Anyways, I think that joy is a mysterious and strange thing for most people. Christians included. The majority of humans aren’t really joyful!

We go through the motions in almost every aspect of our lives, including church. Personally, for me its a matter of trying to do it from self-power versus reliance on God. God wants to show us a way of fellowship and ministry that’s easy, light, and joyful. I seem to want to keep doing the tough it out joyless style. When I rely on God and admit that I can’t do spiritual things on my own, then things can be joyful.

But I think I do know. I was in their position. I was miserable, a depressed, melancholic teenage girl. I went to Sunday school, worship service, and youth group. I volunteered at the “Service Saturdays” where we cleaned up cluttered parts of the church building. I read the Bible and knew you were supposed to have joy, so I just told myself, “Well, joy isn’t that happy feeling you rarely have. It is a deep-seated thing that you just have because you’re not a Christian.” What a lie! In my definition, joy was basically a state a bearable misery. The only joy was that I would one day die. There was no joy for the present in my heart.

Some Church people aren’t so morose. I think they like to put on a happy face, get into the worship music, and warmly greet fellow pew-sitters in the Sunday morning ritual. These external acts make them feel joyful, because they’re acting joyful. But there’s no substance: no deep relationships or feeling of purpose. And joy is very substantial, so much so that we can experience it even in the worst of circumstances (Php. 4:6-13). So the happy-go-lucky church-goer can’t be the meaning of joy, either. They deceive themselves, as I did, into thinking joy is something you just inherently have as a Christian, and then you act it out once or twice a week at “church.” Or maybe even when you’re friendly to a cashier, or smile instead of flip the bird when someone cuts you off in traffic.

We need a much better understand of joy to make sense of the Bible’s words about it, and I think this series is building that understanding.