The first thing I'd like to address is what joy is. It is deep happiness and contentment so it is far more powerful than simple happiness. It is being content which is being perfectly satisfied with your present situation. Many of us do not feel this way though and we certainly don't feel all the various words that are related to joy: Delight, pleasure, triumph, satisfaction, ecstasy, bliss, euphoria, glee, elation. The most we will find usually is happiness.
I think of it like this. God wants us to have the pure whole fruit but instead of coming to him the tree where the fruit is grown we'll go else where and settle for cheap imitations. God in his kindness still lets us have glimpses of the real product but they are mere diluted forms, fruit squashs and flavourings. In the case of joy I believe that happiness is the cheap imitation. Without God the best we can hope for is a bit of happiness on Earth before we die. In the Bible the book of Ecclesiastes talks about this subject. It looks into the wisdom of a life without God and decides that anything we try to achieve without him is meangingless so we may as well try to make ourselves as happy as possible before we die. The sad truth is that many in the world are living this way. Looking to things such as career, family, friends, money, sex, drinks, drugs to achieve fufliment and then not finding it in any of those things.
I've often tried to find satisfaction in many different combinations of these things but they have left me feeling empty. It's because though I can make myself happy I'll always sense that there is something more waiting for me just beyond my reach and the pleasure I can gain is never enough to satisfy. We weren't designed to live just to please ourselves. We were actually designed to live in a relationship with God and do you know what? We actually find the pleasure and satisfaction we were looking for within that relationship
"If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father's commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you." John 15:10-12
From obeying the Lord's commands we will remain in his love and as a consequence we will have complete joy. What are the Lord's commands? A Pharisee once asked Jesus this. He asked Jesus to sum up the Law that God gave to his people and Jesus answered
"The most important one," answered Jesus, "is this: 'Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.' The second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these." Mark 12:29-31
It is not natural for us to love our neighbour so God has sent the Holy Spirit to help us. The Spirit is from God so when we ask him to come and live within us he shares God's heart for our neighbours with us and we can love them as Jesus loves them. I have noticed this to be true the place where I feel the most joy is when I'm in fellowship with fellow believers and when truly worshipping God; the two places Jesus said we would find complete joy. So I urge you as I urge myself to seek joy from living life for God's benefit as you come to know him you will find that joy and you will hardly be able to stop yourself from expressing it to those around you.
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