Last time we looked at joy. Is joy in God a choice that we make, or is joy in God a feeling that just sort of comes and goes? Monday we saw that joy in God is not a choice. It's not a choice, but a God-given, spontaneous experience of the beauty, worth, and greatness of God.

That's what you said, Pastor John. Great episode. Love that response. Joy is a gift. It's a supernatural gift, a divine awakening to true beauty. And that leads to Dan's question today. Dan is in Wheaton, Illinois, and he writes this, "Pastor John, I have greatly appreciated your emphasis on joy in the Christian life.

Indeed, the psalmist tells us to rejoice always. Paul describes himself as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. As the Bible commands us to have joy in God, are we in sin to the degree that we lack joy? Or could our lack of joy sometimes be the result of sin, but not a sin in itself?" Whenever we're dealing with the emotional dimension of the Christian life, which is most of it, I think, a simple yes and no answer is seldom adequate.

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 why endless qualifications sometimes seem to be necessary. One is that words that refer to emotions are so flexible because they carry meaning, but the meaning, the name of an emotion has to correspond with your experience of the emotion because that's the nature of emotions.

And our experiences of emotions are so different, so the words, when we say them to each other, may not correspond to exactly the same thing. For example, if you've never experienced anger, and I use the word anger, it just won't carry meaning for you. Same thing would be pity, fear, guilt, lust, pride, greed, joy, admiration, hope, thankfulness, all of those, the hard words, the negative words and the positive words, they all refer to experiences that you may or may not have and that you might have very differently than someone else.

So it's hard to give simple answers regarding emotions when people's meanings for the word corresponding to their experiences are so different. And another reason that I feel like I'm always making qualifications when I give answers regarding the emotional life of the Christian is that our responses to comments about emotions are so different.

I might say something in answer to this question, and a sensitive person might feel like I'm pointing out a defect in them that sends them into a tailspin of despondency, while another person might hear the very same word and like water off a duck's back because they're not even touched by comments about their emotions at all.

And so a person who tries to answer a question about emotions has to be so discerning if you're in a situation of who's listening, and of course I have zero control over that, and I hope that people take to heart this complexity and cut me some slack. So anyway, here's the simple answer, and then endless questions.

Since the Bible commands us to rejoice always, I think it is sinful not to. There's my simple answer. Jesus commands us to rejoice even in the hardest circumstances. Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.

Rejoice and be glad. So not just when it's easy, but when it's flat out seemingly impossible, do that. And Peter commands us to rejoice, 1 Peter 4.13, rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings. And Paul commands us to rejoice, rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, rejoice, Philippians 4.4.

So I take it that Christ wants us at all times to rejoice in Him. It's a Christian duty. If we fall short of that duty, it's a sin. Now, there's my simple answer, and here come some qualifications, and these are so crucial. The Bible says, for example, weep with those who weep.

In other words, compassion, empathy for others will modify at least the way you express your joy, if not the joy itself. 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. 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.

James 4.9 says, sometimes we sin, be wretched and mourn and weep. Let your laughter be turned to mourning and your joy to gloom. Hmm. 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 that you need to repent to God and to them?

So there are times, obviously from this text, when for the sake of recovered joy, fuller joy, we put away our cheerful demeanor and really experience a broken heart over our sin. Now, my guess is if Paul were having a conversation with James about this, I don't think they would wind up disagreeing.

I don't think that ultimately contradicts Paul's command to rejoice always because at the bottom of our repenting, even in the very moment of our repenting, our repenting is owing to the fact that at the root of our being, we're totally convinced that God is all satisfying and we haven't acted like He was.

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. So that's my first qualification. Here's the second one. As soon as I say joylessness is a sin, I realize that the resistance to the command to rejoice may be unbelievably diverse.

So here's a person who hears me say, or hears Paul say, "Rejoice always." That person might say, "Who do you think you are telling me to rejoice? Get out of my face." Now that's one kind of disobedience. 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." And another person might say, "I do.

I do rejoice, but it's so weak." 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. And here's my last one, my last qualification for why the simple answer just can't be left by itself.

There are enormous differences in personality types. Eeyore, the gloomy, depressed, old gray donkey in Winnie the Pooh is a real personality. 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.

And here's the last and most important qualification of all, perhaps. It's not really a qualification, it's an encouragement. 1 Thessalonians 4 says that the Thessalonians are walking in a way that pleases God. And then he adds, "Now, do so more and more." So, they can do better. They can do more.

And yet they're pleasing God. 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. 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.

They are pleasing God. "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." 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.

I think a lot of us feel like, "If God's just pleased with me, He's just folding His arms and rolling His eyes and clucking His tongue. It's just fed up with me." That's not true. That's not the way He relates to His children. So, back to the beginning, yes, let's rejoice in the Lord always.

And again, I say rejoice. And even in our shortcomings, there is reason to rejoice. Yes. Amen. Always good reasons to rejoice. Thank you, Pastor John, for this emotionally careful and pastoral response to Dan's question. And thanks for joining us today. If you want to ask Pastor John a question, email that question to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

And as always, you can find all of our nearly 2,000 episodes in the archive at askpastorjohn.com. In the search bar this morning, I just typed in "joy," and 80 episodes popped up. So, lots of episodes to listen to if you want more on joy. Well, speaking of things that we haven't ever really talked about on the podcast, AI is the big news of 2023, artificial intelligence.

So, what's Pastor John's first take on chat GPT? What does it mean for learning about divine realities? Can bots guide us into spiritual truth? We're going to find out together next time. I'm your host, Tony Reinke, Pastor John, and I will see you on Monday. Have a great weekend.

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