am joyed. When a child looks over at his parent, and the parent is delighted with what the child is doing, the child will ramp up the enthusiasm. That is the best example I have been able to find as to how this works.
The so-called ‘pleasure pathways’ of the body are obviously designed to reinforce us children in the direction of righteousness. I will repeat what makes me happy. Joy, however, is more of an advance on the deal. I find that it fuels my efforts, not rewards them, like happiness does. Joy, then, is a true strength.
It is telling to me that the Jews understand that pleasure is commanded whenever it is not a sin. If you think about it, pleasure tells you to repeat an action. The best pleasures I ever had were the pleasures of motherhood (that oxytocin is AWESOME, folks!). Seratonin is a pleasure response that we get whenever we feel connected. Some neuroscientists will even refer to it as the relationship chemical. Seratonin is essential for life. If our levels run too low, we actually can die. That is why we are driven to raise those levels compulsively. I think it is really true that we do not live by bread alone. (Think about those orphans in Romania, if you need a reference.) If we do not have good relationships to keep us happy, we will turn to other methods of raising seratonin. I have wondered if these unholy ways, which are, specifically, mostly addictive type behaviors, some of those “many inventions” we have been warned of. They clearly are substitutes for true relationship. When I am feeling loved, I don’t need anything else!
It is obvious to me, anyway, that we are supposed to run on the good stuff. Joy is good stuff. Joy can get you out of bed, and it sure does make having faith easier! I am currently in the process of getting my car engine re-built to run on joy. So many years there was only the adrenaline of fear at the devil’s gas station, and I had to believe so many lies to qualify for a tank refill. These days, now that I have repented for believing those lies and for agreeing with that fear, I need a new source of strength. I cannot ‘use’ fear, guilt or shame to drive me, as I am out of agreement with those lies, but I am not very good at using the good stuff, I am finding. I did not learn, apparently, how to fill my tank correctly at the correct times (that would be AHEAD OF TIME, y’all) so as to stay strong enough to employ faith at all the places love is supposed to be my motivator. It is hard to just stop and do nothing, and feel like a failure in that place, waiting for my love to grow. But it is a strong motivator! Gone are the days of Superwoman! If I cannot run on true love, I have to leave my yetzer parked. Currently, my life is looking like a failure, for sure. I am mighty uncomfortable looking at all those areas that were so fear-driven for so long, but I am NOT going back. I am lying in the road like Balaam’s donkey. I have seen the Destroying Angel, and I am going no further until I get this joy thing straight. Halleluah!
Joy Unspeakable
Joy to the world, our LORD is come! Let Earth receive her King!
Let every heart prepare Him room..
Joy is the flag flown high from the castle of the heart when the KIng is in residence there. Who is this King of glory? The LORD of Heavens armies — He is the King of glory ~
Yes, relationship. Relationship of parent (our Father) to His children (us).
Relationship of Sovereign Shepherd (and King of kings) to His sheep (us). Relationship of future Husband (Him) to His beloved and betrothed Bride (us).
Where does the joy come from? It comes when we realize and recognize and respond to the very Source of our joy- and praise Him (yes, praise Him!) praise Him profusely and without end.
It is impossible to praise the Father or praise the Son or praise God from whom ALL blessings flow, knowing (yes, experientially!) God has given us Life, Love, Liberty, Laughter – oh, how we could go on! – (yes) counting our blessings!!
The Joy of the LORD? – It is (yes) yet another (grace) gift. Perhaps it is better understood as Joy FROM the LORD- for He is the Giver and He is our Loving, Caring, Tender, Compassionate- ever near, ever listening, ever present, ever (and always!) GOOD- God!
Joy is a response to something given. Hopefully we saw glimpses of joy during this recent Season, these precious few months and moments of thanksgiving, of remembrance, of the festive gathering together of family and friends, and in our worship of the One who is the Word Incarnate – was there “joy” in all of these things? Friend, we need only ask ourselves.. – Where does the Joy come from? One Source – It is the LORD.
Blessed is tHis Name of the LORD, for He shall be called.. [and He is} – Emmanuel – God with us.
~ The LORD your God is with you, [He is] the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in His love He will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing ~ (Zephaniah 3.17)
~ that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full..
Yes, – your joy will overflow! ~ (John 15.11)
Great insight Skip!
To me, its now simple. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit. When I finally really gave up trying to live the “Christian” life, and came to the Father as a dependent child with nothing to bring to the table, His Life finally came in to stay. Love for the Father, joy, peace, obedience, patience, service, humility etc soon followed and continue to grow. I simply abide in Him as an eternally dependent Child who will someday be complete and mature in Christ.
Christ in me the hope of glory … and joy. It’s always been a matter of life. Who’s life will we live by? Our life ,,,, or the Life of Christ. Until we are truly broken and humbled, we will always mix these two mutually exclusive source. As Philippians 2: 12-13 says, we work out this salvation only because it is God who works in us both to will and do His good pleasure.