Abundant Joy - Part 1

Abundant Joy - Part 1

As we inch closer and closer to Christmas, it’s traditional in many churches to celebrate Advent. Although I don’t serve in a traditional church, I’ve always appreciated the idea of Advent. It gives us a chance to slow our lives down and contemplate some things that are bigger than ourselves. Those things are the great Christian ideas of hope, joy, peace and love.

Last week, I wrote a lot about hope. This week, even though it’s a bit out of order, let’s focus on joy. I once heard someone say, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” I think that’s pretty wise but I’d go a step further. I’d say that it’s sin that robs us of all of those great themes of our faith. If you want to live a fulfilled life, to be all the man or woman that God created you to be, you need to understand sin and what it does to us.

That means seeing our sin for what it really is. It is the stuff that robs us of our hope, steals our joy, diminishes our peace and teaches us to hate instead of love. It separates us from God who is the source of those things and it is the mortal enemy of the Christian walk.

How do we keep sin from robbing us of those things? It helps to acknowledge that sin starts with a rejection of God’s Word as our foundation and authority.

When we look to the world instead of God’s Word, when we pursue our own will instead of God’s will, when we desire relevance over holiness, or image over substance, we will experience hope, peace, joy and love only in a superficial sense. We will experience them but we won’t really have them.

So, let’s look specifically at joy. Over the next couple of days we’ll learn how to experience joy in the way God wants us to have it: abundantly.

John 10:10

“… I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.”