Down In My Heart!

It wasn’t always easy for Fanny Crosby (1820-1915) to believe that great joy could come from great trouble. You see, when Fanny was six years old, she lost her sight because of a doctor’s error and remained that way all of her life. But because she did believe in the sovereignty and purposes of God, she once said, “I have always believed that the good Lord, in His infinite mercy, by this means consecrated me to the work that I am still permitted to do.” That work? To write the lyrics for over 9,000 hymns of the church, many of which are still enjoyed today such as, “Redeemed By The Blood Of The Lamb,” Blessed Assurance,” “Praise Him! Praise Him!” and To God Be The Glory” to name just a few.*

To be honest, however, I don’t believe I’ve ever seen anyone, including myself, overly joyful when going through a trial or a testing of our faith. But God says it’s necessary to go through difficult times in order for our endurance and our faith to grow.

I think the reason that we’re not always “happy campers” when we go through trials is because we have a tendency to equate being “happy” with being “joyful.” And that’s where, I believe, we make our mistake. Being happy is certainly not wrong, but happiness is more equated with pleasure than with pain or maturity and being happy is usually very temporary.

Joy on the other hand comes with an eternal value because in the spiritual sense, joy comes as a result of God doing something in our lives that we couldn’t do (or wouldn’t) do for ourselves, to help us become better followers of Christ.

Joy is not dependent on our circumstances because we can find joy in the Lord even in the midst of suffering. In looking back, when that has happened to me, I have found that God was maturing me so that I can become a more complete person in him. I suspect He has done the same in your lives, as well.

I recently read that the command that is repeated most often in the Bible is “rejoice” (238 times), which literally means, “to have joy.” We are commanded to be joyful, not for God’s sake but for ours.

To rejoice is to recognize that we have a reason to be encouraged because God is on our side and has heartily and joyfully embraced us as His own! So we can be joyful, saints of God, because our Lord thinks we’re so special that He wants to make us even better. The writer of Hebrews reminds us of our greatest example:

“And let us run with endurance the race God has set before us. We do this by keeping our eyes on Jesus, the champion who initiates and perfects our faith. Because of the joy awaiting him, he endured the cross, disregarding its shame. Now he is seated in the place of honor beside God’s throne.” – Hebrews 12:2

One final thought on Joy from A. W. Tozer: “The Christian owes it to the world to be supernaturally joyful.” Hey, that’s us, church. – Maranatha!