Core Value: Joy

You can find an audio version of this blog at: ​https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/cbc-devo-core-value-joy

In recent years our church has had a theme to focus on each year. This year, however, instead of a specific theme I want to focus on core values. These core values developed over the past several years of preaching on subjects like spiritual gifts, modeling Christ, the Christian family, prayer, and worship. In compiling these subjects, we now have an extensive list of core values that I don’t want us to forget and that we need to apply if we’re going to continue being a healthy, effective, life-giving, and God-glorifying church. Each month I plan to focus on one core value through a devotional like this one. The core value will also appear in our bulletin. If interested, you can find the entire list of core values on our website.
 
The first core value I want us to focus on is joy. Joy! It’s what everybody wants! In my first year as a pastor, my personal theme that year was “to serve the Lord with joy.” Followers of Jesus should be known for their joy. I’ve said many times before that if we can’t have fun and enjoy doing ministry, we won’t be doing much ministry at all! No one wants to be part of a church or any other group that has no joy. We can communicate all the right information to people but without a sense of joy, it will go over like a lead balloon. Who wants to hang around a bunch of cranks who argue and complain about everything or go through life as an expressionless Stoic? They make a terrible witness for the good news of the gospel! Joyful Christians, however, are winsome witnesses for Jesus. Charles Swindoll once said that long before people are attracted to our life of love, they are often attracted to our joy. Christ came to give us an abundant life (John 10:10) and in a very real sense, part of that “life” is a lightening of our spirits and learning to laugh at life! There are two principles that I would like to share to make sure we don’t lose our joy. The first one is that joy comes with abiding. In John 15:10-11 Jesus said,

If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love; just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. These things I have spoken to you so that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

​Jesus teaches that we can abide in His love by keeping His commandments. The reason He tells us this is because He wants us to have an abundant life characterized by joy! He wants us to have His joy and for our joy to be complete. One translation says “so that your joy may overflow.” Sometimes people are tempted to view God’s commands as restrictions that steal their joy. God is looked at as a big bully in the sky who doesn’t want us to have any fun. On the contrary, for believers, it’s when we are living in sin against God that we lack this overflowing joy. God will not let His children enjoy what is not good for them. Therefore, overflowing joy only comes when we are walking in fellowship with the Lord and thus abiding in Him.
 
The second principle is that we must be careful about where we find our joy. In Luke 10 when the disciples returned from their first short-term missionary journey, they

returned with joy, saying, “Lord, even the demons are subject to us in Your name."

​Understandably, the disciples learned that serving Jesus can bring them immense joy. They were joyful about the way He used them and empowered them for the work of ministry. However, Jesus knows that ministry hardship lay ahead and they need something more secure to rest their joy in. He responded, saying,

Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are recorded in heaven.

​As heaven’s disciples, and especially for those in some sort of vocational ministry, we must beware of placing our joy in what we do (maybe it’s a ministry or job) or in what we possess (maybe it’s material possessions, influential qualities, or personal performance). Placing our joy in anything other than Christ and what He has done for us—formally inscribing our names in heaven’s book of life—is a recipe for disaster because everything other than Christ is temporary and fleeting or fluctuates up and down. If I place all my joy in my job but my job isn’t doing well, my joy won’t be doing well. If I place my joy in a fancy vehicle but then it gets wrecked or I am forced to sell it, my joy will go with it. Joy comes to stay when we recognize that Jesus is everything we need and because of Him, we are saved and going to heaven. If you seem to have misplaced your joy lately, I encourage you to pray with David in Psalm 51:12,

​Restore to me the joy of Your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit.

In Christ with you, 

Pastor Justin

2/18/2024