As we con­tinue to look at the fruit of the Spirit, today we look at the char­ac­ter­is­tic of joy.

Joy (Greek, chara; Antonym: anx­i­ety and worry)

The Greek word for joy is chara, derived from the word charis, which is derived from the word we know as ‘grace.’ This is impor­tant for it tells us cat­e­gor­i­cally that chara or joy is pro­duced by the grace of God. Put in another way, because we have expe­ri­enced God’s grace, his for­give­ness and mercy, we can now gen­uinely expe­ri­ence joy. Because we choose to grow our rela­tion­ship with God, he empow­ers us to live a joy­ful life.

Beyond this, joy then is not hap­pi­ness which is fleet­ing and often­times triv­ial. Rather this type of joy is an expres­sion within us given by the Spirit which can occur in any cir­cum­stance, but espe­cially those that are chal­leng­ing or try­ing. In these cir­cum­stances, this is when we know that we are uti­liz­ing the joy that He desires for us to have. Iron­i­cally, some­times for us to expe­ri­ence joy, we have to face some trial or dif­fi­culty, per­haps a loss of some kind, maybe we have been let down by some­one or things just haven’t gone our way. It is at these times we know that we have the fruit of joy. Joy is easy to expe­ri­ence when things are going great; it’s when life is chal­leng­ing that we have to reach within our soul to pull out gen­uine chara. When we lit­er­ally will joy into our lives in these dif­fi­cult times, it is our­selves that deter­mine how we will feel, what kind of atti­tude we will take and how we will act—-not the cir­cum­stance. Again, as it is with each of the fruit of Spirit, they are given to us by God, but in the same breath, we must take hold of them and act them out.

Some­times for us to under­stand a word, a good way is to look at its oppo­site or its antonym. As men­tioned above, the oppo­site of chara or joy is depres­sion or worry. The Bible is clear to point out that often emo­tions whether they are pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive are man­u­fac­tured and cre­ated by our own selves. As an exam­ple, if I think about a lot of depress­ing things, inevitably I will begin to feel dejected and low. Granted, any emo­tion can be beneficial—even depres­sion or anx­i­ety can be some­thing good for us to feel and expe­ri­ence. As an exam­ple, if you expe­ri­enced a sud­den loss of some kind in your life, I would expect you to be angry and depressed, and if you weren’t I would have con­cerns. Depres­sion then can be a pos­i­tive emo­tion for us to expe­ri­ence depend­ing upon the cir­cum­stance and how we let it have power over our lives. This is the impor­tant point—an emo­tion is some­thing that in most cases, we can con­trol. There­fore, no dif­fer­ent than depres­sion, joy is some­thing we can be in com­mand of and direct in our lives.

As the writer and priest Ronald Rol­heiser said, “The oppo­site of depres­sion is delight, being spon­ta­neously sur­prised by the good­ness and beauty of liv­ing.” In this state­ment, he is describ­ing an impor­tant aspect of joy—delighting in the good­ness and beauty of liv­ing. Joy is about seek­ing plea­sure in what life has to offer. Here are just a few things we can find delight in and dis­cover good­ness and beauty: a new friend­ship, a hike on an unfa­mil­iar trail, our chil­dren even on the most dif­fi­cult of days, play­ing bocce ball on a freshly cut lawn, sit­ting with a good book or movie, a favored hobby, a roman­tic evening with your loved one, wash­ing the car or clean­ing the house, a last minute excur­sion up north for the week­end, a well-made meal, even pulling weeds in your gar­den. Often in the most mun­dane things we do, we can find joy. For myself, some­times my most joy­ful moments are when I am dri­ving to work, lis­ten­ing to the morn­ing radio and plot­ting out what my day will be like. In this soli­tary space, I look around at the fields, and trees, and the peo­ple pass­ing by and find a grate­ful­ness that I am about to expe­ri­ence another day—wondering how the day will unfold. So with this, we have to seek out joy and look for it. Again, joy almost never just shows up announced. It is often an invited guest. I like what Charles Spur­geon said about this fruit of the Spirit: “The com­mand to rejoice is as undoubted a pre­cept of God as to love the Lord with all your heart. The vows of God are upon you, and they bind you to be joy­ful.” I think that sums it up.

Below are some ques­tions you can ask your­self as you attempt to apply the fruit of chara or joy to your life: How well do you “joy” in your life? How well do you counter depres­sion, fear or anx­i­ety with joy? To become more joy­ful, do you need to become less dis­con­tented or unhappy in your cir­cum­stances? Do you need to find bet­ter ways to con­trol your emo­tions which some­times leads to feel­ings like depres­sion, anx­i­ety or anger? What sit­u­a­tions are you fac­ing right now that you need to seek out joy instead of fear or dread? How do you need to ‘will’ joy in your life? How can you pur­sue delight in your life? Are there ways in which you need to change your life and find more joy­ful things to do? What do you need to do to change in your life to become more joyful?

[amazon_enhanced asin=“0385511159” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=“038549419X” /] [amazon_enhanced asin=“0385512325” /]