Is My Lack of Joy Sinful?
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00:00:05.000 | Dan in Wheaton, Illinois writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, I have greatly appreciated your emphasis on joy in the Christian life.
00:00:12.000 | Indeed, the psalmist tells us to rejoice always. Paul describes himself as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
00:00:20.000 | Since the Bible commands us to have joy in God, are we in sin to the degree that we lack joy?
00:00:27.000 | Or could our lack of joy sometimes be the result of sin, but not a sin in itself?"
00:00:33.000 | Whenever we're dealing with the emotional dimension of the Christian life, which is most of it, I think,
00:00:43.000 | a simple yes and no answer is seldom adequate.
00:00:48.000 | And I was thinking about why this is, and it might be helpful for me to just think out loud with Dan for a minute.
00:00:55.000 | Why endless qualifications sometimes seem to be necessary.
00:01:00.000 | One is that words that refer to emotions are so flexible because they carry meaning,
00:01:09.000 | but the meaning, the name of an emotion has to correspond with your experience of the emotion,
00:01:17.000 | because that's the nature of emotions, and our experiences of emotions are so different.
00:01:23.000 | So the words, when we say them to each other, may not correspond to exactly the same thing.
00:01:29.000 | For example, if you've never experienced anger, and I use the word anger, it just won't carry meaning for you.
00:01:37.000 | Same thing would be pity, fear, guilt, lust, pride, greed, joy, admiration, hope, thankfulness.
00:01:46.000 | All of those, the hard words, the negative words, and the positive words,
00:01:50.000 | they all refer to experiences that you may or may not have, and that you might have very differently than someone else.
00:01:58.000 | So it's hard to give simple answers regarding emotions when people's meanings for the word corresponding to their experiences are so different.
00:02:10.000 | And another reason that I feel like I'm always making qualifications when I give answers regarding the emotional life of the Christian
00:02:21.000 | is that our responses to comments about emotions are so different.
00:02:28.000 | I might say something in answer to this question,
00:02:31.000 | and a sensitive person might feel like I'm pointing out a defect in them that sends them into a tailspin of despondency,
00:02:41.000 | while another person might hear the very same word and it's like water off a duck's back
00:02:46.000 | because they're not even touched by comments about their emotions at all.
00:02:51.000 | And so a person who tries to answer a question about emotions has to be so discerning.
00:02:59.000 | If you're in a situation of who's listening, and of course I have zero control over that,
00:03:05.000 | and I hope that people take to heart this complexity and cut me some slack.
00:03:11.000 | So anyway, here's the simple answer, and then endless qualifications.
00:03:15.000 | Since the Bible commands us to rejoice always, I think it is sinful not to.
00:03:22.000 | There's my simple answer.
00:03:23.000 | Jesus commands us to rejoice even in the hardest circumstances.
00:03:28.000 | "Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.
00:03:34.000 | Rejoice and be glad."
00:03:36.000 | So not just when it's easy, but when it's flat-out seemingly impossible, do that.
00:03:43.000 | And Peter commands us to rejoice, 1 Peter 4:13, "Rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings."
00:03:49.000 | And Paul commands us to rejoice, "Rejoice in the Lord always."
00:03:53.000 | And again I say, "Rejoice," Philippians 4:4.
00:03:57.000 | So I take it that Christ wants us at all times to rejoice in him.
00:04:05.000 | It's a Christian duty.
00:04:06.000 | If we fall short of that duty, it's a sin.
00:04:08.000 | Now, there's my simple answer, and here come some qualifications, and these are so crucial.
00:04:14.000 | The Bible says, for example, "Weep with those who weep."
00:04:19.000 | In other words, compassion, empathy for others will modify at least the way you express your joy, if not the joy itself.
00:04:31.000 | There may be joy beneath your tears when you're weeping with those who weep, but you don't sing chipper songs to the grieving saint.
00:04:38.000 | And James 4, I just saw this for the first time in getting ready for this question, and it was very helpful for me to think about.
00:04:46.000 | James 4:9 says, "Sometimes we sin, be wretched, and mourn and weep.
00:04:54.000 | Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom."
00:05:02.000 | Hmm.
00:05:03.000 | So what becomes of rejoicing at all times when you let your joy turn into gloom because you've been such a rat towards your employees
00:05:13.000 | that you need to repent to God and to them?
00:05:17.000 | So there are times, obviously, from this text, when for the sake of recovered joy, fuller joy,
00:05:26.000 | we put away our cheerful demeanor and really experience a broken heart over our sin.
00:05:35.000 | Now, my guess is if Paul were having a conversation with James about this, I don't think they would wind up disagreeing.
00:05:42.000 | I don't think that ultimately contradicts Paul's command to rejoice always because at the bottom of our repenting,
00:05:52.000 | even in the very moment of our repenting, our repenting is owing to the fact that at the root of our being,
00:06:00.000 | we're totally convinced that God is all-satisfying, and we haven't acted like He was.
00:06:05.000 | And so there's this seed of joy in God that's even giving rise to my brokenheartedness that I haven't experienced it to the full the way I should.
00:06:16.000 | So that's my first qualification.
00:06:18.000 | Here's the second one.
00:06:20.000 | As soon as I say joylessness is a sin, I realize that the resistance to the command to rejoice may be unbelievably diverse.
00:06:31.000 | So here's a person who hears me say or hears Paul say rejoice always.
00:06:35.000 | That person might say, "Who do you think you are telling me to rejoice? Get out of my face."
00:06:40.000 | Now, that's one kind of disobedience.
00:06:42.000 | Here's another one. A person may say, "I want to. I really want to, but I can't feel anything right now but the want to."
00:06:51.000 | And another person might say, "I do. I do rejoice, but it's so weak."
00:06:57.000 | Now, all those three people I think are falling short of rejoice always, and again I say rejoice, but what a difference between the kinds of falling short.
00:07:10.000 | And here's my last one, my last qualification for why the simple answer just can't be left by itself.
00:07:17.000 | There are enormous differences in personality types.
00:07:21.000 | Eeyore, the gloomy, depressed, old, gray donkey in Winnie the Pooh, is a real personality.
00:07:30.000 | And Puddlegum in the Chronicles of Narnia is a real personality type, and their experiences of joy are going to look so different from someone else's, especially on Sunday morning during worship.
00:07:46.000 | And here's the last and most important qualification of all, perhaps. It's not really a qualification, it's an encouragement.
00:07:54.000 | 1 Thessalonians 4, 1 says that the Thessalonians are walking in a way that pleases God.
00:08:05.000 | And then he adds, "Now, do so more and more."
00:08:10.000 | So, they can do better. They can do more. And yet, they're pleasing God.
00:08:15.000 | In fact, Tony, I noticed in the whole batch of questions you just sent me, lots of people struggling with what looks to me like a kind of perfectionism and obsessiveness.
00:08:24.000 | This text here addresses every one of those questions, I think, because it gives us a paradigm to know we can please God while not being as good as we should be.
00:08:37.000 | Isn't that what that means? They are pleasing God.
00:08:39.000 | "Now, do so more. Please Him more. Go on more. There's more that you can do. There are more things about the way you're living that could become more fully pleasing to God."
00:08:51.000 | Which means—and here's the massive encouragement—God has a huge capacity for sorting out the good fruit of our lives from the failings of our lives and finding delight in the good while being displeased with the bad and all the while never holding His children in contempt.
00:09:18.000 | I think a lot of us feel like, "If God's displeased with me, He's just folding His arms and rolling His eyes and clucking His tongue. It's just fed up with me."
00:09:25.000 | That's not true. That's not the way He relates to His children.
00:09:29.000 | So, back to the beginning, yes, let's rejoice in the Lord always.
00:09:34.000 | And again, I say rejoice, and even in our shortcomings, there is reason to rejoice.
00:09:43.000 | Yes, and amen. Thank you for that encouragement, Pastor John.
00:09:46.000 | And thank you, Dan, for the question.
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00:10:30.000 | Well, we do not want to become, in the words of John Piper, "domesticated, comfort-seeking, entertainment-addicted, prosperity-loving, security-craving, approval-desiring Christians."
00:10:42.000 | No.
00:10:44.000 | And tomorrow, Pastor John will explain why and how not to become that.
00:10:48.000 | I'm your host, Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the podcast.
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