Quotes About Joy

Genuine love is the glad effort to make others glad in God forever. Genuine love is being willing to suffer and die to draw as many people as we can into the pursuit and enjoyment of God.

the story of Ruth . . .was written to give us encouragement and hope that all the perplexing turns in our lives are going somewhere good. They do not lead off a cliff. In all the setbacks of our lives as believers, God is plotting for our joy.

There is a kind of happiness and wonder that makes you serious. C. S. LEWIS

if you devote yourself with all your heart to the holy joy of your spouse, you will also be living for your joy and making a marriage after the image of Christ and His church.

So from the context of 1 Thessalonians 5 I say that the key to "rejoice always" is to "pray without ceasing." Lean on God all the time for the miracle of joy in your life. Never give up looking to him for help. Come to him repeatedly during the day and often. Make your default mental state a Godward longing for all that you need, especially for spiritual desires.

We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

As we grow older and our bodies weaken, we must learn from the Puritan pastor Richard Baxter (who died in 1691) to redouble our efforts to find strength from spiritual joy, not natural supplies.

The Calvary road with Jesus is not a joyless road. It is a painful one, but it is a profoundly happy one. When we choose the fleeting pleasures of comfort and security over the sacrifices and sufferings of missions and evangelism and ministry and love, we choose against joy.

Indeed, if we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.

job 14:1 man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of troubles "If that isn't your experience now it will be; its just around the corner. if this is a bright day for you, the dark day is around the corner. If this is a dark day for you , there's a brighter day is coming. the life we live here in planet earth is tribulation." sermon: Be Constant in Prayer for the Joy of Hope. December 26, 2004 @ Desiring God

Suppose you answer, "I want to be free from self and full of joy in God; I want to enjoy making much of God, not me. And I want the fullness of my joy to last forever." If you respond this way, then you will also have an answer to the fear I mentioned earlier, that you are just being used by God when he creates you for his glory. Now we see that in creating us for his glory, he is creating us for our highest joy. He is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.

Oh, what a grand design! to make our joy the echo of your excellence. To make our pleasure proof that you now hold the place of Treasure in our lives. To make the gladness of our soul the essence of our worship, and the mirror of your worth. To make yourself most glorified in us, oh God, when we are satisfied in you. How could I, Lord, have ever been to so blind to think think that being loved by you means making much of me and not yourself?

In other words, when all the supports of human life and earthly happiness are taken away, God will be our delight, our joy. This experience is humanly impossible. No ordinary person can speak in truth like this. If God alone is enough to support joy when all else is lost, it is a miracle of grace.

God uses means to awaken joy in himself

So I arrive at this definition of gratitude. Gratitude is a species of joy which arises in your heart in response to the goodwill of someone who does or tries to do you a favor.

Seeing the glory of Jesus Christ in the gospel awakens joy.

A GOOD FIGHT It will help us fight for joy if we realize why Paul calls it a good fight. First, it is a good fight because the enemy of our joy is evil. The enemy is unbelief, and the satanic forces behind it, and the sins that come from it. When you set yourself to combat the forces that try to make you delight in yourself or your accomplishments or your possessions more than in God, you oppose a very evil enemy. Therefore it is a good fight.

Always you renounce a lesser good for a greater; the opposite is what sin is. . . . The struggle to submit . . . is not a struggle to submit but a struggle to accept and with passion. I mean, possibly, with joy. Picture me with my ground teeth stalking joy—fully armed too as it's a highly dangerous quest. FLANNERY O'CONNOR The Habit of Being

Look to Jesus this Christmas. Receive the reconciliation that he bought. Don't put it on the shelf unopened. And don't open it and then make it a means to all your other pleasures. Open it and enjoy the gift. Rejoice in him. Make him your pleasure. Make him your treasure.

Sometimes what we need from the Bible is not the fulfillment of our dream, but the swallowing up of our failed dream in the all-satisfying glory of Christ. We do not always know the path of deepest joy.

God's work in us does not eliminate our work; it enables it. We work because he is the one at work in us. Therefore, the fight for joy is possible because God is fighting for us and through us.

We make a god out of whatever we find most joy in. So, find your joy in God and be done with all idolatry."-John Piper

Rejoicing without the content of Christ does not honor Christ.

There would be no obstacles to overcome. We won't fight for joy in heaven. But we are not there yet.