What Has Happened To All Your Joy?

“What has happened to all your joy?” Galatians 4:15a (NIV)

If the devil cannot steal your joy, he cannot deprive you of anything that is yours. The target of the enemy’s fiery darts is not our material possessions but rather to rob us of that joyful confidence in the faithfulness of our Father. He hates our joy because he knows it is the source of our strength, the strength that will always ground him. The devil cannot stand the force of joy. Yet for many of us, our joy is what we often allow the enemy to steal so easily.

This is why Paul asked the Galatians here “What has happened to all  your joy?” The way I read this, it is as if they didn’t notice when their joy slipped away, and you know, that is often what happens to us. We come out of our quiet time of devotion with the Lord in the morning bubbling with joy and feeling as if we can jump over any mountain. Then as we go into the day, we allow our negative reactions to the little irritations and bigger problems that life throws at us, to erode our joy. That person who wasted our time, the other who spoke to us unkindly, and someone else who carelessly broke our equipment, the car that refused to start, and the sudden bad news we received, all crowd in to rob us of our joyful confidence in the Lord. And before we realise it we lack strength, because the joy of the Lord is gone. We need to learn the discipline of constantly casting our cares upon the Lord if we want to keep our joy.

Joy is a very important barometer for measuring where we are in our communion with the Lord. Has my joy level gone down? What happened to it? Joy should be a constant and growing experience in the life of a believer. Yet in reality it is not so for many of us. We look back to those early days of our walk with the Lord and we know things are different now. We have allowed our response to the troubles of life to erect a wall between our Heavenly Father and ourselves. We lack that joyful confidence in Him that we used to have.

If we would listen, we would hear the Lord calling us back, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest” (Mat 11:28). We can recover joy if we choose to trust him. Our ‘joy’ should not depend on our circumstances. The joy of the Lord does not depend upon our feelings but on our will. We can choose JOY. That is what Habakkuk did when he said, “Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, YET I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in God my Savior” Habakkuk 3:17 & 18 (NIV)

Habakkuk was saying, “I choose joy, I am not going to let my trouble get me down. Because I know the Lord is faithful, no matter what life might serve me, I choose joy!” You can too!