But Joy – industrial strength, mood-altering, life-shaping, blessing-counting, contagious Joy – is the missing ingredient we’re searching for, and we won’t find it by changing the brand of coffee at the welcome desk. So how do we find Joy?
On one level, it’s as simple as adding flour. Joy is produced in a life built around the Joy-giver:
- Listening to God; aware of God’s beauty, power, purpose, and immeasurable blessings
- Interceding for others with confidence in God’s faithful response
- Looking deeply into God’s Word to see what the Holy Spirit is revealing
- Worshiping with heart, soul, mind, voice, and posture
- Giving as an act of letting go and Joyfully sharing God’s blessing
- Welcoming others into your world through conversation and meals
- Building an accountable relationship with people you can trust
- Resting—(yes that means YOU!); setting aside the time for all of the above.
While the recipe is simple, the life-change required is not. Most of us have become quite accustomed to mediocrity. We’re settling for the “flour-less cookie” version of a life of faith thinking that’s all there really is despite Scripture telling us, over and over again, IT’S NOT! We would do well to listen to the advice of more seasoned followers of Jesus for whom these Joy-producing disciplines act like spiritual “flour”, and not just blindly follow the recipe we have thinking it is the way its supposed to be.
I have found that the long and patience-trying process of re-“Joy”-ing our individual lives and the life of our congregation begins in worship. The way we worship eventually shapes the way we live, and the way we live most certainly shapes the way we worship. This is true for every member of a worshiping community, but it is especially true for those of us who are called to lead worship. We can’t give what we don’t have. Part of our call to leadership involves taking responsibility for our own spiritual health and Joy (or lack of it) we are experiencing.
Karl Barth, a Swiss theologian in the previous century, wrote, “Joy is the simplest form of gratitude.” How much of your life are you building around the Joy-Giver?
