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*The Fruit of the Spirit **—** Joy!*
{{@Cue Let's pray}}
“Cultivate the root and God will bring the fruit”, this is the theme of the series that we’re working through entitled “Sweet – Cultivating a Fruitful Life”.
We started this series with /“22//But the fruit of the //Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, //23//gentleness and self-control.
Against //such things there is no law.//”
/(Gal 5:22-23 NIV).
Today, we’re going to continue this series with a look at the characteristic of the fruit of the Spirit that is joy.
Let’s take a quick look at the definition of joy.
I think that this definition will provide some clarity to the struggle we have for joy.
Joy is defined by Merriam-Webster’s dictionary as “*1 a: *the emotion evoked by well-being, success, or good fortune or by the prospect of possessing what one desires”.
Understanding one’s desire is the key to this definition.
We are conditioned by television, radio, the workplace, and with our friends to work toward our own selfish desires.
Let me give you an example of this selfish desire.
When I was a kid, I traveled a fair bit.
My travel was usually confined to a car, but if I were real lucky I’d be able to travel in an RV or cap-over-camper.
There is one trip I can’t forget.
Well, I could forget it if my family would let me.
This trip was with my aunt, uncle, and three cousins.
They came and picked me up from my house in Arizona to take me back to their place in Northern California.
The excitement began to build as my uncle was packing the camper with all of our stuff.
Since the cab of the truck could only hold two, or three if you were lucky, us kids got to ride in the back.
Now, with kids in the back there wasn’t a bunch of room inside for all the luggage.
No problem, my uncle quickly remedied the problem by tying all the luggage to the top with high quality rope purchased at K-Mart.
The twentysome-odd hour trip started with a bang and all was smooth sailing until we got to Los Angeles.
As you might imagine all that luggage bouncing around for that many hours could really take a toll on that high quality rope.
Sure enough, as we were passing through LA, the luggage started to fall off the trailer and bounce down the freeway.
I’m here to testify to the strength of Samsonite luggage.
As it turned out, I was the only one to see the luggage fall off.
Naturally, I did the smart and practical thing and started to ball my fool head off!
It must have been miles (or so it seemed) before anyone in the camper with me could recognize that the only word I could utter was ‘luggage’.
Finally, they ciphered my hysteria and got the truck pulled around so that we could go gather what might be left of the luggage.
When we finally arrived where the luggage had fallen off, only a single suitcase was left.
Great!
It wasn’t mine.
At this moment, there was no joy in Bradville!
I no longer possessed what I desired.
This realization consumed me.
It consumed me so much that I had forgotten I was on vacation.
I had forgotten that I was actually on my way to Disneyland as a stop on the way to Northern California.
My joy had turned to sorrow and I was consumed by it.
I had lost control of my stuff and felt helpless, scared, and I lost those things that were closest to me at the moment.
You see, I think we’ve all been victims of tying our baggage to the top of our camper with cheap rope.
We hope that this rope will maintain control in our lives and we’ll arrive at our destination still in possession of those things we desire.
In fact, our world is set up to focus on those things we desire.
We
desire success rather than significance.
We desire power to control what isn’t ours to control.
We desire to be loved so much that we’ll give up moral ground to achieve it.
This continuous desire to satisfy our urges and attain joy causes us to give up our freedom.
We try to satisfy these urges in very unhealthy ways.
We take away the pain that we feel through alcohol and drugs.
We substitute real love for satisfaction of physical desire.
We get caught in the moment and we’re not able to see the big picture.
Let me give you a few examples.
As parents, we often times get caught in the moment of the kids not fulfilling our desires that we blow our top without remembering the joy we felt the day they were born.
As kids, we often got angry at our parents for the rules around the house without realizing that the rules are often times for our own safety.
As husband and wife, we get so angry with our spouses over not having our own desire met that we forget the joy of the wedding.
We find ourselves strapping our desires to the top of the camper with flimsy rope and when it breaks; we’ve either got a mess to clean up or nothing at all.
Let me ask you; is this God’s will in your life?
What is God’s will in your life in these and other circumstances?
Let’s take a quick look at some scripture to see.
We’ll be looking at 1 Thessalonians 5:12-18.
However, before we dig into the scripture I’d like to provide a backdrop.
This letter to the church in Thessalonica was written by Paul as an encouragement and urging to stay strong in their faith.
The local community was diverse in culture and economic status with a population of about 200,000 – not unlike French Valley.
Others had painted an unflattering and untrue picture of Paul and his faithfulness.
These attacks called into question the validity of their leadership and really tugged at the resolve of the congregation.
In the conclusion of this letter Paul provides the leaders of the church some final instructions.
{{@Cue Please stand for the reading of scripture.}}Paul
writes /“12//Now we ask you, brothers, to respect those who work hard //among you, who are over you in the Lord and who admonish you.
//13//Hold them in the highest regard in love because of their work.
Live in peace with each other.
//14//And we urge you, brothers, warn those who are idle, encourage the timid, help the weak, be patient with everyone.
//15//Make sure that nobody pays back wrong for wrong, but always try to be kind to each other and to everyone else./
/16//Be joyful always; //17//pray continually; //18//give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in //Christ Jesus.//”/
Here Paul describes for us what God’s will is in our lives for all circumstances.
God’s will for our lives is to stop chasing our own desires and surrender the lordship of our lives to Christ.
Through this surrender, we’ll have the proper perspective on desire.
Our desire will be aligned with the desire of God and we’ll be able to have joy.
God wants for us to have a true understanding for what has been provided to us through Christ that we’ll well up with joy, thanks, and prayer.
This surrender bears the fruit of the Spirit.
This is cultivating the root so that God can bring the fruit.
We have a great example of this type of joy in the life of David.
I’d like to take you through a couple days of David’s life to show you how our proper perspective of our desires produces joy.
We’ll be reading the sixth chapter of 2 Samuel.
Before we read, I’d like to talk for a brief moment about the scene we’re going to look at.
We’re going to read about David bringing the
ark back to Jerusalem.
The ark had previously been captured by the Philistines during a war with Israel.
The ark brought the Philistines lots of pain and sorrow through plagues and other calamities delivered by God.
In an attempt to stop these horrible events, the Philistines put the ark on a cart and sent it back to Israel and left it in a field.
It eventually ended up at the house of a man named Abinadab.
Abinadab had three sons, two of which we’ll read about in the story and the third was the one that was asked to care for it.
This scene picks up with David’s desire to rekindle his kingdom’s relationship with God.
Before reading the text, I’d like to visit David’s role a little bit so that we can really appreciate the complications in his life.
We must remember that he was anointed king as the youngest son in his family.
I suspect there was a lot of love there from his brothers.
In addition, David’s life was full of potential distractions.
After all, David had 5 Wives, 2 Brothers, 2 Sisters, 17 Sons, and had a 24~/7 job as a king.
I’m not sure how he does it, but with my minor brood of 2 kids I have a tough time being joyful on the way to the grocery store.
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