Sermon On The Distinction Of Joy & Happiness

Adela Rogers St. Johns, a female American journalist and novelist once remarked: “Joy seems to me a step beyond happiness - happiness is a sort of atmosphere you can live in sometimes when you're lucky. Joy is a light that fills you with hope and faith and love." John 15:11 reminds us: “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

Joy is defined in the dictionary as a feeling of great pleasure and exultation, whereas happiness is regarded as a state of elation or cheerfulness. Happiness may also be deemed as a veritable position of well-being characterized by positive emotions, contentment, and satisfaction. While the two are generally interpreted as indistinguishable and interchangeable, they do seemingly retain differing complexities. Joy is believed by some as the deeper, more lasting feeling of well-being that comes from within, while happiness is typically a more fleeting temporary emotion often linked to external circumstances or events. For others, the obverse may be considered true. Whatever one’s thoughts, however, both with their joint imposing merit, could be seen as the invitational spirit and light of God.

The light of God is regarded as a deeper source of joy, hope and ethereal illumination. It resembles the vital bodily organs and air that combine to sustain life. It is one of God’s personal treasures that can eradicate all inner darkness, so often prevalent within mortal beings, replacing it with a permanent spiritual glow of peace, hope and well-being that evokes its own individualistic elements of joy. It can be considered as the derivation of life itself. A prospective search for joy may seem a daunting task, because joy can never be found by itself, it is a gift from God that is cultivated through various mindful practices that establish the true value of life. It is considered a fruit from the Holy Spirit that enters the heart of man with its own distinct beauty and worth. It quantifies encouragement and strength which leads to an appreciation and understanding of the world in general. It may be deemed as the essential food of the Holy Spirit that combines all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. If we sin, we effectively die from the blessings and fruits of God, as the wages of sin is death. However, redemption can always be sought and obtained through repentance.

Colossians 2:1-23 reminds us: “For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God's mystery, which is Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ.”

Therefore, as you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving. See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ. For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily, and you have been filled in him, who is the head of all rule and authority. In him also you were circumcised with a circumcision made without hands, by putting off the body of the flesh, by the circumcision of Christ, having been buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead.

And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him. Therefore let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink, or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ. Let no one disqualify you, insisting on asceticism and worship of angels, going on in detail about visions, puffed up without reason by his sensuous mind, and not holding fast to the Head, from whom the whole body, nourished and knit together through its joints and ligaments, grows with a growth that is from God.