Are you truly happy? ’Cause the Holy Spirit wants you to be.
- Joy /dʒɔɪ/ n. Feeling of great happiness and pleasure.
- [Joyful /'dʒɔɪ.fəl/ adj.; joyous /'dʒɔɪ.əs/ adj.]
You’d think I wouldn’t need to include a definition of joy before writing on the subject. You’d be wrong. Not everyone agrees with, or even approves of, this definition.
Joy’s a feeling. An emotion. A positive emotion, one which God wants us to feel. He wants us to experience joy on a regular basis. He wants us to be filled with pleasure and happiness. It’s how his kingdom’s meant to be. No more tears;
But there are a large number of joyless Christians who claim it’s not a feeling of happiness; it’s not an emotion whatsoever. Instead it’s a “state of well-being.” Once you decide, regardless of your circumstances, you’re gonna be okay with things—despite suffering, chaos, or general suckitude, you’re gonna tamp down those feelings of despair and just tough it out—that’s joy. God gives us the power to slog out any circumstances, and psyche ourselves into feeling hope instead of despair.
Yeah… that’s not joy they’re describing. It’s patience.
And patience—or if you wanna call it by its King James Version word, “longsuffering”
This redefintion has even slipped into dictionaries. One of my Greek dictionaries defines hará/“joy” as “gladness, cheerfulness”—which is correct; or “a state of being calmly happy or well-off”—and no it’s not.
Bust out your concordance and look up all the instances of hará/“joy,” number 5479 in Strong’s dictionary, and you’re gonna find joy hardly sounds like being content no matter the circumstances. Sounds more like being tremendously happy because of circumstances. Here’s a bunch of examples from the New Testament.
Luke 1.13-15 KWL - 13
B “Your wife Elizabeth will give birth to your son, and you’ll name him John. - 14 He’ll be happiness and joy to you,
- and many will rejoice at his birth, 15
A for he’ll be great before the Lord.”
John 3.29 KWL - “The groom’s the one with the bride.
- The groom’s friend, joyfully standing and listening, rejoices at the groom’s voice.
- So this joy of mine is full.”
Luke 10.17 KWL - The 72 students returned with joy, saying, “Master, even demons submitted to us in your name!”
Luke 15.7 KWL - “I tell you, because of it there’s joy in heaven—over one repenting sinner.
- More so than over 99 moral people who don’t need to repent.”