Nothing gladdens the heart like a joyful spirit. If I decide to study the physiology of my body and understand how joy affects my health, I will be amazed at how it restores, heals, and brings my body back into balance. And if I add obedience to the laws of health, I simply marvel at how wonderfully I am made.
God has given me an amazing body that takes care of itself independently of me, receiving impulses and commands from the control center in my head. My brain is directly connected to my mood and is influenced by my feelings. It hears my words, understands my emotions, and processes everything I do and the way I do it. My life tells my body what it is to become.
If I sit behind the wheel of a car, the car does not care what mood I am in while driving it. It will respond only to the commands of my hands and feet. But my body responds very precisely to everything I experience and produces stress hormones or joy hormones, depending on what I feel and what I direct my mind toward.
Joy can be produced artificially through external stimulants, improper nutrition, or even temporary sinful pleasure. My body responds to these things as well, and its ability to function changes accordingly. But I have a unique body that knows the voice of its Creator and understands His commands. It awaits the union of my human nature with the Divine so that, in this harmony, it may do everything that was originally intended.
I rejoice in the Lord. This is a return to the original, natural state of the human soul. It is the harmonious union of the earthly and human with the Heavenly. My heart knows this voice of Eternity and begins to beat joyfully, sending life-giving impulses to every part of my body.
Each of us has two hearts. One is the heart in my chest that pumps my blood; the other is my spiritual perception of the world around me and the choice of my will concerning whom it will belong to. This heart can decide in whose chest it will beat—in the chest of my carnal nature or in the chest of my Savior. I make this choice, and I make it continually.
When I choose God, I come into harmony with Him. I allow Him to gladden my heart, direct my life, and cleanse my soul from the defilement of this world. Such harmony makes everything within me rejoice. The union of my joy with all the other materials of my house of happiness fills my life with genuine and lasting gladness.
What do joyful people look like? They are beautiful in God’s eyes, because they reflect the image of their Creator very faithfully. As a reward, they receive all the bounties of Heaven in the form of abundant blessings from God. Like a snowball, all of this grows larger and larger until it overflows from me in shouts of praise and prayers of thanksgiving and becomes an overwhelming desire to bring joy to those around me as well.
The carnal nature hates joy in the Lord and tries in every way to prevent it from spreading—through cutting reproaches and faultfinding, mockery and insults—in an attempt to ruin my mood. How I meet this attack of the enemy and how I respond to it will affect how I feel afterward.
But to understand the value of my joy and what it cost my Lord, I must consider the One through Whom I have it. My thoughts first take me to the Garden of Eden, where the enemy of humanity stole the character of Heaven from us. Then I ascend to Calvary, where I see the price of my sin in the death of the One Who never committed a single sin, yet loves me so deeply that He chose to take this step in my place in order to restore to me the possibility of living happily and living forever. The price is exceedingly great. In this light, I understand that rejoicing is not merely something I may or may not do. I will remain in this joy continually, because it is the fruit of the Holy Spirit in my life.
Joy includes elements that can be seen and may be expressed on my face or in my emotional behavior. Yet in its depths it has a very complex inner structure and is more like the roots of a fruit tree, continually growing in the depths of God’s heart and seeking sources of nourishment for my soul. Joy is like a grafted grape branch that grows into the Vine with its whole being and becomes one with it, drawing nourishment from its sap and becoming part of the plant. This process has a unique characteristic. If a dark grape variety is grafted onto the Vine, it will bear dark fruit according to the nature of the branch, while a light variety will produce light-colored grapes. In Christ I do not lose my individuality; instead, I harmoniously unite my own qualities with God’s laws and principles.
Joy in the Lord is a beautiful opportunity for love to express itself visibly and also to bring inner purity to my heart. Love performs this work very skillfully, with ease and joy. The original plan of love in the creation of our world and of humanity in the person of Adam is described very well in Proverbs 8:30–31: ‘Then I was by Him, as one brought up with Him: and I was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him; rejoicing in the habitable part of His earth; and My delights were with the sons of men.’
Joy in the Lord is the eternal adornment of my life and of my house of happiness. It is the blood of Christ flowing through my veins and nourishing my spiritual nature. It is given to me forever, to be my lifelong companion throughout Eternity and continually nourish my being from the inexhaustible Source of Eternal love.
Do joyful people bring you joy? Aren’t they beautiful? They create an atmosphere of life and rejoicing around them. Even when they are silent and not smiling, and even when they carry many cares, they are beautiful. It is very pleasant to be in their company.
If an ordinary person is offered a highly paid job among hostile coworkers, he will not endure that environment for long. He will prefer an average salary on a team of joyful people to a miserable existence under constant stress for a great deal of money. Yet for some, the love of material things overpowers the appeals of reason. These people deprive themselves of much by choosing what is temporary, perishable, and poisonous, and then wonder where their sickness and suffering came from when everything around them seems so glittering and grand.
There is a common belief that joy and children are the lot of the poor, and this idea is drawn from life. You can see that in some places it is indeed so: the simpler people’s outlook on life, the more happy faces there are. But joy in the Lord is available to every level of society and even to childless families. It can adorn any home and transform any heart into the likeness of God. Yet it cannot live on its own, separated from the whole body. This brick of happiness will not bring me joy apart from the rest of the house. Like a coal taken from the fire, it will very quickly grow cold and die, or it will assume an outward form of godliness while lacking inner power.
Laughter is not always joy in the Lord, but it is better than anger. Joy should not be confused with frivolous joking. Satan tries to introduce this counterfeit in order to bring us under his power, but a pure heart rejects artificial sources and chooses what is eternal. A sense of humor is good in itself when it rests upon obedience to God and love for Him.
Bible verses for this chapter:
Proverbs 15:17; 17:22; 1 Chronicles 16:26–33; Nehemiah 8:10, 17; 12:43; Job 38:5–7; Psalm 16:11; 30:5; 43:4; 47:1; 51:10, 14; 68:3; 105:43; 126:5–6; Proverbs 10:28; 14:10, 13; Ecclesiastes 2:26; 5:19; 11:9; Isaiah 53:11