My Joy

“But your sorrow will be turned into joy.” ~John 16:20

What would it be like to experience the joy of Jesus Christ? To experience the joy of God would indeed be fulfilling, in a way that is incomparable to anything in this world. God’s joy? What is it?

Jesus during His last hours of preparing His disciples for their commission tells them, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.”1 Jesus has just told his disciples that He is leaving them to return to the Father, yet He promises joy that is greater than His physical presence with them. He tells them of the Holy Spirit, who will be their helper, who will remind them of all that He has instructed, who will give them the power to continue and carry out all that He began.2 He tells them of the importance of abiding in Him, that they can do nothing without Him—nothing without God’s Spirit dwelling within them.3 This joy is the essence of Jesus' prayer to His Father, our God in heaven, just before His arrest and crucifixion, when He says to God, "But now I come to You, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves."4

When Jesus departed from His earthly sojourn to sit at the right hand of God,5 He left us with His joy - His Holy Spirit - that "no one will take from you."6 The Joy of Jesus is a fruit of the Holy Spirit,7 available to you when you receive Jesus Christ as your Savior and risen Lord. When you accept Christ as your Redeemer, His sacrifice on the cross stands in place for the judgment of all your sins. When your receive Christ as Lord of your life, God's Spirit is planted within you—you are "baptized" with the Holy Spirit. By the power of the Holy Spirit, a transformation on the inside begins to define who you are, a child of God in the image of Christ. This baptism of the Holy Spirit is the beginning of your new life in Christ, a work that He will finish in you.8 Jesus will teach you—through your reading of God's Word in the Holy Bible—principles of godly living so that your joy may be complete. Doing God's Word is how He finishes the good work He begins in you when you accept Him as Lord of your life. Christ is the author and finisher of your faith,9 faith that is so fulfilling that "your sorrow will be turned into joy."10


Praise to Our Father for the words He has given me. ~Jeff Cambridge

Written July 5, 2004
Copyright © 2004, 2005, 2016 Stellar Rhema Ministry, Jeff Cambridge

Footnotes
All Scripture quotations unless otherwise noted are from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982, Thomas Nelson, Inc., Publishers.

Verses marked NLT are Scripture from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Verses marked NIV are Scripture from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of International Bible Society. “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark office by International Bible Society.

1. John 15:11
2. John 14:25-26, Acts 1:8, Luke 10:19
3. John 15:1-11
4. John 17:13
5. Luke 22:69
6. John 16:22
7. Galatians 5:22
8. Philippians 1:6
9. Hebrews 12:2
10. John 16:20