Light the Joy candle
Sing: Joy to the World
This week, my son Everett has helped me write this sermon. Who remembers what the last two Sunday’s words were? The first week of Advent we light the Hope candle, then the 2nd we light the Peace candle, this week’s candle is called the Joy candle.
We’ve learned that hope that has matured is faith, and faith leads to peace. Do hope and peace lead to joy? Yes, because as we read last week in Romans 15:13 (NIV) May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. All three words are found in that one verse. As we hope in the Lord, He fills us with peace and joy.
I started thinking about the word joy and I wondered if there was an acronym that could fit. I don’t know if anyone has thought of this before or not but this is what came to mind.
J: Jesus
O: others
Y: you
If you put this in reverse order you get: Yoj. That isn’t even a word, so we definitely shouldn’t do that!
The first letter of Joy is J for Jesus. We should place Him first above all things. Matthew 6:33 says, “But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” In context, we find that Jesus is talking about worry. The rest of that section says, “If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith? 31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ 32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”
It is difficult to be joyful if we are worried. If we set our eyes on Jesus and put Him first, then we can give Him our worries and He will fill us with peace and joy. Joy follows obedience. When we follow Him, our obedience fills Jesus with joy and then as Nehemiah 8:9-11 says, “the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
When we follow Jesus, we will find that the things He has us do, the tasks He gives us, the calling He places on our lives, those things will become things of joy to us if we surrender to Him and follow His leading. At first, sometimes the things He asks us to do might seem like a burden to us and we may not want to do what He asks. But if we trust Him, in the end, we will see that following Him ultimately leads to joy. I didn’t think I would like homeschooling when I first imagined it many years ago. But now I can’t imagine not homeschooling! It has become a source of joy. Jesus says, in Matthew 11:28-30, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”
When we put Him first and follow His plan, we will find that things that seemed burdensome at first will turn out to be a blessing if we surrender to His plan.
The second letter of Joy is O for others. If we’ve placed Jesus first, then it is possible to place others second, above ourselves. When thinking about an example, I immediately thought of a passage in Wendell Berry’s story, Pray without Ceasing. He is writing about the moment when the main character’s grandmother learned that her husband had died. He wrote:
“I knew what it was then,” my grandmother said. “Oh, I felt it go all over me before I knew it in my mind. I just wanted to crawl away. But I had your mother to think about. You always have somebody to think about, and it’s a blessing. (p. 38)”
If we have someone else to think about, then we have to be strong to take care of that other person. If it’s just ourselves, then it’s harder to be strong. We can get stuck inside of ourselves and be so focused on how we feel that we can’t do anything else. We get paralysis of analysis. We can get so fixated on our problems that we can’t see anything but those problems. In those situations we aren’t fixing our eyes on Jesus. If we put Jesus first, we can put others second and then we won’t get stuck with our eyes on ourselves. We can avoid paralysis of analysis. It doesn’t mean that we are ignoring the problem, it means that we are looking to God to help us keep a correct perspective. It means that we are looking at problems through His lens. We are looking at problems through eyes of faith.
It also feels really good to put others before ourselves. My experience has been that whenever I put someone else’s needs before myself, I am filled with joy. It feels good!
The third letter of Joy is y for you.
As Matthew 6:33 NLT says, “Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.”
If we are following the Lord, He will give us all that we need. We don’t need to worry about ourselves. Jesus will take care of us.
When Ava was born, people loved to give me advice and someone told me, “Parenting is like flying in an airplane. Be sure to put on your mask first, then you can take care of your child.” I disagree. That is good advice in an airplane emergency, but parenting is not like flying. I kept reading parenting books and they all said the same thing: be sure to have “me time”. The more “me time” I tried to get, the more unhappy I became. Those books were essentially telling me to be selfish. I abandoned their advice and instead looked to Jesus. He showed me that if I surrendered to being a mommy and put Ava before myself, then He would take care of me. I tried that out and found that I was filled with joy. And the amazing thing was, as I did that, He brought times of rest and creative outlets for me and suddenly I didn’t feel burdened or that I was missing out on anything. I had so much more by letting go of worrying about me.
When we look to Jesus to take care of us, we can have hope (faith) in His provision, we can have peace in every situation, and when we do that we will find that He fills us with joy beyond comparison.
John 15: 9-12 states:
9 “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love. 10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you.
If we love Jesus and keep His commands, then we will be able to love others with His love and then He will fill us with His joy.
Joy: Jesus, others, you. Our joy will be found as we put Jesus first, others second, and then ourselves.
Sing: Let there be Peace
Prayer: Lord help us to always put You first and follow Your word above all else, help us to love each other as You have loved us so that our joy may be complete.
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