Joy To The World

A story is told of a farmhand who had worked for a married couple for several years. As time went on, the couple grew older and older and they couldn't do as much they had and the farm was beginning to look a little shabby. The paint on the barn was peeling. The fences had holes in them and slats were loose. The gravel road had potholes in it. Shingles on top of the farmhouse were beaten and weathered and needed replacing. But as the farmhand made his way to milk the cows each day, he thought: What is that to me? It's not my farm. Then, one day the farmer and his wife asked him to come for dinner. They told him how much he had meant to them. They told him that they had no children to inherit the farm, so they wanted to give it to HIM when they died. The next day, the farmhand was walking to the nursing barn, he noticed the paint on the barn. In a few days he'd painted the barn and fixed the fence, and in the next few weeks he was putting a new roof on the farmhouse and putting new gravel on the road. Why would he do that? What made the difference in his attitude? He was now an heir. And as a Son he began to treat the old farm different than he ever had before. And so it is with us. We are heirs to the Kingdom of God. And because we are heirs we have the joy of knowing that what we do, we do because of the fabulous gift of salvation our Father has given us.

Personally I find it difficult to say the word joy with a frown. Now don’t get me wrong, I can do it, but if I truly think about that word and it’s definition, I don’t know that I can keep the frown on my face. There is a commercial out right now that I have heard on the radio. It’s a commercial for a dentistry office I think. They say something like say this phrase without a smile on your face, your parents are coming over for the weekend, yay, I can hardly wait. Now say it with a smile on your face, your parents are coming over for the weekend, yay, I can hardly wait. My sarcastic nature thinks that the lady really meant it in the way she said it without the smile on her face, but the same principal applies when it comes to spreading joy. A smile makes all the difference. We should be smiling, we should be joyous, we should be full of great pleasure and happiness.

Dwight L. Moody says it well, “Happiness is caused by things that happen around me, and circumstances will mar it; but joy flows right on through trouble; joy flows on through the dark; joy flows in the night as well as in the day; joy flows all through persecution and opposition. It is an unceasing fountain bubbling up in the heart; a secret spring the world can’t see and doesn’t know anything about. The Lord gives His people perpetual joy when they walk in obedience to Him.”

I had the pleasure of experiencing the joy on the faces of those we went and sang carols to last Sunday. Their smiles of appreciation for us to take time out of our days to share His joy with them was wonderful. I heard that Mildred turned to the person sitting next to her at the nursing home and said “that’s my church group.” When we were speaking to Doris, I thought that she was going to give us a full sermon and was going to invite her to speak this week… You could feel her joy that came from His love being spread from us. On Wednesday we delivered the angel tree gifts to PELC. Mr Wallace was overwhelmed with the amount of gifts we brought in through the generosity of our congregation. We know that only comes from the love of Jesus. Now those are just a few instances of joy that I have experienced over the last week… There have been times though that I felt my joy disappear. I am nowhere near perfect and have had many instances in my life that joy was zapped from my body. I had an instance earlier this week that kept me from working on anything else until I addressed it. I had reacted in a situation that was definitely over the top and not very loving. I am not going to go into details, but as I processed through what had happened, I wasn’t able to do anything, eat anything, or focus on anything else until I had asked for forgiveness not only from God, but from the people I offended as well. Not that it was on the same level as King David, but I was directed to Psalm 51:12-13 which says, Restore to me the joy of Your salvation And sustain me with a willing spirit. Then I will teach transgressors Your ways, And sinners will be converted to You. I had lost my joy in this situation and was not a very good example as a representative for Christ. I had to admit what happened and repent.