Romans 15:13
“ Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
“There are two types of joy, one created by God for man to enjoy and one created by God for man to be sustained by. “ If you recall I made this assessment in my last post and I wanted to bring some insight to what I meant by “there are two forms of joy” that a believer can experience. (It is my intent to finish up this journey before June 1st so that I can go into a month long journey of exploring the Book of Romans.) So let us go ahead and explore the type of joy that God created us to enjoy.
According to Webster’s dictionary the word joy is defined by the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires. Also the words delight, gladden, bliss, rejoice and enjoy could be closely related to joy. All in all the word joy has some very remarkable features that many of us (mankind) long for in our lives, relationships, circumstances, etc to occur. There is not a day that goes by that the common man longs for joy to be the very substance that motivates them to do what they do. (Tell me I am wrong and can prove that I am not, or else why not just die and say “the heck with it”. )
For the remainder of this post I want to discuss the “joy” that God has created for man to enjoy. Truly it is an emotion that runs deep within our veins, but how often do we truly thank God for giving us such an emotion? Rather, we take credit for it ourselves because along the way we feel we deserve to be happy or joyful for various reasons. But truth be told this was God’s ultimate plan that His ultimate creation, we humans, would benefit from the very emotion that God Himself enjoys. At its climax ”joy” can be so overwhelming that it can literally bring tears to our eyes, cause our body to shake profusely, make our words stutter as they come out all because this emotion reached its climax within our humans bodies.
To be blatantly honest with you, I am not psychologist; I have a weird suspicion that this phenomenon of emotion can bring us to a place of utopia. I do have a concern about this emotion; it is the fact that it is short lived only to find another “high” to feed off of. Do not get me wrong, this emotion is great and it is a blessing from the Lord but many of times it is only momentary. There are many instances both in the bible and in life that folks experience joy. Here are some examples from the bible:
Israel experienced "joy" when they anointed both David and Solomon as kings according to the Old Testament.
Israel experienced 'joy" when they brought the “Ark of the Covenant” to Jerusalem.
Israel experienced "joy' when they defeated their enemies or when God blessed them.
Now here are some examples from everyday life:
When a mother is able to hold her newborn child for the first time after all the labor that she just went through.
When a father is able to see his children achieve greater things that he did.
When we see God bestow blessings on our lives, these very things bring us "joy" in many different levels.
So as we can see, God created "joy" for man to enjoy. In our next post we will discuss the “joy” that God created to sustain us. You will see that this type of "joy" is very different than the joy that was described in this post.
“ Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit."
“There are two types of joy, one created by God for man to enjoy and one created by God for man to be sustained by. “ If you recall I made this assessment in my last post and I wanted to bring some insight to what I meant by “there are two forms of joy” that a believer can experience. (It is my intent to finish up this journey before June 1st so that I can go into a month long journey of exploring the Book of Romans.) So let us go ahead and explore the type of joy that God created us to enjoy.
According to Webster’s dictionary the word joy is defined by the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires. Also the words delight, gladden, bliss, rejoice and enjoy could be closely related to joy. All in all the word joy has some very remarkable features that many of us (mankind) long for in our lives, relationships, circumstances, etc to occur. There is not a day that goes by that the common man longs for joy to be the very substance that motivates them to do what they do. (Tell me I am wrong and can prove that I am not, or else why not just die and say “the heck with it”. )
For the remainder of this post I want to discuss the “joy” that God has created for man to enjoy. Truly it is an emotion that runs deep within our veins, but how often do we truly thank God for giving us such an emotion? Rather, we take credit for it ourselves because along the way we feel we deserve to be happy or joyful for various reasons. But truth be told this was God’s ultimate plan that His ultimate creation, we humans, would benefit from the very emotion that God Himself enjoys. At its climax ”joy” can be so overwhelming that it can literally bring tears to our eyes, cause our body to shake profusely, make our words stutter as they come out all because this emotion reached its climax within our humans bodies.
To be blatantly honest with you, I am not psychologist; I have a weird suspicion that this phenomenon of emotion can bring us to a place of utopia. I do have a concern about this emotion; it is the fact that it is short lived only to find another “high” to feed off of. Do not get me wrong, this emotion is great and it is a blessing from the Lord but many of times it is only momentary. There are many instances both in the bible and in life that folks experience joy. Here are some examples from the bible:
Israel experienced "joy" when they anointed both David and Solomon as kings according to the Old Testament.
Israel experienced 'joy" when they brought the “Ark of the Covenant” to Jerusalem.
Israel experienced "joy' when they defeated their enemies or when God blessed them.
Now here are some examples from everyday life:
When a mother is able to hold her newborn child for the first time after all the labor that she just went through.
When a father is able to see his children achieve greater things that he did.
When we see God bestow blessings on our lives, these very things bring us "joy" in many different levels.
So as we can see, God created "joy" for man to enjoy. In our next post we will discuss the “joy” that God created to sustain us. You will see that this type of "joy" is very different than the joy that was described in this post.
