Get Your Joy Back

Get your joy back.What happened to all your joy? Where did it go? Who (or what) did you let steal your joy?This is the question a missionary named Paul asked a group of Christians living around Galatia:

What has happened to all your joy? (Galatians 4:15)

These people used to live with joy, but something happened to it. Their joy was lost, stolen, snuffed out, buried.What about you?What has happened to all your joy?You need to answer this diagnostic question before you can answer the remedy question: How do you get your joy back?The Galatians lost their joy because they lost a firm grip on the freedom and grace they had in Jesus. Therefore, the remedy for their joylessness was to rediscover Jesus.Get your joy back. Answer the first question, find out how you lost your joy. Then you can answer the second question and get your joy back.Your diagnosis and remedy might be the same as the Galatians.Or, it might not be. You may simply be overworked and in need of a long vacation and change of pace. Even if that's the case, getting your joy back will have everything to do with rediscovering Jesus.I'm 31 years old and have finally realized that you can't do anything well without joy. At least not for the long haul. Or, maybe it's more the case that I don't want to live life and do work without joy. If joy isn't fueling the work I do as a pastor, I will quickly burn out.A little while back I realized I'd lost my joy. I didn't like this. I wanted to get my joy back. So I did.It felt like cutting my way through a dense jungle at the time, but looking back I see the process was simple:

1. I asked, "What has happened to my joy? It took months to come to clarity on this question.2. Once I had that clarity, I asked, "How do I get my joy back?" I knew what I needed to do. It took months to feel like my old self again, to regain a sense of stable, steady joy in the Lord, but it came.

We've got work to do. We're on a mission to make disciples of all nations. It's not going to happen without joy. Joyful Christians are what this world desperately needs.

...the greatest need of the hour is a revived and joyful Church...Unhappy Christians are, to say the least, a poor recommendation for the Christian Faith; and there can be little doubt but that the exuberant joy of the early Christians was one of the most potent factors in the spread of Christianity. -Martyn Lloyd Jones (writing in 1964)

Go. Get your joy back. It's the most important thing you can do today, it's the most important thing you can do with the rest of your life.