This year, in place of the usual resolutions and half promises to make myself a healthier, nicer, all round better ‘me’, I’ve decided to do something radical. I’ve decided to commit the remaining 344 days of 2017 to purposefully pursuing Joy. This may sound strange to some of you. “Isn’t that a selfish pledge?”, you might think to yourself, “dedicating the whole year to making yourself happy?” This, my friends, is not the kind of joy I’m referring to. The joy I want to actively pursue is found in the scriptures:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. Against such things there is no law.” Galatians 5:22.
These are qualities of the Holy Spirit that Jesus perfectly embodied while on earth and should be hallmarks of our own Christian lives too. I’m sure many people, Christian or otherwise, recognize the virtues of many of these character traits and aspire to live these out in their own lives as best they can. Yet often ,’aspiring’ is simply not enough. Sometimes we actually need a push to do more than just hope we can become a better person. Sometimes we need to be purposeful.
Joy has always been a trait I have aspired to. It is not that I am a particularly joyless person, i don’t think… However, too often I have equated joy with personal happiness; an emotion or feeling that is wholly dependent on my circumstances on a given day. Consequently, there are days when my laundry basket is full to overflowing, when I get bad news, when I’m homesick or struggling with being a stay at home mom, that I don’t feel particularly joyful. From this joyless attitude subsequently springs feelings of frustration, discontentment, envy… you get the picture. None of which particularly line up with the fruits of the Spirit that should be characterizing my life as a Christian woman, wife and mother.
The joy that the bible talks about is so very different than what I just described. True joy is not a feeling as variable as our current mood, a reactionary response to our circumstances. Instead I believe it is a deep contentment in the depth of our soul that is a response to who God is, His love for us and the promises He has given us. That is the rock on which our joy should stand. When we understand that our joy transcends our earthly circumstances, it give us the strength to fight back and the desire to keep going, whatever life may throw at us – safe in the knowledge of who we belong to and what has been promised to us. In her wonderful book, “Fight Back with Joy,” that I’ve just started reading, Margaret Feinberg describes joy as being a defiant action, a weapon. It is not simply a passive submission to whatever might be going on in our lives. It takes strength to face life’s battles in this way, and as Nehemiah 8:10 says, the source of this strength is in our joy.
So, the point of this blog is to document my journey to joy. These fruits of the spirit are not simply inherent character traits that we can unlock if we only try hard enough. As a wonderful Godly woman told me recently, they require to be purposefully practiced until they become a habit.
So how can I start being more purposeful? Prayer, asking God to fill me with His joy at the beginning of every new day, is a good start. Reading scripture and joy-based books written by Godly women and then having good friends who will encourage and keep me accountable in living this out in the real world. Finding ways to share this joy with others – reflecting on my attitude at home and how I can bless my family, my friends, my neighbors and perfect strangers with an outpouring of joy.
It’s not going to be easy, but then the valuable things of this world, rarely are. I hope you can share in this journey with me.