this joy that is part of the fruit of the Spirit

dogs4thewin said:

What IS it any now?

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I tend to think it is when a Christian's faith & trust in the Lord is the source of happiness in one 's life. The challenges of living life by faith & the sorrows of the world remain but a believer lives in faith to do good works grounded in prayer for the salvation of their neighbor. Some do more and evangelize.

Dear dogs4thewin. Lukaris says it well, joy enhances all Love. We are told to
Love God with all our hearts, with all our souls, and with all our minds. ALSO
Love our neighbour as ourselves. In Matthew 7: 7-10: we are told to:
"ask and ye shall receive." There we ask God for Love and Joy, then share all with our neighbour: all around us. We keep asking for Love and Joy,
then thank God and share all Love and Joy with our neighbour. God will see our loving efforts to share this Love and Joy, and God will approve and Bless us. We might stumble and forget sometimes, but then we ask God to forgive us, and carry on Loving and Caring, with as much Love and Joy as we need.
I say this with love, dogs4thewin. Greetings from Emmy, your sister in Christ.

Galatians 5 (ESV) said:

[22]But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,

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dogs4thewin said:

What IS it any now?

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I believe you're in good company when asking the question.

King Solomon sorta wondered the same thing:

Ecclesiastes 2(ESV) said:

[1]I said in my heart, “Come now, I will test you with pleasure; enjoy yourself.” But behold, this also was vanity.

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In the original Hebrew text, I understand, the word "simha" which has here been translated to "pleasure" is the word which is most commonly translated to "joy" in the Old Testament.

Solomon conducts a kind of experiment, in search of the source of "joy", searching in every conceivable way:


in drink, in riches, in property, in possessions, in concubines he searches for satisfaction, but although admitting a certain amount of pleasure from each, he cannot wholly feel joy.

Ecclesiastes 2(ESV) said:

[11]Then I considered all that my hands had done and the toil I had expended in doing it, and behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind, and there was nothing to be gained under the sun.

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He concludes that it is God who ultimately determines joy:

Ecclesiastes 2(ESV) said:

24 There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, 25 for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment? 26 For to the one who pleases him God has given wisdom and knowledge and joy, but to the sinner he has given the business of gathering and collecting, only to give to one who pleases God. This also is vanity and a striving after wind.

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here now (in verse 26) that same Hebrew word "simha" is translated "joy".

That's my biblical response. My personal experience is more difficult to describe. Have you ever felt joy at a funeral? I did, two weeks ago. That sounds horrible doesn't it? But it's true. The wife of one of the elders of my church passed away and, by her own pre-humous (is that even a word?) request, her memorial service was conducted at our church and filled with music and singing of her favorite worship songs, testimonies of her faith and in fellowship with each other. Our whole congregation gathered together that Saturday afternoon in love and hope and joy. This woman, her husband and their daughters all have such an amazing faith that it seemed apparent to everyone there that our separation from her is only to be a temporary one, and there was virtually no sadness at all. It truly did rather feel like a celebration of her going home to be with the father. Now, of course I know that the family did and still will grieve their loss, but it is absolutely amazing to me how, as a Christian, there is simply joy everywhere. Even to those (especially to those) who would seem to have no business experiencing such. Joy in suffering. Joy in pain. Joy in poverty. Joy in struggle. Even joy in death, because we know that death is not really death, but rather the beginning of eternal life.

I don't know. I guess that all might sound rather silly to you, but to me it's very real. It gives me hope. It gives me value and those are things that just a short few years ago, I never thought I'd be able to have in my heart. I just didn't think that I was worth it. But I am, so are you, we all are. It's available to all of us. No one has to live without joy. They just don't. I don't know how it works and I guess on paper it doesn't make much sense at all, but when you finally let God into your life, the Holy Spirit works to fill your heart with joy and to keep it there. Bad stuff still happens sometimes, you still get sad, but the difference is this incredible sense of hope and not being alone. And I know that comes from God, because for a long time, like Solomon, I spent my life searching for something to fill that void; woman, drinking, making money, running off to this place and that - I know that feeling of never really feeling satisfied. Never really feeling ok with myself. Never really feeling joy. But, now I do and I owe that all to God.

That's just my $.02. Thanks for posting the question.

dogs4thewin said:

What IS it any now?

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It would be easy to say it is a temporal happiness, a feeling one experiences. But then what about the trying times of life? The misery and sufferings that are around us. How about those of us who suffer from depression (I'm one of those)?

It reminds me a little bit about how when one looks at the Beatitudes Jesus says, "Blessed are the poor...", "Blessed are the hungry..." etc. Some translations render "Happy are the poor...".

Well what do we mean by "happy"? The word "makar" (prolonged as the adjective makarios in the Beatitudes) speaks of contentment, fulfillment, one who has their fill, their fullness, needing nothing else. Thus blessed are the poor, blessed are the hungry, blessed are those who mourn, blessed are those who suffer, etc becomes obviously a strange thing to say.

It's obviously not a happiness we are well acquainted with. If I am starving and in need of food, am I truly happy? Not really, but the beatitude says I am, against all odds and what I see and experience right not, one who has everything already. How so? Presumably it comes with the promises attached to the Beatitudes, "for yours is the kingdom of God", "for you shall be filled", "for you shall be comforted" etc.

The blessedness, the contentment, the happiness is in the God who in justice restores all wrongs to rights.

What is the joy of the Spirit? Is it this fleeting, temporal happy feeling? Or is it the joy of the knowledge that being baptized I belong to Christ, and if I am Christ's, I am God's. And if I am God's, I have more than I could ever hope for in this life, and so even in misery there is joy, not that I feel happy when I am miserable, but that in faith I know the misery of this life cannot rob from me the goodness and kindness of God and what He has promised me in Jesus.

It is a terrible thing when certain Christians promise a rose-petal road of happiness and good things in this life. Because unless you are one of the most fortunate with many material things, without material worries, etc for the majority of us--all of us--this life is a cross that we carry every day. And even for the most fortunate, they are not blind to the suffering around them, and are not immune to disease, or the changing tides of society and economy.

That isn't to say everything in this life is horrible blech, it's to understand that in the real world there is suffering, and the Christian ethos is to know that suffering, and know it as a cross to be carried, and through that love and do good to our neighbor. Because the burden of the cross in this life is not the final word about human existence, there is an empty tomb near Calvary that preaches to us that cross and death are not final, are not what ultimately defines the world, or ourselves, but that Jesus Christ risen from the dead is God's final word to all creation.

-CryptoLutheran

Dear dogs4thewin. Joy is gladness, enjoying what one does, or sees, joy is happiness and contentment: to love is to be filled with gladness and joy.
Simply put it might be: life enhanced with joy and gladness for all we do and all we experience: Love always brings forth Joy, life without love and joy is empty and without meaning. There are times when only Love will give what we need, but in the end Joy will always cling to Love.
I say this with love, dogs4thewin. Greeting s from Emmy, your sister in Christ