“These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”
When I was little boy, we used to sing a chorus at the Smithville Baptist Church called “Joy Down in My Heart.” It went like this: “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart, down in my heart, I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart, down in my heart to stay…” (If you have heard it, you are probably humming the tune as you read the words.) There were other verses, but it is this first verse that always comes up in my memory. One of my favorite themes as a minister has been about joy. I try to make it a theme of my daily life and not just a theme for preaching or writing. If I tried to convince you that I am joyful all of the time, you would know that I was lying. But one thing that I learned from John 15:11 that has helped me to know that though I am not always joyful, I always have joy. Jesus has placed His joy in my heart, “down in my heart to stay.” It is not always easy to explain what this means, because we confuse joy with happiness. They are not the same. A nice lady once asked me if I smiled all of the time. My answer to her was, “Heavens no. If I smiled all of the time, I would be lying a good part of the time.” If I smiled all of the time I would be happy all of the time. I am definitely not happy all of the time, and I doubt that anybody is. You see, happiness is a temporary thing. For example, your team wins the game and you are extremely happy, but the next week they lose and you are not happy. When good things happen to us, or to our children and grandchildren, we are happy, but when bad things happen we are not happy. Happiness just comes and goes, but joy we have always as a gift of Jesus. What does this eternal joy mean to us? It means that whatever we face in this life, we can rejoice in the fact that Jesus is in control. When I think of this, I think of an incident that happened when I was a little boy. We were singing the invitation hymn at a revival service at the Smithville Baptist Church. The preacher asked everybody who knew that they were saved and that they would go to heaven if they died that night to raise their hands. I looked up and my mama had raised her hand. I remember thinking, “I wonder how she knows that.” Well, I know personally now, but when mama died on September 9, 2010, I remembered that. I knew that she was a Christian and that her hope was in Jesus. Since her death, I often think of that incident and the joy of Jesus rises up in my heart. Mama is in heaven. I am not happy that she is no longer with us, but the joy of Jesus in me reminds that I will see her again in heaven. It means that when we are at the low points of life, we are not without joy. This came to me when I went through chemo-therapy in 2011 for lymphoma, and had colon surgery to remove a cancer in 2012. You know that I would be lying if I said to you that I was happy when I was skinny, undernourished, n and bald-headed at one point and in pain from surgery at another point. But I can tell you that I was fully aware of the presence of Jesus during all of this time. I don’t think that I have ever felt His love so fully and completely as I did during those times. I am not lying when I tell you that His joy came to my rescue and kept me from asking Him why, or complaining because of what I was going through, or blaming Him for letting this happen to me. Prayer came alive to me as never before, and the Bible spoke profoundly to my heart as never before. It wasn’t a happy experience, but it was an experience that brought forth the joy of Jesus that comforts me even to this day. I sincerely hope that you can sing, “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart to stay….” Bro. Joe
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AuthorDr. Joe Beauchamp is the author of this blog and website. Categories
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