At the start of 2022, I chose JOY as my word for the year. At the start of the year, I got married, moved seven hours away from my family, began a new job to support us while Aaron completed student-teaching for his degree, and applied to the masters program at Concordia Seminary.
Before the big move, I had been overwhelmed by the thought of so much change. I was faced with a lot of anxiety – I had so many moments where I had to surrender my worries to God. But I knew that the season of being a newlywed would be such a special time in my life, and I didn’t want my anxiety to stop me from feeling joy.
Since then, joy has been a theme I keep going back to. I thank God for equipping me to feel true joy through multiple changes, uncertainty, medical diagnoses, and grad school (homework stress is its own beast).
Now, I feel real joy in what I am doing, where I am, and the people I’m able to live in community with. But it didn’t happen by accident.
What is Joy?
To have joy is a beautiful thing. You can feel it. The swelling in your chest as if your heart is so full it is pushing against your body. It can’t escape that way, so the feeling travels up to your face and makes your lips break into a giant smile. Like sun-beams from your smile, joy shines out of you and touches other people too.
Joy is amazing. We know it when we see it. We know it when we feel it.
But the definition of joy is hard to pin down. Merriam-Webster defines joy first as:
“the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires.”
– Merriam-Webster Dictionary online
If joy is caused by success or good fortune or getting what you want in life, how can the Bible tell say, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2, ESV).
If we use a definition of joy according to the world’s standards, how can we be joyful if we have major depression that stops us from being able to be as successful in our career as we would like to be. Or endometriosis that causes multiple miscarriages and crushes our dreams of having a baby over and over again?
If joy is based on health, worldly success, or possessions… it doesn’t seem like many people will be able to achieve it. But that’s not what Scripture tells us. That verse in James says to “count it JOY” when these trials and disappointments come our way.
This is why we need to understand joy as a fruit of the Spirit.
Fruit of the Spirit
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
– Galatians 5:22-23, ESV
Joy is a fruit of the Spirit, the second one listed after love. They are called fruit of the Spirit because the Holy Spirit is the one who tills the ground and sows the seed. God plants love, joy, peace, and all the others, in our hearts. We really cannot do it alone.
God is the ultimate Gardener. Jesus even describes the Father AS a vinedresser – someone who cultivates grapevines. He tells his disciples, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser” (John 15:1, ESV). In other parables, Jesus uses the analogy of a vineyard owner to describe God (Mark 12:1-11, Matthew 20:1-16).
So, when Galatians says that joy is a fruit of the Spirit it’s because God plants joy in the hearts of believers.
So What Do I Do?
The garden of our heart needs to be tended. God is the ultimate Gardener, but we cannot be completely passive and expect our fruit to thrive. Without our input, our joy will shrivel up like a plant that hasn’t been watered.
After listing the fruit of the Spirit, the apostle Paul says this:
If we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
– Galatians 5:25, ESV
Friends, this is a call to action. He doesn’t say to “sit” with the Spirit. He says “keep in step” – walk! Actively work to be in line with the Spirit.
This is the active part of the fruit of the Spirit. We have to be in the gardens of our hearts. Pulling out weeds, adding fertilizer, keeping bugs at bay. And relying on God’s grace to produce the juicy, tender, beautiful fruit of joy.
It’s messy work. You might get dirt on your jeans while you’re pulling weeds. Sometimes joy is messy too. And it doesn’t look the same for anyone, just like no strawberry has the same number of seeds and no apple has exactly the same shape.
But we have the promise of Jesus to encourage us. He said,
Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing… These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
– John 15:5,11, ESV
Let’s go back to our definition of joy for a minute. Joy is an emotional response – it can include happiness, contentment, delight – that comes from knowing that we have everything thing we need, no matter what our external circumstances are. We have Jesus.
Now we can ask –
- How DO we tend our gardens to produce joy?
- What habits or practices can we incorporate into our days to cultivate joy?
- What relationships can we pursue that will help our joy to grow?
And that’s what we’ll be covering soon! I hope you enjoyed this intro into joy as a fruit of the Spirit and keep reading to talk about how we can tend our gardens to cultivate joy.
