The Fight For Joy
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INTRODUCTION
If you were to have asked me in seminary, what would be the most offensive topic I would ever have to preach on, I may have said abortion, transgenderism, or something of that ilk. I would have been shocked, however, to discover that one of the most difficult topics I would ever be called to preach on was joy. Something so central to the Christian life, but something so few of us seem to have. And what I have found out over the last few years, is if you simply declare what the Bible says about it, it leaves many questioning their faith and wondering if they are even a Christian.
What I would like to do in this article is address this head on. I would like to begin by demonstrating why being offended by the Bible is so necessary and how we cannot allow joylessness to become an acceptable sin. And then, I want to show from Psalm 42 how David teaches us to fight for joy, which has been one of the more important lessons in my life.
So with that, let us begin.
THE NEED FOR OFFENSE
Everyone who claims to be a Christian will be and very well should be offended on a regular basis by the Word of God. This is, in fact, how we grow. This is how we mature. Even if we do not like it.
And while we hate being offended personally, we must remember that before we knew Christ, we spent every waking moment offending a holy God. Even now, in our new creation status, we still return to our sin like a dog to the vomit. We give ourselves over to things that we have no business being owned by. So with that, I think it is high time that His Word began offending us, especially the parts of our life that are still at odds with Him.
Let me frame it this way: The question is not IF the Word will offend our sinful nature, it is merely a question of when and how we will respond when it does. Will we respond with humility and repentance turning to God for our sanctification? Or will we respond with anger and apathy, excusing those parts of the Word that chafe against our sin, excusing them as if they do not really apply to us?
Which gets at the heart of the matter. From my experience, Reformed Christians, who have been shaped by the good old doctrines of the Reformation, no longer balk at the obvious sins. They are no longer distressed when the Bible calls sodomy an abomination that is punishable by death or abortion as a captial crime. They know full well how disgusting and abhorrent those sins are. But, what I have found to be equally true, is how easily reformed, serious, and theologically astute Christians will dismiss the little things like joy.
Joy, as is clearly stated in the Bible, is a fruit of the Spirit (Gal. 5:22). That means it is not a mere suggestion of the Spirit, it is not good advice from the Spirit when it makes sense in our circumstance, it is a Spirit wrought certainty for all those who are indwelled by Him. It is a staple of the regenerate man. It is as natural to the Christian as apples are to an apple tree, but even more so. And when we choose to live our lives in ongoing bitterness, anger, depression, and anxiety, we are not only choosing second best, we are choosing sin. Perhaps a sin that is more palatable to the reformed religious conscience, but no less offensive to His holiness.
A joyless Christian is a contradiction in terms.
This means we must repent of our joylessness. It also means we must fight for our joyfulness. We must, as God-elected, Christ-bought, Spirit-indwelled believers, be growing, over the course of a lifetime, in our height, depth, and breadth of joy! We are called to have joy in all circumstances (Phil 4:4), especially in trials and tribulations (Ja 1:2-4), because we know that this joy produces an eternal reward (1 Pet. 1:8-9). A reward that grumbling, complaining, sadness, and depression cannot earn (Prov 17:22).
Think about it in regards to the Trinity. The Father is the most joyful being imaginable and He is the one who made us in His joyful image. That means we have been made to be like Him by having joy! Think of the Son. The Son is our all-joyful savior who had joy even while enduring the shame of the wretched cross (Heb 12:2)! And since we are called to imitate Him, we must imitate His joy, even when this awful world wields its ugly worst. Think of the Spirit, who promised to produce joy in us until Christ returned. He was not lying about this, was He? He was not confused about His plans, was He? He is not too impotent to accomplish this is He?
ACCEPTABLE SINS
The simple, unavoidable, and often inconvenient truth is that Christians were made to have joy. There are no acceptable sins that allow us a pass to sit in our negativity. We are not allowed to indulge our grumblings or feed our despair. The same Lord who calls the murderer to repent is the same Lord who admonishes the curmudgeon to lay down their anger and the complainer to give up their grievances. The same Lord who abhors child sacrifice is the same Lord who commands His children not to sit in their sorrows.
The question is not: “What does the Bible say about joy?” It is plain and obvious what it says about it. The real question is whether or not we will believe it? Will we orient our life around it? Will we repent when our life is out of alignment with that vision? Will we search the Scriptures for help in doing it? And will we employ what Scripture says as an act of repentance. These are the right and proper questions that we should be asking and these are the questions this post will be addressing.
Essentially, if we had to boil this all down into a single question, it would be: How can we have joy, even in miserable and awful circumstances? We know the Bible commands it. Now, how do we do it? The remainder of this post is going to look at some tools, so that if we follow these three steps, that are laid out by David in Psalm 42:1-5, then we will have an everlasting and never-fading joy!
Let us look at the setting David is in when he writes these words
THE SETTING OF DEPRESSION
The Psalmist begins with vivid imagery describing his depressed state. It is clear that he is not in a happy place. He is not in a joyful state. He is ridden with misery. Crumbling under the weight of the pain that he is feeling. Listen to what he says:
“As the deer pants for the water brooks, So my soul pants for You, O God.”
David is comparing himself to a deer in mortal anguish. A beast so deprived of water, that it can no longer keep from panting. Hours have gone by while it searched for water. Panic has now set in. So that this creature cannot help using essential energy in labored, frantic, breathing. This is what David compares himself to in his anxiety. This deer.
And we should ask: why is he so anxious? Why is he in despair? What has frustrated his soul to the point of tremors? Is it the stock market or economy? Is it the lines at the grocery store? Is it a condescending spouse, an unruly child, or a discontented spirit? Certainly not! He is anxious because his God felt distant from him! And that thought brought him grave distressing.
He tells us that his soul is thirsting after God, his body is longing to be in the sanctuary of God (v.2), and his only food has been the tears he cried in the presence of the wicked who hate his God (v. 3). David wants more than anything to leave the filthiness of this world, the pain, the misery, the heartache, and all the drama to be in the presence of the Lord. What a wonderful thing to be exasperated for, in comparison to the base things that so easily make us anxious.
But David does not accept this, even this, as a holy kind of anxiety. If ever there were a sanctified sort of sadness this would be it. If glorified gloom could be a thing, wouldn’t this qualify? If there ever was an anxiety that the Lord would overlook, surely this would be the one!
Yet, David sees right through it, for what it really is, and will not allow it to fester within His soul for an instance. And we should not allow it either. All despair, all anxiety, all abiding sadness is a refusal to hope in God. There is nothing redeemable about it. Nothing allowable about it. It is a sin standing alongside the other sins. And David puts forward a three-fold strategy for how to combat it, beginning with questioning yourself.
STRATEGY 1: QUESTION YOURSELF
David does not assume that he is thinking clearly in his depressed condition. He doubts himself. He doubts the kinds of ways he is speaking to himself. He doubts the damaging self-talk that got him in this depressed condition and will keep him in this wretched state.
He does not assume there is any inherent righteousness in his spiritualized belly-aching and proceeds immediately to interrogate himself instead of excusing himself. He puts himself on the witness stand. He grabs hold of himself, silences himself, and begins to take control of the line of questioning.
As Martin Lloyd Jones once famously said about this very passage:
“Have you realized that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?”
Up until verse 4, David’s was the one who was listening to his flesh instead of speaking to it. His flesh, his inner self, was the one crying out in agony and bellowing in beleaguered beguilement. And it was not until verse 5 that David understood the problem was actually him! He was the issue! He figured out the secret, which is that he should not be listening to himself any longer. His flesh was doing a lot of the talking, but none of it was producing any good. And if he were going to have any relief from his sad condition, it would have to come from him speaking instead of listening. The same is true for us today.
Our minds are our own worst enemies. Our self-talk is more polluted than a toxic waste dump. The internal chatterbox that constantly tears you down, mocks you, casts judgment on you, and speaks all manner of evil against you, is the problem! You were not made to be held captive to the ravings of a madman, any more than you were made to take counsel from a discontented soul. You are the one that needs to start doing the talking. The listening time must be over!
This is what David understood. He figured out that the first step toward having joy was to take his sinful self in hand and to start asking the questions.
He said to himself:
Why are you in despair, O my soul? And why have you become disturbed within me?
He immediately recognizes the paralyzing effects that sitting down sinful self-talk will have upon the soul. So, he begins questioning that fruitless enterprise. He pipes up to shut the whole thing down so that he could control the narrative moving forward. He says: “Why are you in despair, my soul?” Because he knows despair is antithetical to God. He tells himself: “What right do you have to become disturbed, my soul?” because David knows sitting in your disturbances is inviting perpetual pain.
David finally sees how damaging it is to listen to yourself. and sit in your emotions No one who does this will ever be free. Everyone who does this will be shackled in anxiety and fear. The only antidote is to stand up, grab the sword, and regain the narrative, which leads to our second step.
STRATEGY 2: COMMAND YOURSELF WITH THE PROMISES OF GOD
David not only silences the inner flesh monster with strong aggressive questioning, he also commands his flesh with the promises of God. He commands his soul, saying:
Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence.
David realized that it is not enough to question yourself, you must also command yourself. You must order yourself toward hope. You must dictate the terms to your obstinate and rebellious flesh and force it toward praise. You must challenge your flesh. Fight your flesh. Take an active role in defeating your flesh. Knowing that your joy will return!
Notice that David does not wait for his joy to come back before he gets to work… He begins preemptively with a surgical strike against his sin nature, charging up the hill of doubt, laying joys flag defiantly in the sullen sand.
He knows the promises of God. He knows that he will soon praise the Lord! He knows that God’s Spirit will not delay in giving him the aid of His presence. He knows that the spiritual desert will not last, so long as he takes charge of his sinful flesh and commands it back toward the Lord.
Knowing this, it could be that we remain joyless for far longer than we ever need, simply because we are listening to ourselves instead of talking to ourselves. We are letting ourselves dictate the terms and we far too easily fall under our own spell and surrender into doubt, sadness, discontent, and unhappiness. Could it be that if we would fight ourselves, question ourselves, and command ourselves that we would hope in God like David, who experienced the joy of true repentance?
This is often not immediate, but takes the final step, which is to wait.
STRATEGY 3: ABANDON YOURSELF AND WAIT ON GOD
Once David realized that he could not trust himself, and needed to combat himself with truth (vv 6-10), the battle was almost over. The only thing left for David to do was to keep on fighting himself until the Lord came through. His goal was to abandon all hope that he could find hope within himself, and to ferociously fight against his error prone ways until the God of hope felt near to him again.
Far from sitting in his sin, settling into worry, making excuses for his mood, or pretending that grumbling is normal, David attacked his sin. He attacked it until it finally relented and his joy returned, which is the secret to joy.
Joy is not a magical feeling that just happens with no effort, it is a devoted kind of hope in God that is won through struggle. If we are not willing to fight our flesh, kill our sin, and wrestle vocal control out of the hands of our inner man, then we will have no joy.
What we will have is an inner critic, an inner judge, an inner comiserator, an inner doubter, an inner fault finder, an inner liar, and an inner cynic that keep us bloviating about our grievances instead of finding all of God’s graces.
Joy can be had in this life! Joy can be had in the most toxic, bitter, and painful circumstances. The question we need to ask ourselves is this: are we willing to do what it takes to have it? Will we overlook joylessness as an acceptable sin? Or will we run to the cross of Christ, ask for forgiveness, lay that sin down and leave without it, make war if it will not die easily, and wait for the joy of the Lord to fill our hearts in Christ?
I pray that you will fight for joy!
