Considerations: God Returns His Children To Joy

For a while I have been learning how the main aim of caring for children is to return them to joy. We change them, feed them, clean them up, put them to bed, care for them, and even discipline them, because we want them to have as much real joy in their lives as is possible.

This morning this all clicked for me in the way that God is constantly working to return us to joy. The grand work of redemption is to lift us out of the joyless lives that are ours because of sin, and back into the “fullness of joy” that is in God’s presence (Psalm 16:11). As Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full” (John 15:11).

It simply encouraged my heart to think of how important it is to my heavenly Father to return me to joy. He will put me through the furnace of affliction for a season, not to keep me from joy, but to purify my heart so that my joy-capacity becomes more like him.

I give thanks to Jesus Christ that he wants me to have his joy in me, and my joy to be full.