Lorraine Roberts, along with her husband Bryan, co presented at Gap Summer Camp 2021. The theme was Choose Joy, and Lorraine has prepared a devotional for us, based on what they presented.
After the difficulties experienced by many throughout 2020, it can almost seem insulting to just say to someone “choose joy.” What does that even mean?
And in the midst of this crazy life that is sometimes like a roller coaster, how do we choose joy?
When you google the definition of joy, one of the first definitions is “a feeling of great pleasure & happiness.” If, when we are talking about choosing joy, we are referring to choosing this feeling, then how does one just abandon their sorrow and choose to feel happy? Saying that would assume that we have complete control over our emotional state. So, for example, when you go camping and you open your tent in the morning and find a bear standing in front of you, you choose to feel fear. Doesn’t seem to make much sense, does it?
As humans we don’t just command ourselves into feeling a certain way.
When I open my Bible, some of the places where I find the word joy used makes me wonder if biblical joy is more layered than just “be happy.”
In the first verses of 2 Corinthians 6 Paul outllines some of the things he has been through: imprisonment, hunger, sickness, poverty, and the list goes on. Then he says something that seems like an oxymoron, saying “we are deeply sorrowful yet always filled with deep joy.” (v10)
There are many instances in the Bible where other people say similar things. The joy being spoken about here is way more than a feeling. Christian joy is an attitude that God’s people adopt not because of their circumstances but because of their hope in God’s love and promise (Tim Mackie). It means that I can be sad and grieve the things that hurt me like losing a loved one, being unable to see family because of border closures,having major plans messed up due to COVID and whatever else; and yet I can have joy in Jesus.
That all sounds lovely, but how do we actually experience this joy?
How can our lives be transformed in this way?
In the middle of 2020 just before our second lockdown in Victoria, a friend of ours introduced my husband and I, and a few others, to a practice that has changed our lives for the better. We were encouraged to form a small group where we would read the Bible as a narrative, meaning reading it in its entirety as if everything was connected. In reading it, we were to ask, as we worked through each book, “what does this tell me about the character of God” or “what kind of God would…”
We’d each read a book of the Bible per week (or however long we agreed upon depending on the length of the book), write down any notes or questions we had and then we’d discuss what we learnt about the character of God at our weekly small group meeting.
In doing this I found myself having a deeper understanding of God. Learning about the beauty of God’s character humbled me. One of the most beautiful things is that the God who created everything is so humble He wanted to prove Himself to us; willing to come down into this world as a baby to a woman who was a nobody, showing us who He is and therefore, who we are.
He came to show us who we were meant to be from the beginning of time, to teach us how to live and what matters. Through Christ’s life we learn that what matters most is to love God and love others as ourselves.
We make our life about all those ‘things’ and we forget that life here is a small part of eternity.
The thing is, on this earth our joy is sometimes taken away by what we’ve been told about this life. We’ve been told that life is about accumulating things, the perfect job, finding the perfect husband or wife, looking a particular way, and the list goes on. It never ends. A lot of these things in and of themselves may not be wrong but they most certainly are not what our lives are about.
We make our life about all those things and we forget that life here is a small part of eternity.
So what does all of that have to do with joy?
When you get to know who God is, His ways, His goodness, His power, you start to get a clear picture of what your life is really about. Joy is the freedom in knowing that my life here isn’t the end. Joy is knowing that my loss or sorrow doesn’t have the last word. As painful as it often is, I can afford to miss out on some things in this life because the two most important things at the end of this life will be, did I love and believe that God was who He said He was and did I love others as myself. Did I allow what I know about God to truly transform the way I live? Nothing else will matter, and there is freedom in that!
We don’t have to live according to anyone else’s standards, pace or expectations. Only God’s, and all He requires of us is those two things.
There are things that I want in this world, plans I have, things I hope for and I will try to make those things happen. However, my hope, worth and joy will not be founded on those things.
Getting to know the character of God and therefore who we are and why we are here is the foundation of our joy. So as Paul says, yes, we will experience sorrow on this earth. But we have deep joy!
I encourage you to get to know God’s character through His word.