Joy

One of the Christmas candles we light is Joy. We have or will sing the familiar Christmas song “Joy to the Word”. Many of us have grown up with Sunday School songs, complete with actions, “I’ve got the joy joy joy joy down in my heart, where, down in my heart – where?” and “I’ve got joy like a fountain, I’ve got joy like a fountain, I’ve got joy like my fountain in my soul”

When you hear the word joy – what comes to mind?

One of the primary things people lament in their lives is the lack of joy. It is a common complaint of people, and is often connected to “I’m not happy”. I am deeply concerned at the number of teens and young adults that have shared with me as a Pastoral type person, significant lack of joy in their lives. The subsequent impact on their lives is profound in the feelings of purposelessness, meaninglessness and general malaise of life in general. More times that I care to remember I have received calls from people despairing of life itself.

A 2000 MIT report stated,

Major depression is recognized as the most prevalent type of mood disorder today. It is estimated that 17 percent of the U.S. population will suffer from a major depressive episode… (http://tech.mit.edu/V120/N3/dep1.3n.html)

I’m sure that these trends are no different for Canadians. And the numbers are growing. People are desperate, and are literally dying for the lack of Joy. Ironically, when they crunch the numbers for Christians – the numbers are about the same.

In the most basic terms, depression is primarily trigger by a sense of significant loss. It would seem that for all our affluence, material possessions, careers opportunities, education, and abundance of food, entertainment and leisure, access to whatever pleases the eye… we are a miserable and joyless bunch. In fact, it’s likely this blog isn’t bringing us much joy either.

I just find it amazing that as Christian we sing about joy, preach sermons – and yet, many still feel they to manufacture a façade of joy. Cause’ that’s what were supposed to be.

So Joy is a problem – just because we light the candle and sing the songs doesn’t mean we have it – for some it even causes more damage because it creates a disharmony between what they feel inside and what they project – which just furthers the sense of depression, because everyone else looks happy – but me. And the reality of it is what you’re going through is real, it’s tough and hard – and creates a war within our soul.

So now what? Where do we go? Is there any good news? Well, perhaps.

Please let me take a rabbit trail for a moment. One of the areas of study is the effects of vibration and disharmony on bridges and buildings. These studies are related to the structures themselves, and to impact that these vibration and the subsequent harmonics that they create. Vibration and disharmony causes stress, fatigue, frustration, irritation, and eventual structural breakdown. The impact of vibrations and disharmony noises such as competing frequencies of fans that create have emotionally effect people over time – increasing stress, fatigue, frustration, irritation and depression. It grates on us.

Here’s where we join the paths. When we become spiritually out of harmony with God, vibration is created in our lives. We can try to ignore it, mask it, or deny it, but it is ever in the background. It causes a great deal more stress, frustration and breakdown than we admit. We try to medicate, mediate and meditate it, but no matter how hard we try – that disharmonious tone vibrates through our existence.

As far as I can tell there’s only one solution. Give up. Before you give up on me here, just hang in a bit longer.

The reason we feel such great loss is that often we are trying to hang onto that which we can’t keep. It’s want caused Jesus to say the words “ What good will it be for a person if they gain the whole world, but lose their soul, Or can a man give in exchange for their soul?” We are looking to the wrong things to bring joy into our lives.

Maybe the problem isn’t joy, but in what we find, or think we find our joy in? It may be that we have confounded the difference between joy – and what we believe is an inalienable right “happiness” after all its written right into the American Constitution. “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness” ironically many have lost both their life and their liberty in that pursuit and are exhausted from chasing it – and it’s always just outside the reach of my fingers.
Eastern mystics do not have it all wrong. They speak of finding that inner harmony and peace with the universal ‘Om’, and encourage the participants to verbally chant ‘Om’ to find empty yourself of noise and disharmony and reach a universal harmony. We believe in something similar. However, we believe that it isn’t nothingness that we are seeking – the answer is not in the emptying, but in the filling, and the Holy Spirit within that we seek.

Change gears.

Deuteronomy 28
1-6 If you listen obediently to the Voice of God, your God, and heartily obey all his commandments that I command you today, God, your God, will place you on high, high above all the nations of the world. All these blessings will come down on you and spread out beyond you because you have responded to the Voice of God, your God:

God's blessing inside the city,

God's blessing in the country;

God's blessing on your children,

the crops of your land,

the young of your livestock,

the calves of your herds,

the lambs of your flocks.

God's blessing on your basket and bread bowl;

God's blessing in your coming in,

God's blessing in your going out.
7 God will defeat your enemies who attack you. They'll come at you on one road and run away on seven roads.
8 God will order a blessing on your barns and workplaces; he'll bless you in the land that God, your God, is giving you.
9 God will form you as a people holy to him, just as he promised you, if you keep the commandments of God, your God, and live the way he has shown you.
10 All the peoples on Earth will see you living under the Name of God and hold you in respectful awe.
11-14 God will lavish you with good things: children from your womb, offspring from your animals, and crops from your land, the land that God promised your ancestors that he would give you. God will throw open the doors of his sky vaults and pour rain on your land on schedule and bless the work you take in hand. You will lend too many nations but you yourself won't have to take out a loan. God will make you the head, not the tail; you'll always be the top dog, never the bottom dog, as you obediently listen to and diligently keep the commands of God, your God, that I am commanding you today. Don't swerve an inch to the right or left from the words that I command you today by going off following and worshiping other gods.

Now, that was the good news… here is where it gets kinda hard. Now, I add this, if you are not interested in being harmony with God than stop reading

15-19 Here's what will happen if you don't obediently listen to the Voice of God, your God, and diligently keep all the commandments and guidelines that I'm commanding you today. All these curses will come down hard on you:

God's curse in the city,

God's curse in the country;

God's curse on your basket and bread bowl;

God's curse on your children,

the crops of your land,

the young of your livestock,

the calves of your herds,

the lambs of your flocks.

God's curse in your coming in,

God's curse in your going out.

20 God will send The Curse, The Confusion, The Contrariness down on everything you try to do until you've been destroyed and there's nothing left of you—all because of your evil pursuits that led you to abandon me.
21 God will infect you with The Disease, wiping you right off the land that you're going in to possess.
22 God will set consumption and fever and rash and seizures and dehydration and blight and jaundice on you. They'll hunt you down until they kill you.
23-24 The sky over your head will become an iron roof, the ground under your feet, a slab of concrete. From out of the skies God will rain ash and dust down on you until you suffocate.
43-44 The foreigner who lives among you will climb the ladder, higher and higher, while you go deeper and deeper into the hole. He'll lend to you; you won't lend to him. He'll be the head; you'll be the tail.
45-46 All these curses are going to come on you. They're going to hunt you down and get you until there's nothing left of you because you didn't obediently listen to the Voice of God, your God, and diligently keep his commandments and guidelines that I commanded you. The curses will serve as signposts, warnings to your children ever after.
47-48 Because you didn't serve God, your God, out of the joy and goodness of your heart in the great abundance, you'll have to serve your enemies whom God will send against you. Life will be famine and drought, rags and wretchedness; then he'll put an iron yoke on your neck until he's destroyed you.

It would seem, for the follower of God there is a direct correlation between obeying and listening to God’s voice and – Joy.

We have replaced relentless pursuit of God for the relentless pursuit of happiness.

God isn’t a means to Joy – He is Joy. I think perhaps we’ve come to the belief that if we believe in God, He will give us the stuff that will make us happy. However, God Himself – His being is the source of that happiness – and we will only find true joy as we take our refuge in Him.

Deuteronomy 28 is a very hard read. We just may straight out not like it. But there it is. God doesn’t offer apologize. You see, it isn’t that God needs to be in harmony with us – but we with Him. I know we’d like it the other way around but it’s not.

Psalm 5:11 (New American Standard Bible)
11But let all who take refuge in You be glad,

Let them ever sing for joy;

And may You shelter them,

That those who love Your name may exult in You.

Psalm 16:11You will make known to me the path of life; In Your presence is fullness of joy; In Your right hand there are pleasures forever

The restoration of our joy can only be discovered in the wild abandoned and fully giving of ourselves ourselves and get ‘in tune’ with God.

Here’s what my theory is – Depression out of a sense of loss is so significant because we are looking to other things, pursuits and relationships to fill a void, meaning and purpose that only God himself can give.

The profound sense of loss is a result of my life being out of step with God. My lack of joy is that I’ve put my hope, trust and desire for happiness in the wrong things – temporal things, things effected marred themselves by sin.

Psalm 51:

6Behold, You desire truth in the innermost being,

And in the hidden part You will make me know wisdom.

7Purify me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

8Make me to hear joy and gladness,

Let the bones which You have broken rejoice.

9 )Hide Your face from my sins

And blot out all my iniquities.

10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,

And renew a steadfast spirit within me.

12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit

True lasting and healing Joy can only come when we stop ignoring the vibrations that our disharmony with God has created. We must honestly examine those areas of our lives that are ‘out of tune’ with Him.

God is, and can be the only source of true Joy – We find total and complete joy in His existence and that ‘God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:7–8).

Anyway, I was just thinking,

Neil Cudney