The Joy of the Lord

Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength."

Nehemiah 8:9-11


Asked, most of us would likely admit that we would like to live lives characterized by the joy of the Lord. I would guess that at various times in our lives many of us have experienced a surpassing exhilaration that seemed to release us from all the weight of disappointment, humiliation, inadequacy and insignificance. When we think about the joy of the Lord, we may recall this experience. For others of you the joy of the Lord may be much less an emotional phenomena; you may recall moments when a personal assurance that God controls everything and has used that to love us and make us His children overwhelmed and supplanted every grievance, complaint and irritation as well as every legacy of victimization, failure and indifference.

Whatever else it may mean to us, the joy of the Lord probably means to us happiness and freedom or release. Paul liked the word “liberty.” However, I suspect that most of us regret that the joy of the Lord seems so transient. Our lives have “highs” and “lows;” the latter tend to out number the former; and, believers tend to see this as the inescapable consequence of original sin, our sinful nature and our sinful decisions. These irreducibly mar our earthly existence, and the Good News is that Christ died to save us from this marred existence by opening to us a life after death free from sin. In other words, the joy of the Lord will be a permanent condition of eternal life commencing after death.

I have not written all this as a preface to suggesting that with a different understanding the joy of the Lord will be more accessible. Rather I want to share that recently as I was praying, over several days, God just kept putting the phrase, the joy of the Lord, on my heart, in my ears, and even in a vision of the written words. Furthermore, He pointed out to me that if I believe that His joy is a desirable but inherently unsustainable state, I will not seriously pray for it. But He affirmed that it is His desire that we should pray for His Joy, that we should have it, and that it is not He limiting the joy of the Lord to our life after death.