Joy is often confused with happiness. But while happiness is related to our circumstances, environment, and personality, happiness is concerned with what is happening, and joy is a more lasting and solid affection. Here are five steps to rediscovering joy:
The readers of Peter’s first letter were experiencing suffering. They were undergoing “trials,” and these of a “grievous” kind. And yet, they were still able to experience joy. The world tells us that joy is about what we have; the Bible tells us that joy is about who we are in Christ. The world tells us that joy is impossible when we are suffering; the Bible reveals the apostles singing in jail and the apostle Paul writing his most joyful letter (Philippians) in prison.
The readers of Peter’s first letter discovered joy because of him – that is, because of Jesus. “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him…” (1 Peter 1:8). When our eyes are focused on ourselves, we will find many reasons to be miserable. When our eyes are on him, there will always be reasons to rejoice.
Peter tells his readers that though they do not see Jesus because they believe in him, they have joy. Martin Lloyd-Jones would famously say that the trouble with Christians is that we listen to ourselves when we should be talking to ourselves. Tell yourself to trust in him. Tell yourself who he is so that you may exercise your faith and put that faith in him.
The kind of joy that Christians experience is a foretaste of heaven’s joy. It is glorified joy. Listen to how Jonathan Edwards described it, “Although the joy was unspeakable, and no words were sufficient to describe it; yet something might be said of it, and now words more fit to represent its excellency than these, that it was full of glory; or, as it is in the original, glorified joy.”
Fifth, delight in the truth that if you have faith in Jesus, you are “obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls” (1 Peter 1:9). This salvation is what the prophets searched and spoke about, and is so extraordinary and amazing that even “angels long to look” into it (1 Peter 1:12). Who could not rejoice to think that they have that which Isaiah and Ezekiel and Amos foretold and searched and inquired about, and which the very angels of heaven as it were stoop down from heaven, craning their necks, to see better!
Some people have more upbeat personalities than others. Some struggle with depression and anxiety, while others are temperamentally more inclined to happiness. Among God’s giants, there have been those who wrestled with sadness for much of their lives (Martin Luther; Charles Spurgeon). Despite the human variety of personalities and the human condition in which we all find ourselves, there is lasting joy for the journey in Christ!
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