Sermon on Maintaining Joy
Are you finding it difficult maintaining joy during challenging moments in life? You are not alone. However, if anyone knows how difficult it is maintaining joy during hardship, it was the Apostle Paul. Paul experienced imprisonment, persecution, accusations, shipwrecks, and eventually death all in the name of preaching Jesus. However, even in some of his darkest moments, he was able to hold on to his joy in Christ Jesus. His letter to the Philippians helps us understand how he was able to do it.
It has been said, “Don’t let anyone steal your joy.” That is good advice. Those of us in Christ have a joy that is given to us by The Spirit of the Lord and cannot be taken from us even by the evil one unless we allow him to. There are any number of reasons that our joy wavers at times. Those times come as a result of lack of faith and trust. Jesus taught His disciples that He desired His joy to be complete in them. And so He left His Spirit to complete us. This lesson identifies the stealers of joy and how to progress beyond them.
Pastor Dwight <><
Listen as Pastor Dwight continues teaching through the letter to the Philippians. In this sermon, he focuses on how to maintain joy despite the things that try to steal our joy. It is not always easy.
Notes: Sermon available for online listening until March 22nd, 2020. To view more sermons, visit our Sermon Archive.
Bulletin Message
Joy Defined
Joy isn’t like happiness which is based upon happenings or whether things are going well or not. No, joy remains even amidst the suffering. Joy is not happiness. Joy is an emotion that’s acquired by the anticipation, acquisition or even the expectation of something great or wonderful. It could be described as exhilaration, delight, sheer gladness, and can result from a great success or a very beautiful or wonderful experience like a wedding or graduation, but the definition of joy that the world holds is not nearly as amazing as biblical joy is also a gift.
A Fruit of the Spirit
Paul mentions some of the fruits of the Spirit like “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness” and many others, so joy is one of the fruits or the results of having the indwelling in the Holy Spirit. You cannot fake joy. . . you either have it or you don’t. Paul writes to the church at Thessalonica that “for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit” (1 Thess 1:6) indicating that joy is associated with God the Holy Spirit and that the “righteousness and peace and joy [is] in the Holy Spirit” (Rom 14:17) and finds its source in God as even “the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit” (Acts 13:52).
The Joy of His Disciples
Peter wrote about this as with having the knowledge of Jesus, writing “Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not see him, you beliee in him and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory” (1 Pet 1:8). Even in our trials James writes that we should “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds” (James 1:2). This helped Jesus endure the cross “who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2).
By Jack Wellman