Church of the Living God Bible Study
Presenter: Evangelist Sheree Tait
Date: Wednesday, December 5, 2012
Series: JOY
Scripture Reference in Context: Nehemiah 8:1-10 Focus Verse: Nehemiah 8:10
(KJV)
Today’s
Discussion: True Joy
There are
many things in this life that we find to be joyous, things that we believe make
us happy and bring joy to our lives. We’ll entitle them joy perpetrators. They
might to our family (children, spouse or significant other) and friends, our
homes, our possessions, financial success, pets, television shows, vacations,
doing things we enjoy and the list goes on and on. All of these things can be
here today and gone today. However, true joy comes only from the Lord. He is
the only constant in our lives, today, tomorrow and forever more.
What is joy? The bible defines joy in Nehemiah 8:10 as gladness. Webster defines a glad person as someone with a cheerful or happy disposition by nature, experiencing pleasure, joy or delight, full of brightness and cheerfulness. When you read these definitions and you look around the body of Christ today, you don’t see much joy. There is a great deal of sadness, depression, frustration and hopelessness, but not a whole lot of joy.
Why is this?
Again, because true joy comes ONLY from the Lord. It is not contingent upon our
circumstances, what our day looks like, how we feel, what happened yesterday or
even ten years ago. It based on a peace that passes all understanding and a
relationship with God that is so strong that even in your most difficult days,
your greatest tragedies and your saddest moments, the strength that comes from
the joy of the Lord permeates in every area of your life and the gladness
shines through for others to see and glorify God.
The
scripture gives us multiple examples of how we can have and maintain true joy.
Read the following passages:
Psalms 16:11 We
can experience true joy when we spend time in His presence
Psalms 5:11 We can experience true joy when we trust in Him and
love His name (or be in love with Him)
Isaiah 35:10 When we experience true joy, sorrow and sighing
shall flee away (God will take away every pain and sorrow we experience in
life)
Nehemiah 8:3 We can experience true joy when we are attentive to His
Word (spending time focused on reading the Word without distractions)
Nehemiah 8:6 We can experience true joy when we spend time praising
and worshiping the Lord
Nehemiah 8:9 We can experience true joy when we have hearts of
repentance (we are sorry for our sin and repent)
Nehemiah 8:10 We can experience true joy when we operate in God’s
strength no matter what!
True joy is not something that is only available for a
few. It’s not something that is out of reach or
impossible. It is something that is available to every believer if you follow the road map. God
impossible. It is something that is available to every believer if you follow the road map. God
is standing by, waiting for us to lean and depend on
Him. He is ready to fill us with His joy. He is
waiting for us to stop depending on the joy perpetrators
in our lives. Instead, He wants us to
spend time in His presence, trust Him, fall in love
with Him, be attentive to His Word, to repent
from our sins and spend time praising and worshiping
Him. When we do these things, we will
begin to experience the “true joy” that God has in
store for you. True joy will remove our hurts,
pains and sorrows and give us strength to not only endure
but also overcome every trial,
tribulation, difficult circumstance and frustration.
Then, we will be able to say what Nehemiah
said the “joy of the Lord is your strength.”
When you look at the definition of joy or gladness, do you believe you fit into that category? Are you full of brightness and cheerfulness? If not, you may not have "true joy". If not, who or what are your joy perpetrators? What areas (as described in the lesson) do you need to work on to move you toward experiencing true joy?
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