Alive Youth Church Weekly,
Are you:
Tired? Worn out? Feeling the weight of it all? Overworked? Stressed? About to give up? Confused? Don't know what to do next? Trying your hardest but not getting there? Weakened?
“The joy of the Lord is your strength.”
- Nehemiah 8:10
Not:
The emotional worship moment is your strength
The conference you attended
The camp you loved
Or the perfect life circumstance you manufacture
The joy of the Lord is not the absence of pain, loss, fear, or any of the things we normally try to avoid.
The joy of the Lord is our strength.
I have been thinking back on the moments in my life where I experienced the deepest joy. I encourage you to take a few moments with a pen and paper and write down the moments you can remember where joy felt real. Not happiness. Not excitement. Joy.
Seriously, do it now if you can. Make a list. Take the time.
When I did this, I started looking for the common denominator. Why were these moments marked with joy? What was present? What was absent?
And what I discovered surprised me.
In almost every one of those moments, I wasn’t concerned with myself.
That sounds simple, but I think it reveals something deeply wrong with the way we often search for joy.
Most people spend their lives trying to construct joy externally. We believe joy is waiting for us somewhere in the future:
When life slows down
When we get the relationship
When we finally heal
When we make enough money
At a particular event or gathering
Or when we get the experience we’ve been craving
But joy is strange because the harder you attempt to manufacture it, the more artificial it becomes.
Real joy seems to arrive quietly and unexpectedly. The moments seem to sneak up on me.
Moments that, on paper, should not even matter that much.
I just tried to describe some of the moments I wrote down, and seriously, they sound really lame. I even typed a few out to try to describe this point better using examples, and then I deleted them because they sounded too simple to be meaningful.
But I think that’s exactly the point.
Joy is rarely found in the moments we obsessively try to engineer. It’s usually found in moments where we forget to obsess over ourselves at all.
A conversation.
A drive home late at night.
Laughing with people you love.
Serving someone.
Sitting in silence.
Feeling fully present.
Moments where your mind stops reaching for the next thing.
And maybe that is why Scripture says the joy of the Lord is our strength.
Because joy was never meant to come from control.
Or performance.
Or stimulation.
Or endless emotional highs.
The modern world has confused intensity with joy. We think if something is louder, bigger, faster, more emotional, more impressive, then it must also be deeper. And that's just so not the case. Somewhere along the line, we got confused, and we are paying the price.
Joy was never supposed to be an up-and-down battle. Ping ponging back and forth. Joy was never meant to be emotional whiplash, controlled entirely by circumstance. Joy is supposed to be a constant. If our joy only survives good seasons, then it was probably comfort we were experiencing, not biblical joy.
Some of the deepest joys in life come from moments so ordinary they are almost invisible. But surprisingly, they are the moments that I remember the most.
Joy lives wherever gratitude and presence meet. By that, I mean times when we are fully present and grateful for the place we are in and the people we are with. To actually be somewhere. Fully there. Not constantly reaching ahead into the future or replaying the past.
I think this is why children often seem more joyful than adults. Children are fully consumed by the moment they are in. Adults are consumed by what's next or what needs to be done. We analyze moments while they are happening instead of living them.
We have become experts at documenting life or manufacturing the moment without actually experiencing it.
And because of that, many people are deeply joyless.
Joy is not an activity.
Not an environment.
Not a person.
The more self-focused we become, the harder joy becomes to access. Self-centeredness turns every moment into evaluation:
Am I happy enough?
Am I successful enough?
Am I loved enough?
Am I important enough?
Is this enough for me?
But joy often appears when the self grows quiet.
When comparison dies.
When striving pauses.
When gratitude becomes louder.
I think many of us miss joy because we are waiting for big moments that feel cinematic, while God keeps placing joy inside ordinary life.
And maybe the reason the joy of the Lord is our strength is that it cannot be taken away by circumstance.
Happiness can collapse when situations change.
But joy is rooted deeper.
It’s possible to grieve and still have joy.
To suffer and still have joy.
To lack and still have joy.
Because joy is not pretending life is perfect.
Joy can be found in every moment.
Heavy question for you to ponder this week: Have you lost the ability to recognize joy in the ordinary moments?
Can we all agree that experiencing the joy of the Lord is a good thing? Can we all agree that we want joy?
Agreed? Cool.
Let's make a deal then... Can we stop waiting for the moment to be right, for our needs to be met first, or for our expectations to control our joy? Let's make a deal to be ready for the joy in the little moments.
Joy in our conversations
Joy in our worship
Joy in our meal times
Joy in our hellos and goodbyes
Joy in our struggles
Joy when life isn't going as planned
Joy when an event could be better
Joy in our tiredness
Joy when we are working harder than we think we should
Joy despite our circumstances.
Joy Joy Joy.
I know I'm in need of joy. And I bet you are too.
The Joy of the Lord is our strength. Make this a focus of yours moving forward. Seek Jesus, and live in His joy.
-Isaac Fehlen
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