Jesus said, "These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full."
So far as the sacred record of the life of Christ is concerned, the only time Jesus spoke of His joy was as He was approaching Gethsemane. That seems a strange time to talk of joy. In half an hour or less, He would be praying until He was bleeding from His brow, wrestling with the weight of the sins of the world.
There can be no better guide into the experience of joy in your life than One who was so full of joy that He could speak of His joy in the approaching hour of His death!
Where did Christ’s joy come from?
How can you appropriate it in your life?
1. WALK in the presence of the Father.
On the Day of Pentecost, one of the Apostle Peter’s Old Testament quotes in his sermon came from the Messianic sixteenth Psalm. (Ps. 16:11)
"You have made known to me the ways of life; You will enrapture me [diffusing my soul with joy] with and in Your presence." (Acts 2:28, Amplified Bible)
It takes the presence of God to produce true joy.
2. WORK for permanent rewards.
Mat 25:21 - His lord said unto him, Well done, [thou] good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
Jesus believed in rewards motivation. He told us that our work now would produce joy forever.
3. WITNESS of the Good News about Jesus.
In all three parables of Luke 15, the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son, joy was evidenced when the lost were found.
4. WAIT with endurance.
The Bible teaches us to keep "looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of [our] faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God." (Hebrews 12:2)
