The Joy of the Lord- What is the Joy- MONDAY

How many statements or vignettes have you heard about the word joy?  I could give you a few such as, "Happiness is manmade, but joy is God made," or"Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain."  How about the cute little song, "The Joy of the Lord is My Strength?"   I remember several years ago before we had the booming sound systems that every church has now days, the creative worship leader asked us to take out our keys and shake them while singing that song.  Ever done that?  The only way I can describe it is "cute" or maybe "childish," for we all laughed and had fun with it.  But here is the problem with the concept of the song, along with the other thoughts.  We get the wrong message to sing it like this or to think of it this way.  Read the scripture above and put it in context so I can make my point.

Look carefully above and note that it is God's joy that is our strength, not our joy giving us strength.  Now before you slap me around like I stole your sucker or took away your keys, hear me out, for it is important for you if you wish to have God's strength living in your life.  To begin with we have to understand the nature of the problem and why we incorrectly make the biblical concept of joy about our self, rather than God.  The problem is, we are human and as a result inherently selfish.  Our world generally revolves around our wants and needs or the needs and wants of our loved ones.  We wake each morning with the personal objective to fill our needs with whatever makes us "joyful."  Little wonder we love the thought that God's waking moment with us is to give us the joy we want, and this is when we begin to look incorrectly at the King of the Universe as our butler, or errand boy.  Got the picture?  The King of Kings being summoned to give us joy?  Really?  Do you think this is all He is to you, a source of wealth, prosperity, security, significance and joy?  Now don't get me wrong.  God's grace to you may include all of those things.  But it just might be that you have none of it because you may have the wrong motivation in what you are seeking by the way you are seeking it?  This week I want to turn our focus toward the real source of joy and indirectly how it comes to God's child.  Yes!  God wants us to have joy.  He wants us to have His joy.  But it is to share in His joy, for when God delights in us, He shares his joy abundantly with us.  He is generous.  He is elaborate in His generosity and we cheat our self when we scramble under His table to look for His crumbs to sustain us rather than sit at the meal He has invited us to.

When I was a kid, in big family gatherings we had the "big table" and the "little table."  When I grew up I knew that I was recognized as becoming a man when I was invited from the little table where I had been with the smaller children, to join the adults at the big table.  This is when I began to eat like an adult and feed my increased appetite.  In the same way, God's family needs to move to the "big table" where the feast is.  When we are picking up only the crumbs because our motivation is to seek our own joy instead of making our mission to bring joy to our Father, we cheat our self by starving our self of what we want.  When we change our pursuit from what we get from God to what we give to God, we begin to find out what was missing in our life.  Guess what it is?  It is Joy!  This week we are going for the feast boys.  So hang on.