The battle for our minds is super intense and we must do all we can to follow Jesus into the victory for our minds. Maintaining joy in the fray is such a valuable part of the moving forward in securing the liberty Christ has for us in our thought life.
Joy as a verb, an action we can and should choose to take. Wow, that’s really powerful. Joy is such an important, offensive weapon in the Christian’s arsenal in the battle for the mind. In my own life, I started to see joy as a defensive mechanism I could use when the enemy attacked me. Then, I began to see joy as an offensive weapon to keep the enemy at bay and to move into his territory and to chase him out. Instead of using joy as a defensive mechanism like a wall, I was beginning to see it as an offensive weapon like a tank or fighter jet. Really. God was showing me how to attack the enemy and his victims with joy to help captives be free. Then, they would do the same for others, and so on, and so on.
I hope you’ll give the following your full attention. In my own life I’ve found it to be true and it has saved me from enemy lies and traps time and time again.
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The Radical Secret Of Joy
By Messianic Rabbi Jonathan Cahn
Everyone seeks fulfillment, happiness, or joy. But how do we find a life of joy? First, we must be saved. Without salvation, there’s no real basis for a joyful life. But after that, how do we need to live as believers to find a life of joy?
In English, when we speak of joy or happiness, we are almost always centering on a “noun.” We view joy as a “thing.” And in modern culture, we see it as a commodity – something we either have or do not have. And if we do not have it, we have to get it, or somehow procure it.
Further, in order to get joy we believe we have to get something else that will allow us to have it. In order to get joy, we have to get married, or success, or a house, or a car, or a thing. We have to get joy indirectly by getting something else.
But the way of joy as given in God’s Word is radically different.
Fits, in order to live a life of joy, we have to not spend our lives pursuing it. We are to live pursuing something else – The Kingdom of God and His righteousness. And then all these other things will be added to us.
Second, we are not to find joy by seeking to acquire something else that will then give us joy – We are to get joy directly.
Third, the key doesn’t lie in joy as a thing or commodity. The key is not in relating to joy primarily as a noun – but relating to it, as it often appears in the original Hebrew of the Bible – as a verb.
In other words, if joy is simply a noun, something you have or have not, then if you don’t have it, you’re pretty much stuck. But if joy is a verb, then it doesn’t matter what you have in this world or don’t have – it’s something you do.
So the Word of God does not instruct us to have or get joy – but rather to rejoice. In fact, it tells us to rejoice always. In order to rejoice always, your joy has to be unconditional and not based on anything in this world. The only way to rejoice always is to rejoice in that which is not of this world – to rejoice in the Lord.
It is that unconditional joy by which Paul and Silas could praise and worship God in the midst of a prison cell. In fact, it was in a prison cell that Paul wrote the words “Rejoice in the Lord always!” For the child of God, joy is a choice, a choice that must be made at all times and in all circumstances. But it is a joy that overcomes the world. For the way of the Lord is the way of joy, a joy that comes not by running after it, but by choosing it in light of the unconditionally present reason of the Good News of great joy!
Choose to rejoice this month no matter what. And may God greatly bless you as you do!
“But let the righteous be glad; let them rejoice before God: yea, let them exceedingly rejoice.”
Psalm 68:3
Your brother and co-laborer in His love and service,
Jonathan
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I’ve found that the more joy I use in my thought life, the more free I’m becoming. It takes an effort to use joy in all circumstances like the Apostle Paul did, but when you get used to using it no matter what you’re going through, you begin to be really set free in Jesus. When circumstances no longer matter, you’re well on your way to being free, indeed. John 8:36
God bless,
Mark