Joy | Sermon | The Grove Church, Port St. Lucie

Why Joy Isn’t Something You Can Find

Big Idea: The joy every heart is searching for cannot be found, earned, or chosen; it is the joy of Christ, received by faith and animated in the believer by the Holy Spirit, even in the middle of sorrow.

Summary

Galatians 5:14–25 names joy as the second fruit of the Spirit, set against the works of the flesh. Preaching at The Grove Church in Port St. Lucie, Florida, David Hancock argues that joy is so hard to find because it cannot be found at all. Humanity lost the joy of Eden by grabbing for it on its own terms, and the flesh still grabs through pleasure, rivalry, and idolatry, ending in despair or war. Real joy is the joy of the Triune God, given in Christ and grown by the Spirit as fruit, so that a Christian can be sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.

Key Takeaways

Joy cannot be found, earned, or chosen; it must be received, because its only source is God Himself.
The flesh is self-reliance, and every attempt to seize joy on our own terms ends in either despair or war.
Paul calls joy fruit, not works: it grows as the believer depends on the Holy Spirit to animate the joy of Christ within.
Christian joy does not erase sorrow but lives alongside it, because its source is Christ rather than circumstances.

Read Galatians 5:14–25 (ESV)

For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.

Talk about it

1. The sermon opened with the most common answer to the question of what people want most: I just want to be happy. Think of a moment when you felt real joy, not just a good day. What made it different, and why didn’t it last?

The Joy of Eden: What Kind of Joy Were We Made For?

Most people quietly suppress their desire for joy because the search keeps coming back empty; joy slips away like water in a closed fist. Yet God made Abraham a threefold promise the Bible calls an inheritance: a land, a people, and a blessing. That promise always pointed back to the first land, the one we lost. Eden was a garden of delight that cared for us and provided for us. In it were people to delight in, friends and family gathered around a table with laughter, singing, and dancing, all resting on a love that says, I am staying. And at the center was the blessing itself: God. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit live in perfect love and joy toward one another, and to step into His presence is like being struck by a golden shaft of light. He is the source. Where He is, the land gives joy, and His people reflect His joy to one another like living mirrors. This is the joy of Eden, the joy your soul wants more than anything else.

KEY WORD: EDEN

The name Eden is connected to a Hebrew word meaning delight or pleasure; Eden was the garden of delight where God placed the first humans, providing for them and walking with them. A word from the same Hebrew root appears in Psalm 36:8–9, which says God’s people “feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.” The Bible’s story of joy begins with a river in a garden and ends, in Revelation 22, with a river flowing from the throne of God.

Talk about it

2. The sermon described joy in three parts: a land that provides, people to delight in, and God Himself at the center. Which of those three are you most counting on to make you happy right now? What happens inside you when it fails to deliver?

Thorns and Thistles: Why Is Joy So Hard to Find?

The serpent promised joy on our own terms: be your own king and god. When humanity bit the fruit, joy drained out of us like air from a vacuum. The land was lost; cherubim with a flaming sword guarded the gate, and the ground now grows thorns and thistles that provide but also cut. People made to be enjoyed now bite and devour one another (verse 15). The blessing seemed lost, God’s face hidden. In that darkness a monster appears, which Paul calls the flesh, and it lives in each of us. The flesh is self-reliance: I deserve joy, and I will get it no matter the cost. Paul’s list shows what happens when we grab. We squeeze pleasure out of thorns through sexual immorality, sensuality, and drunkenness. We turn the people we were meant to delight in into rivals through jealousy and envy, as if only one of us can have joy. We run to puny gods through idolatry and sorcery and are remade into their image; some are shaped into the image of a career, others into whatever the right people seem to want. Chase long enough and you either give up or bite harder: despair or war. You are not joyless because you have not tried hard enough. You are trying to find something that cannot be found by effort, wisdom, goodness, or skill.

THE SERMON’S ILLUSTRATION

In C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair, a girl named Jill, lost and desperately thirsty, finds a stream, but a great Lion lies beside it. He invites her to drink. She asks him to go away; he will not. She asks him to promise not to harm her; he makes no promise. She decides she will look for another stream. “There is no other stream,” says the Lion. The scene captures the dilemma of the human heart: the only water that can satisfy is guarded by One we cannot control.

Talk about it

3. Paul’s list exposes three ways the flesh grabs for joy: pleasure on its own terms, rivalry with people who seem to have what we want, and idols that remake us into their image. Which of the three is your usual reach? If you become like what you worship, what has your pursuit of happiness been shaping you into?

The Fruit of the Spirit: Where Does Real Joy Come From?

There is one stream, one river of delights. It is not found by looking within, sailing the farthest seas, or climbing the tallest mountain. It is guarded by the Lion of Judah, Christ Himself, and each person must decide what to make of Him. Paul calls joy the fruit of the Spirit. Earlier in the letter he called a barren woman to rejoice (Galatians 4:27), and she can, because joy is fruit, and by faith the Spirit makes His home inside the believer, in the womb of the soul. To walk by the Spirit and keep in step with Him is an active, ongoing, disciplined dependence on the Spirit to animate the life of Christ in you. In Christ there is enough joy to set all creation dancing, and His Spirit is in you, so when sorrow comes you do not muster up joy; you depend on Him. This joy does not make sorrow vanish; it lives alongside it. Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, and the Spirit draws His joy up from the deep places of sorrow and death into resurrection life. That is why the church is a garden: not people who found joy, but people in whom joy is growing. The kingdom has come; not Eden in full, but Eden in part.

KEY WORD: CHARA

Chara is the Greek word for joy in Galatians 5:22, the second fruit of the Spirit, and it is the only place the word appears in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. It shares a root with charis, the word for grace, and the connection fits: in the New Testament joy is not an achievement or a mood a person produces, but a gift received. Paul calls it fruit because it grows from the life of the Spirit within, the way fruit grows from a living branch rather than being fastened on from outside.

Talk about it

4. Joy is fruit, not something manufactured; it grows as the Spirit animates the joy of Christ in you. Where have you been trying to produce joy by effort, willpower, or a better attitude? What would daily dependence on the Spirit look like for you this week, in specific terms?

Sorrowful, Yet Always Rejoicing: Can You Have Joy When Life Hurts?

There are only two places to seek joy: a land that bites, devours, and consumes every hint of it, or the land who is Christ. King David sang, “The LORD is my chosen portion and my cup… in your presence there is fullness of joy” (Psalm 16:5, 11). When Jill finally knelt and drank, it was the hardest thing she had ever done and the most refreshing water she had ever tasted. Jesus offered the same to a woman searching for joy in men: living water that becomes a spring welling up to eternal life (John 4:10–14). Sorrow is real, perhaps the most terrible thorn in the world outside of death. But the Christian life is not the absence of sorrow; it is the resurrection of joy. When your soul feels barren, when your marriage lacks joy, when family breaks or people leave, when you have failed at something you gave your life to, when sin has turned to shame and shame to sorrow, the answer is the same: stop squeezing joy out of thorns and depend on the Spirit to animate the joy of Christ in you. That may heal the marriage or the family, or it may not, but joy will be in you. A day is coming when everything sad will come untrue. Until then, every Sunday and every morning in the Word and prayer, fight for joy not by self-reliance but by dependence on the Spirit.

2 CORINTHIANS 6:10

“as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.”

Paul wrote these words while describing beatings, imprisonments, and sleepless nights endured for Christ. Christian joy is not a denial of grief or a forced smile over pain. It can live alongside sorrow because its source is not circumstances but Christ, whose Spirit dwells in the believer. Sorrow is real; it is simply not final.

Talk about it

5. The sermon named five places sorrow bites: a barren season, a joyless marriage, a broken family, a failure, and the shame of sin. Which one is yours right now? What have you been depending on there for a joy it cannot give, and what would it look like to stop squeezing that thorn?

The Heart of It: What Was the Joy Set Before Jesus?

This is where you meet Him: Jesus, who “for the joy that was set before him endured the cross.” The cross was not His joy; you were. Love led Him through a wilderness of sorrow toward the day He would give you your inheritance: the land, the people, and the blessing. He became the Man of Sorrows to make you men and women of great joy. From the cross He told a dying thief, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” When He breathed His last and the land of joy who is Christ was pierced, His body became the gate back into Eden. His death secured our forgiveness, the flaming sword of the cherubim was sheathed, and He broke down the dividing wall of hostility built by all our biting and devouring (Ephesians 2:14). In the darkness of sorrow and death the golden light shone, and He rose to give the freedom to rejoice to those who have lost heart. In Him there is enough joy to set all creation laughing, singing, and dancing, and His Spirit lives in you.

HEBREWS 12:2

“looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Jesus did not endure the cross because suffering was joyful. He endured it for a joy on the other side: the redemption of His people and their homecoming to God. The One who carried sorrow all the way to death is now seated in victory, and the joy He looked toward is the joy He now shares with everyone who belongs to Him.

Talk about it

6. Hebrews 12:2 says Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him, and the sermon said plainly that the joy was you. Do you actually believe you are His joy, or does something in you resist it? How would believing it change the way you carry your heaviest sorrow this week?

Questions This Sermon Answers

Why is it so hard to find joy?

Because joy cannot be found by searching; it must be received. Humanity lost the joy of Eden by grabbing for it apart from God, and every attempt since, through pleasure, success, relationships, or approval, comes back empty. People are not joyless for lack of effort. They are trying to find something effort, wisdom, goodness, or skill cannot reach.

What does Galatians 5:22 say about joy?

Galatians 5:22 names joy as the second fruit of the Spirit, after love. Paul calls it fruit, not a work, because it is not manufactured by willpower or a better attitude. It grows in the believer as the Holy Spirit animates the life and joy of Christ within, the way fruit grows from a living branch connected to the vine.

What is the Greek word for joy in the Bible?

The main New Testament word for joy is chara, the word Paul uses in Galatians 5:22. It shares a root with charis, the Greek word for grace, which fits the way the New Testament treats joy: not as an achievement or a mood a person creates, but as a gift received from God and grown by His Spirit.

What does Eden mean in the Bible?

The name Eden is connected to a Hebrew word meaning delight or pleasure. Eden was the garden of delight where God placed the first humans, providing for them and walking with them. A word from the same root appears in Psalm 36:8, where God gives His people drink “from the river of your delights,” a picture the Bible carries all the way to Revelation 22.

Can a Christian have joy and sorrow at the same time?

Yes. Paul describes Christians as “sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” in 2 Corinthians 6:10, written while he was describing beatings and imprisonments. Christian joy is not the absence of sorrow or a forced smile over grief. It can live alongside sorrow because its source is Christ, whose Spirit lives in the believer, rather than circumstances that rise and fall.

What are the works of the flesh in Galatians 5?

Galatians 5:19–21 lists sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, and orgies. Each is a self-reliant grab for joy: squeezing pleasure out of good things on our own terms, turning people into rivals, or looking to false gods for what only God can give.

What does it mean to walk by the Spirit?

To walk by the Spirit, and to keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:16, 25), is an active, ongoing, disciplined dependence on the Holy Spirit rather than on the self. The Spirit, whose Greek name pneuma also means breath, breathes the life of Christ into the believer, so that Christ’s love and joy grow in him as fruit.

What was the joy set before Jesus in Hebrews 12:2?

Hebrews 12:2 says Jesus endured the cross “for the joy that was set before him.” The cross itself was not His joy; the joy was the redemption of His people and their homecoming to God. He became the Man of Sorrows so that His people could share His joy, and He is now seated in victory at God’s right hand.

What does “There is no other stream” mean in The Silver Chair?

In C.S. Lewis’s The Silver Chair, a thirsty girl named Jill finds a stream guarded by the Lion, Aslan, and hopes to look for another. “There is no other stream,” the Lion tells her. The line pictures the gospel claim that the only water that satisfies the human heart is found in Christ, who cannot be controlled, only trusted.

Vision for the Christian Life

The Christian life this passage envisions is a garden growing in a land of thorns: men and women who have stopped chasing joy and started receiving it. They still grieve, still fail, and still feel the bite of a broken world, yet underneath the sorrow a river is running. They gather around a table with friends and family, God among them, reflecting His light to one another like living mirrors, and the watching world glimpses the secret it has been searching for. They do not muster joy; they depend on the Spirit, Sunday after Sunday and morning after morning, and the joy of Christ grows in them as fruit. There is no other stream. Kneel down and drink.

Discussion Questions for Small Groups: Galatians 5

The sermon opened with the most common answer to the question of what people want most: I just want to be happy. Think of a moment when you felt real joy, not just a good day. What made it different, and why didn’t it last?
The sermon described joy in three parts: a land that provides, people to delight in, and God Himself at the center. Which of those three are you most counting on to make you happy right now? What happens inside you when it fails to deliver?
Paul’s list exposes three ways the flesh grabs for joy: pleasure on its own terms, rivalry with people who seem to have what we want, and idols that remake us into their image. Which of the three is your usual reach? If you become like what you worship, what has your pursuit of happiness been shaping you into?
Joy is fruit, not something manufactured; it grows as the Spirit animates the joy of Christ in you. Where have you been trying to produce joy by effort, willpower, or a better attitude? What would daily dependence on the Spirit look like for you this week, in specific terms?
The sermon named five places sorrow bites: a barren season, a joyless marriage, a broken family, a failure, and the shame of sin. Which one is yours right now? What have you been depending on there for a joy it cannot give, and what would it look like to stop squeezing that thorn?
Hebrews 12:2 says Jesus endured the cross for the joy set before Him, and the sermon said plainly that the joy was you. Do you actually believe you are His joy, or does something in you resist it? How would believing it change the way you carry your heaviest sorrow this week?

Related Messages in This Series

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Pastor David Hancock is the Lead Pastor of The Grove Church in Port St. Lucie, FL, a church where believers and skeptics wrestle honestly with faith and doubt.

Wrestling with a question this raised? You can text in your question on any Sunday and hear it answered after the sermon. Or come sit with people asking the same things. Plan Your Visit

Read the full sermon manuscript

Ask anyone what they want most in life and often they will say I just want to be happy and those I love to be happy. We want this because we recognize happiness is rare. Why is joy so hard to find? Because joy can’t be found; it must find you and grow within you. G.K. Chesterton called joy “the gigantic secret of the Christian life.” The world’s most public desire, our city’s deepest craving, is hiding in our church.

We are in our series called Christian Freedom from Paul’s letter to the Galatians, and today we find a joy that can’t be found, earned, or chosen, but must first be received.

“For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another. But I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit, and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh, for these are opposed to each other, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step with the Spirit.” (Galatians 5:14–25, ESV)

Most of us suppress our desire for joy because the search almost always comes back empty. You hold joy for a moment, and then it slips through your grip like water in a closed fist.

Yet, in a far-off land, God gave a threefold promise to a man named Abraham.

The bible calls it an inheritance. This treasure is the land, people, and blessing.

God says to Abraham, “Go to the land I will show you; I will make you into a father of many nations, and through you all the peoples of the earth will be blessed.” A land, a people, and a blessing.

The land God promised to Abraham was always pointing back to the first land, the one we lost, Eden. Eden means a delightful place.

It’s a garden of delight that cares for us and provides for us.

In paradise, there are people to delight in. A fellowship of friends and family, made to enjoy each other and gather around the table and eat of all that the land has provided. In this place is laughter, singing, and dancing.

This is a picture like I often talk of in premarital counseling. The foundation, as we saw last week, is love. A love that says, I’m staying; I’m not going anywhere. I am yours, and you are mine to the end of our days. There is a type of friendship in paradise that says the same thing.

That foundational love is what the joy of friendship stands on.

The Blessing of joy is God himself. God is a picture of joy. The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit express perfect love and joy for the others. If you step through the door into the throne room of the Triune God, it’s like being struck with a golden shaft of light that is pure eternal ecstasy, that raptures you into a heavenly bliss.

Psalm 36:8–9 says, “They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life; in your light do we see light.”

In God flows the river of delights, the fountain of life that gives the light of eternal joy.

He is the source of joy.

Where He is the land gives joy to us. It provide for us and care for us.

Where He is, His people take joy in one another. We are made in His image. We are mirrors, living breathing mirrors. And when we discover His joy, we reflect that joy to all who look at us, and they can take joy in us and us in them because we are shinning His light of joy.

The full picture is a table of friends and family around a table; God is with them as their God, and each is struck by the ecstasy, the bliss that reflects His light to each other.

This, my friends, is the joy from Eden; your soul wants more than anything else.

So what happened to it? A snake promised us, if we ate the fruit of a forbidden tree, we can have the joyful life on our own terms, with the need for God to be our only source of joy.

Joy not from God but from yourself. Be your own king and god. And when humanity bit that fruit, joy was pulled out of our hearts, minds, and souls like a vacuum. We were left empty, alone, without the joy we were made for.

The land was lost. And two angels, a.k.a. cherubim, with a flaming sword were sent to guard the gate back into paradise. That’s why joy feels so fickle. Her gates are shut. We now live in a land of thorns and thistles. It provides, but it also bites and cuts and makes us bleed.

The people do the same. Look at verse 15. The people we once enjoyed have not become the source of our sorrow and pain. We go from being made in the image of God to the image of the snake, who lures us in to bite. It often feels like those we love lure us in, bite us, and then leave us.

The blessings is lost. God seems gone; His face cannot be seen. Has the river of delights dried up? Is the light gone?

We cry out like the songwriter of the Psalms “Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me.” (Psalm 51:11, ESV)

What happens next?

In the darkness, away from the light of joy, an evil monster appears.

It loves only the self. It seeks joy but in twisted ways. It uses bites and devours anything and anyone to find the joy it seeks.

Paul calls this monster the flesh, and it lives in each of us.

The problem is bigger than the monster in you. Paul teaches that the flesh isn’t just a monster, but it’s also self-reliance.

The flesh says I can get joy; I’ll find it. I know it’s out there, and I will claim it as my own. It’s my right by choice. I deserve it and I’ll get it no matter what the cost. It’s the great desire of our hearts.

And when you try to grab joy by your own efforts, look at what happens.

We try to bite into the pleasures of paradise through sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, and drunkenness. Squeezing delights out of thorns. Taking good things and using them on your own terms to find joy in them in a twisted way.

The flesh makes people you are meant to delight in your enemy. It’s expressed as jealousy, rivalry, envy. You look at people who seem to have joy or success, and you hate them for it because they have the thing you want. Jealousy sets in; this turns into a rivalry that thinks only one of us can have joy, so I’ll take it from you.

The flesh takes the blessings that can only be found in God and tries to find joy in fake gods with idolatry and sorcery. When you can’t find God’s face, you make anything your god. You go to these puny gods to a joy only God can give. And worse, you become twisted by them, no longer made in the image of God but into the image of what you have made the god of your life. Some of you, in your chasing of happiness, have been molded into the image of your career. Some of you think if the right people love you, you will have joy, so you have been made into the image you think they want you to be.

When we chase and chase and don’t find, we either give up or bite harder.

We either give in to the monster of despair or the monster of war.

You aren’t joyless because you haven’t been trying. The problem is you are trying to find something that can’t be found by our own efforts, wisdom, goodness, or skill.

We long to drink from the streams of God’s delight, but we can’t find the water no matter what we do, so we grow frantic and pant for a water that is starting to sound like it doesn’t exist.

In the book Silverchair by CS Lewis, a girl named Jill is wandering alone in the woods and comes across a stream. It looked like it would quench her deepest thirst, and she had to have it. Then a voice spoke:

“If you’re thirsty, you may drink.” …For a second she stared here and there, wondering who had spoken. Then the voice said again, “If you are thirsty, come and drink.”…It was deeper, wilder, and stronger; a sort of heavy, golden voice. It did not make her any less frightened than she had been before, but it made her frightened in rather a different way.

“Are you not thirsty?” said the Lion. “I’m dying of thirst,” said Jill. “Then drink,” said the Lion. “May I — could I — would you mind going away while I do?” said Jill. The Lion answered this only by a look and a very low growl. …The delicious rippling noise of the stream was driving her nearly frantic. “Will you promise not to – do anything to me, if I do come?” said Jill. “I make no promise,” said the Lion. …“I daren’t come and drink,” said Jill. “Then you will die of thirst,” said the Lion. “Oh dear!” said Jill, coming another step nearer. “I suppose I must go and look for another stream then.” “There is no other stream,” said the Lion.

Paul is teaching us the same thing. There is only one stream. One river of delights. The river isn’t found in religion as we think of it. You don’t find it by looking within, traveling across the farthest seas, or climbing the tallest mountain.

The river of delights is found in one place, and it’s guarded by the lion of Judah, Christ himself, and you must decide what you make of Him. Will He consume you, and if He did would that be your end, or in a strange way, the best thing to ever happen to you?

How is it that Christ is the only source of joy?

Paul calls joy the fruit of the Spirit.

The Greek word is chara, and it’s the only place it is used in this letter.

But we do have something in our letter about joy. We’ve seen it before.

It’s in a story about a barren woman, who is called to rejoice.

Now, why would God call a barren woman to rejoice? Well, that is a whole sermon, but let me scratch the surface for a moment. Think of a barren woman. She wants her womb to be filled, but it has not yet happened. Maybe she can’t find love or can’t see fruit grow in her womb.

Yet Paul says rejoice. How can he say that when sorrow has swallowed her?

Because joy is fruit. Specifically, the fruit of the Spirit. Where is the Spirit in relation to the Christian? Inside, in the womb of their soul. By faith, the Holy Spirit makes His home in you.

With the holy Spirit in you, Paul says walk by the Spirit and keep in step with the Spirit.

This is an active, ongoing posture of habitual and disciplined dependance on the Holy Spirit to animate the life of Christ in you.

In Christ, there is enough joy to set all of creation into dancing, and the Spirit of Christ is in you. So when you are sorrowful, you do not depend on yourself to muster up joy; you depend on the Spirit, and the Spirit animates the life of Christ in you.

The Greek word for Spirit is pneuma, which means wind or breath. And animate also means to give breath to. So Christ’s joy is being animated or made alive in you by dependance on the Spirit.

No matter what’s happening in your life. The golden light of joy is in you and can grow in but a moment when you depend on the Spirit to animate the joy of Christ in you.

The church is a garden. Not of people who find joy but have joy produced in them by the work of the Holy Spirit.

Jesus says He is the vine and we are branches, without Him we can’t bear fruit. He is the only hope of the eternal true joy you seek and the Holy Spirit is the vein that runs from the root system to the branches, and when we depend on Him, He draws the joy of Christ from the deep places of sorrow and death into the resurrection of joy in our lives.

Now, what kind of joy? The Joy of the Triune God. To look upon the Trinity is to see the golden shaft of light break through the sorrow and give you a type of ecstasy or bliss that doesn’t make the sorrow go away, but lives alongside it.

That joy is in you, and its growth is activated not when you go search for it out there, but when you depend on the Spirit.

That is why the barren woman can rejoice.

The church is the place where the secret joy the world seeks is found, not in possessions, not in money, not in comfort, but in them. Hidden in plain sight. The fruit of joy grows in the Christian as produce, not something manufactured, but something that grows within.

The blessing of joy you have been looking for has found you and is growing within you.

And the land, the kingdom of God has now come. Not as Eden in full, but Eden in part. A glimmer of love and joy in a world that bites, devours, and consumes.

You can either seek joy here in a land that bites, devours, and consumes any hint of it, or you can seek it in the land who is Christ.

Christ is the land of joy, the blessing of joy, and the person of joy. King David sings, “the LORD is my chosen portion and my cup; you hold my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.” (Psalm 16:5–6, ESV)

“You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Psalm 16:11, ESV)

The Christian can have fruit among the weeds of the world. Joy in the middle of sorrow.

Stop trying to squeeze joy out of a land that only grows thorns. Depend on the Spirit to animate the joy of Christ and His kingdom in you.

It never occurred to Jill to disbelieve the Lion – no one who had seen his stern face could do that – and her mind suddenly made itself up. It was the worst thing she had ever had to do, but she went forward to the stream, knelt down, and began scooping up water in her hand. It was the coldest, most refreshing water she had ever tasted. You didn’t need to drink much of it, for it quenched your thirst at once.

In this world, Christ alone offers us eternal joy, a river of delights, through His gift of living water, the Holy Spirit.

Jesus said to an outcast who was searching for her joy in men this: ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, “Give me a drink,” you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water…whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.’”

Sorrow is real. Perhaps the most terrible thorn in this world outside of death. A type of living death. 2 cor. 6:10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.” Not the absence of sorrow but the resurrection of joy.

When we depend on the Spirit, the bite of sorrow can’t consume you.

Why? Because you have consumed the living waters of Christ and His joy, and perhaps more importantly, He has consumed you.

He has claimed you, and you are in Christ, and He is in you.

Put your faith in Him, and be consumed by joy because He is joy.

When your soul feels barren, and life isn’t going how you planned, depend on the Spirit to animate the joy of Christ in you.

When your marriage isn’t filled with love and joy, don’t depend on your marriage for the joy it doesn’t have. Depend on the Spirit to animate the joy of Christ in your marriage.

When your family is broken, when people leave, don’t depend on broken people to give you joy; depend on the Spirit to animate the joy of Christ in you. That might heal your family; it might not, but joy will be in you.

When you have failed at some endeavor you gave your life for, don’t keep going to that thing for joy; it will only give you sorrow. Depend on the Spirit to give you joy amid sorrow. Soon you may see your failure as something to learn from and grow from.

When you have sinned, and shame has turned to sorrow and sadness, depend on the Spirit to animate the life of Christ in you, and the joy of forgiveness will find you, meet you, and lift you into a joy greater than life before forgiveness because now you know just how loved you are.

And remember, there will come a day when all sorrow will pass away. When everything sad will come untrue, and all sorrow is redeemed and used to bring more joy into eternity.

Until that day don’t lose heart. Present suffering prepares you for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, when the gold shaft of light comes down from the heavens above and pierces the darkness of our world, and our Savior returns to redeem all sorrows into joy.

Until then, every Sunday, let the Spirit in you animate Christ. Every morning in the word and prayer, let the Spirit animate the life of Christ in you.

Fight for joy not by self-reliance, but by dependance on the Spirit to animate the joy of Christ in you.

That’s when you meet Him. He, who, for the joy that was set before Him, endured the cross.

The cross wasn’t His joy; you were.

Love for you led Him through the wilderness of sorrow to you, His joy.

He looked forward with joy, at the day He would give you the gift of your inheritance. The land, people, and blessing.

Jesus became the man of sorrows to make you men and women of great joy.

And from the cross He said to a thief, today you will be with me in paradise.

And when he breathed His last, when the land of joy who is Christ was pierced it was then, that inside of death; He opened the gates through His pierced body.

His body became the gates that opened up to Eden.

His death secured our forgiveness, and the flaming sword held by the Cherubim was sheathed.

He broke down the wall of Eden when He broke down the dividing walls of hostility for all the ways we bite, devour, and consume.

When you are full of sorrow, remember that in the darkness of sorrow and death, the golden shaft of light shone, and sorrow and death were defeated.

He rose from that prison of death to give freedom to rejoice to those who have lost heart.

When you face sorrow, remember: in Him there is enough joy to set all of creation into laughter, singing, and dancing, and His Spirit lives in you.