An Introduction to Holy Joy
I have never before sat down to begin a writing project so utterly doomed to fail as my current venture–which, make no mistake, is the entry you are currently reading.
I do not say this because I am overly harsh on my work, nor am I putting on a guise of false modesty as I hope to wow you with what I privately believe to be a literary triumph (this is a blog, and literary triumphs do not exist on blogs).
The reason this project is doomed from the start is because it will ultimately fall short of meeting the goal I desperately want it to accomplish: capturing the pure, unbridled joy that God offers with open hands to the follower of Jesus Christ. To be even more specific, my goal is to capture how your Creator enables you to live a life overflowing with abundance and then equip you to, with no small degree of revelry, drink of it. And then drink more. And more. And more still, until your life is so thoroughly pulsating with uninhibited holy joy that you are a spiritual well from which others may draw in order to taste the sweetness and goodness of their Maker.
I grow more frustrated and overwhelmed as I write this. No matter how precise with my language I try to be–and in that last paragraph, I really tried–I read my writing back to myself and instantly recognize my failure!
My prose, however carefully crafted, does not adequately reflect the outpouring of joy with which God has blessed me. This means any further attempt to convey to the reader the life of joy available to them will not come close to encapsulating what I truly mean, no more than the poetically inept husband with a stunningly beautiful wife says what he means when he describes her as “good-looking.” Yes, the moniker is technically correct, but it is so monumental an understatement that it becomes more comical in its failure to accurately describe reality than it is helpful in communicating a comprehensive idea. It’s like trying to recreate the Mona Lisa with a half-empty box of half-eaten crayons.
However, despite the inevitable outcome of failure, I am going to try to describe it anyway in the series to come. The joy and abundance of the Lord has long been a topic of fixation for me–namely, the question of where it comes from and how to more fully attain it. After all, if God has offered it to us, we ought to capitalize on it.
With that gargantuan preface out of the way, I will now provide a brief overview of where this discussion will take us in the coming weeks.
In my experience, I have found there is only one pathway to maximizing my joy, and that pathway is the pursuit of holy (or “Christian”) joy, which requires its own definition. Holy joy, in my lived experience, is the personal application of this centuries-old Christian creed:
“Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever” (emphasis mine).
This statement of faith hails from the 1646 Westminster Shorter Catechism. I was first exposed to it as an eighteen-year-old student in my introductory theology course, back when I was an intern at the church which I currently serve. I was immediately struck with its simplicity and its beauty, and it in some way coincided with the deep yearning I had always felt for something more–something more joyful, more abundant. I intrinsically sensed, though I couldn’t quite put into words why, that taking this creed and living it out was the way to fill the aching longing in my heart. It’s as if Jesus, when He declared that He has come so we may “have life, and have it abundantly,” was using “abundance” to refer to the new path He had set us on, and if that was the case, then glorifying God and enjoying Him forever was the means by which we walk it.
This naturally raises the question of how one goes about glorifying, and, in turn, enjoying God, but it’s the wrong question to ask. Adhering to the catechism is not a two-step process, with step one being glorification and step two being enjoyment. It is all one action–enjoying God in and of itself glorifies Him. It then spurs the Christian on towards living a life of service and exaltation, which glorifies Him all the more and, through walking in step with the Lord’s will and utilizing one’s gifting to reflect God’s image to others, subsequently increases the believer’s enjoyment of God. This is a perpetual cycle that will have your cup overflowing, so to speak.
How, then, in more specific language, is this all accomplished? I postulate that it is found primarily in recognizing and then capitalizing on the fact that through our Creator, we have freedom. In fact, it is my central thesis that all the joy we receive from our Creator stems from the freedom He gives us.
I am not talking about freedom as we in the West–and especially we Americans–think of it. That is the freedom to exercise one’s rights without interference from other citizens or the state, or, to articulate it in the crude and dare-I-say carnal manner many have boiled this principle down to today, the freedom to do whatever one wants provided they are not infringing on the rights of another individual to do the same.
The latter is an especially stupid way to look at freedom. It robs the concept of all its utilizity–that is, its propensity to keep the “powers at be” from stopping you as you set out to raise your family, instill godly virtue within them, and otherwise be unbothered by the state as you pursue a life that honors your Maker. And not only does it rob the concept of its utility; it retains all the ugliness that can come with it. Essentially, it eradicates the pros of freedom while keeping the cons. What I mean by this is that this shallow view’s emphasis on allowing the individual to do whatever they desire, so long as it is “legal” and does not step on the toes of anyone else to pursue whatever they want, ends up creating a moral system in which the litmus test for determining the moral value of any given action is reduced to the asinine question of “Well, does it stay out of everyone else’s way and make you feel good? If yes, then have at it! If not, then of course you shouldn’t do it, you idiot! That would be unspeakably evil!”
This is the type of “free” found in the statement “it’s a free country,” typically uttered with a shrug in order to justify reprehensible behavior and often said in response to such incredulous questions as “Why would you sleep with that married woman?” or “”Do you really think you ought to have purchased that girl’s OnlyFans to watch her debase herself?” or “Is it wise to go even deeper into debt just for a pair of designer boots?” or “Why are you constantly intoxicated?”
No, this is not the freedom God gives us, nor is it the type of freedom that leads to joy in abundance. The God-given freedom from which holy joy is sourced is the freedom to, as author and political commentator Michael Knowles might put it, “forgo vice and cultivate virtue.”
Being set free is only as good as what one does with their freedom. Fortunately for us, God gives us the freedom from that which is evil and dysfunctional as well as the freedom to do that which is virtuous, a combination that, when followed and taken full advantage of, leads to long-lasting joy.
Follow the train of thought I have taken so far:
Abundant, unbridled joy, called “holy joy,” is available to every believer.
Holy joy comes from glorifying God and enjoying Him.
Glorifying and enjoying God is accomplished by taking hold of the freedom that the salvation of God has bestowed upon us.
We are not quite done with utilizing the handy bullet-point list, yet. Now, with my premise (hopefully) established, we must move on to discuss precisely how we may take hold of the freedom our Creator offers us, which poses another question in its own right: what specifically does this freedom look like?
Through much thought and study of the scriptures, I have come up with the following examples, each of which will have its own entry dedicated to systematically unpacking it. Before I present it, I must note that it would be an act of extreme hubris on my part to show it off as anything resembling a definitive walkthrough on all the ways Jesus Christ has liberated us from darkness and towards light. These are just the categories that I, in my exceedingly limited wisdom, as well as my marked inability to translate the profundity of God’s precious blessings into the written word, have, in spite of my intellectual and spiritual shortcomings, been able to pinpoint:
God gives us the freedom from:
The grip of sin
Death
Despair
Hopelessness
God gives us the freedom to:
Dream
See and experience
Disregard
Love
Be in Life-sustaining Relationship
Serve
Reveling in the holy joy of our Creator is a delightful, transformative lifelong process. As you read each ensuing entry, I pray they draw you into deeper, more intimate relationship with Him and assist you in putting life’s miseries in proper perspective.
