In the 1950s, Frank Lovejoy was a popular movie and television actor. Wonder how someone decided to join those two fruit-of-the-Spirit qualities into one name. And wonder if anyone has tried it with any of the others. Is anyone on the planet named Gentlenessgoodness? Faithfulnesshumility? Probably not.
No question but the first three qualities that make up this Christlikeness–love, joy, and peace–are the best-known and best-loved of the nine. I suspect ten times as many sermons have been preached on these three than all the remaining six combined.
Joy is the flag flown from the castle of your heart to show the king is in residence.
I would have thought C. S. Lewis’ book “Surprised by Joy” dealt with his meeting Joy Davidman Gresham who became his wife. Instead, its subtitle gives it away: “The Shape of My Early Life.” The joy which took this Oxford professor of English literature so by surprise arrived when he put his faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He had built up such an army of misconceptions regarding the Christian life that when it arrived, he found it to be nothing like anything he had anticipated. He was unprepared for the joy.
“Joy,” Lewis later wrote, “is the business of Heaven.”
If it is–and who can doubt that, based on so many revelations of Scripture–then, for a believer to experience joy is to have a “foretaste of glory divine,” as the hymn puts it.
In thy presence there is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures forevermore. (Psalm 16:11)
Our Lord Jesus said, There is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents (Luke 15:10).
Do you find it strange that the one described in prophecy as “a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” (Isaiah 53:3) would devote so much attention to making sure His followers experienced joy in a full and permanent way?