When was the last time you laughed for the sheer joy of your salvation? People are not attracted to somber doctrines. There is no persuasive power in a gloomy and morbid religion. Let the world see your joy and you won't be able to keep them away. To be filled with God is to be filled with joy.
Anonymous
There's nothing more contradictory than an unenthusiastic Christian. The Bible tells us that God loves us so much, in fact, that God gave his only son so that all who believe in him will have everlasting life. Nothing not even death can separate us from God's love! If we really believe that, we can't help but overflow with joy!
Ronald Newhouse
Daily Devotions
One of the great blessings of church, for all of its imperfections, is the gift of a genuine laughter - a laughter shared and bequeathed to us by our perfect Father. This is a laughter that we will share in even greater measure when all the sorrow is gone and every tear is wiped from our eyes. One day, like the captives many years ago said, we too will sing:
We are like those who dream. Our mouths are filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. It is said among the nations, "The LORD has done great things for them." Yes, the LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy. Psalm 126:2-3
Phillip Ware
Heartlight Magazine
A tongue filled with laughter and praise is a reflection of a heart filled to overflowing with the joy of the Lord. What a joy it is just to be with someone whose heart is full. A soothing tongue, a tongue that can say "I accept you where you are," or "I appreciate your questions" without offence or bitterness, is a secure place someone can go for help without fear of judgement, condemnation or censure
Mike Hoskins
"The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express the same delight in God which made David dance." Reflections on the Psalms
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
It is the consciousness of the threefold joy of the Lord, His joy in ransoming us, His joy in dwelling within us as our Saviour and Power for fruitbearing and His joy in possessing us, as His Bride and His delight; it is the consciousness of this joy which is our real strength. Our joy in Him may be a fluctuating thing: His joy in us knows no change.
James Hudson Taylor
James Hudson Taylor Biography
Be merry, really merry. The life of a true Christian should be a perpetual jubilee, a prelude to the festivals of eternity.
Theophane Venard
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Dancing for Joy By Murray Silberling Worship occurs in many ways. Some people worship God through good works. Others worship the Lord through prayer. Many worship the Almighty through singing songs of praise. But more and more people are worshipping God through dance. In Dancing for Joy, Silberling, one of the world's foremost experts on worship dance, uncovers fascinating facts about this biblical form of worship. This "Dancing Rabbi," as he is affectionately known in Messianic Jewish circles, brings years of experience in worship dance and teaching worship dance to this book. He offers encouragement to the klutz - the clumsy person - who doesn't think dancing is for him. He also confronts the fallacy that dancing is only for women. He demonstrates how dance has been used through the ages as a way to worship God. |
If it seems a childish thing to do, do it in remembrance that you are a child.
Frederick Buechner
Unofficial Website
Where others see but the dawn coming over the hill, I see the soul of God shouting for joy.
William Blake
Archive
Any one can sing in the sunshine. You and I should sing on when the sun has gone down, or when clouds pour out their rain, for Christ is with us.
Anonymous
Our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously - no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner - no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment.
(Clive Staples) C. S. Lewis
Into The Wardrobe
There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this it is, and there is no other.
Augustine
Works and Biography
Joy is not the absence of suffering. It is the presence of God.
Robert Schuller
Website
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Let Go: To Get Peace and Real Joy By Francois Fenelon Do you struggle through family problems, battle with the tensions of raising children, or find yourself overwhelmed with pressures on the job? Are personal failures and disappointments on the increase as you face each day? What a fountain of life it would be to discover how to let go of those distresses and learn to embrace the joy and peace that God has promised! Fenelon, with amazing insight, speaks firmly, but lovingly, to those whose lives have been an uphill climb and reveals just how to Let Go! Mass paperback. |
When you have become penetrated with the joy of God, all of your sorrows will turn into joy, all of your trials will be graces; you will recognize your faults, you will be sorry for them, and they will be forgiven so that they may become happy faults. They will remind you only of the goodness, the tenderness, the joy with which God forgives them.
Louis Evely
Joy is prayer - Joy is strength - Joy is love - Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. God loves a cheerful giver. She gives most who gives with joy. The best way to show our gratitude to God and the people is to accept everything with joy. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of the Christ risen.
Mother Teresa
Informational Website
There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love Thee for Thine own sake, whose joy Thou Thyself art. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to Thee, of Thee, for Thee; this is it, and there is no other.
Augustine
Works and Biography
A genuine revival without joy in the Lord is as impossible as spring without flowers, or day-dawn without light.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
The Spurgeon Archive
Joy, not grit, is the hallmark of holy obedience. We need to be light-hearted in what we do to avoid taking ourselves too seriously. It is a cheerful revolt against self and pride. Our work is jubilant, carefree, merry. Utter abandonment to God is done freely and with celebration. And so I urge you to enjoy this ministry of self-surrender. Don't push too hard. Hold this work lightly, joyfully. The saints throughout the ages have witnessed to this reality.... You know, of course, that they are not speaking of a silly, superficial, bubbly kind of joy like that flaunted in modern society. No, this is a deep, resonant joy that has been shaped and tempered by the fires of suffering and sorrow; joy through the cross, joy because of the cross.
Richard J. Foster
Brief Biography and List of Works
Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God's goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new-created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing, let your joyful heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.
William Law
Biography and Works I choose joy... I will invite my God to be the God of circumstance. I will refuse the temptation to be cynical... the tool of the lazy thinker. I will refuse to see people as anything less than human beings, created by God. I will refuse to see any problem as anything less than an opportunity to see God.
Max Lucado
Upwords
We may sing beforehand, even in our winter storm, in the expectation of a summer sun at the turn of the year; no created powers can mar our Lord Jesus' music, nor spill our song of joy. Let us then be glad and rejoice in the salvation of our Lord; for faith has never yet cause to have wet cheeks, and hanging-down brows, or to droop or die.
Samuel Rutherford
Selected Letters
Seek to cultivate a buoyant, joyous sense of the crowded kindnesses of God in your daily life.
Alexander MacLaren
Biography and Online Library
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He Has Made Me Glad: Enjoying God's Goodness with Reckless Abandon By Ben Patterson Scripture characterizes joy as what you experience when you are grateful for the grace that's been given to you. Joy is not simply described in the Bible; it is prescribed. Still, there's plenty going on in the world and in our own lives to make joy seem impractical, gratitude unnecessary and grace perplexing. We who have been given every reason to be joyful can nevertheless be so joyless. How can we begin to live in the joy of the Lord? With gleeful exuberance, Ben Patterson submits his compelling case for joy. His winsome stories and thoughtful reflections show how even traditional practices such as churchgoing and (gulp!) tithing can be hilariously fulfilling when lived out of gratitude for God's gracious gift. |
I cannot understand why those who have given themselves up to God and His goodness are not always cheerful, for what possible happiness can be equal to that? No accidents or imperfections which may happen ought to have power to trouble them, or to hinder their looking upward.
Francis de Sales
Biography and Works
Happiness depends on happenings; joy depends on Christ.
Anonymous
Any alleged Christianity which fails to express itself in cheerfulness, at some point, is clearly spurious. The Christian is cheerful, not because he is blind to injustice and suffering, but because he is convinced that these, in the light of the divine sovereignty, are never ultimate.
Elton Trueblood
Biography
I call the New Testament the Book of Joy. There is nowhere in the world another book that is pervaded with such a spirit of exhilaration.
Henry Ward Beecher
Archives
Happy is the person who not only sings, but feels God's eye is on the sparrow, and knows He watches over me. To be simply ensconced in God is true joy. How small a portion of our life it is that we really enjoy! In youth we are looking forward to things that are to come; in old age we are looking backward to things that are gone past; in manhood, although we appear indeed to be more occupied in things that are present, yet even that is too often absorbed in vague determinations to be vastly happy on some future day when we have time.
C. C. Colton
People are prepared for everything except for the fact that beyond the darkness of their blindness there is a great light. They are prepared to go on breaking their backs plowing the same old field until the cows come home without seeing, until they stub their toes on it, that there is a treasure buried in that field rich enough to buy Texas. They are prepared for a God who strikes hard bargains but not for a God who gives as much for an hour's work as for a day's. They are prepared for a mustard-seed kingdom of God no bigger than the eye of a newt but not for the great banyan it becomes with birds in its branches singing Mozart. They are prepared for the potluck supper at First Presbyterian but not for the marriage supper of the lamb…
Frederick Buechner
Unofficial Website
A beam of God's countenance is enough to fill the heart of a believer to overflowing. It is enough to light up the pale cheek of a dying saint with seraphic brightness, and make the heart of the lone widow sing for joy.
Robert Murray M'Cheyne
Online Information
The believer's death with Christ upon His Cross therefore means being crucified to the world in all its aspects. Not to be a miserable, joyless person, but one filled with the joy and glory of another world. It is not the "cross" that makes us miserable, but the absence of it. It is a delivering Cross - a Cross that liberates you to have the very foretaste of heaven in you, as already sharers of the power of the age to come.... Glory to God for the Cross that severs us from the world, and the world- spirit, and makes a way for us into another world where all is peace and joy and love.
Jessie Penn-Lewis
The Centrality Of The Cross
Satan loves to go to the tranquil mountain you're on, and toss your joy into the valley. Peace is the huge pillow that cushions the falling joy. The greater the peace is, the more insured we can be that our joy is less damaged.
T. J. Cox
January 29 - 30, 2008
The religion of Christ is the religion of JOY. Christ came to take away our sins, to roll off our curse, to unbind our chains, to open our prisonhouse, to cancel our debt; in a word, to give us the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. Is not this joy? Where can we find a joy so real, so deep, so pure, so lasting? There is every element of joy - deep, ecstatic, satisfying, sanctifying joy - in the gospel of Christ. The believer in Jesus is essentially a happy man. The child of God is, from necessity, a joyful man. His sins are forgiven, his soul is justified, his person is adopted, his trials are blessings, his conflicts are victories, his death is immortality, his future is a heaven of inconceivable, unthought-of, untold, and endless blessedness. With such a God, such a Saviour, and such a hope, is he not, ought he not, to be a joyful man?
Octavius Winslow
Happiness depends on happenings, but joy depends on Christ.
Anonymous
I remember once walking along the beach with a friend. We spoke intensely about our relationship, trying hard to explain ourselves to each other and to understand each other's feelings. We were so preoccupied with our mutual struggle that we didn't notice the magnificent sunset spreading a rich spectrum of colour over the foam-capped waves breaking on the wide, silent beach. Suddenly my friend exclaimed: "Look. look at the sun, look!" He put his arm around my shoulder, and together we gazed at the shimmering ball of fire vanishing gradually below the horizon of the wide ocean. At that moment, we both knew about hope and joy.
Anonymous
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