When we look around at what makes men happy, we have a pretty clear message that men have lost their joy.
Men are typically satisfied with things we do, and things we have, and people we know, and accomplishments we attain, and serving our need to look good to others, and so many other superficial things, that we do not easily identify the deeper thing that is wrong.
In fact, I have often seen men face a problem with their vehicle and have it fixed by the end of the day (or the week at the latest), and yet facing their inner deficiencies is avoided like the plague.
Why? Because admitting to the true condition of our souls would require letting someone else help us, and our sarks (flesh) are so committed to self-dependence that they will never let this happen.
What is the good news counterpart to the sark/flesh?
The help of God offered to us in the personal presence of his Holy Spirit in the lives of every man who surrenders to our Lord Jesus Christ in repentance and faith.
One of the problems with joyless men is that they create a cycle of joylessness in their homes. Because of their joylessness, their children are not saturated with the joy that would make them thrive.
On one side, this means that a joyless man hurts his wife and children with neglect because he cannot give them what a joyful man would provide. On the other side, a joyless man hurts his wife and children because he expresses anger and harshness that deeply wound their souls.[1]
The sad thing in this cycle is that joyless men will bark and harp at their children for the expressions of joylessness he sees in them while never addressing that he is the primary cause of their joyless experience. He has neglected to lead them to joy, has hammered their pursuit of joy with painful wounds, and then harangues them for relating out of their joyless souls.
Where is the hope for joyless men?
We cannot escape that our loss of joy is for one all-consuming reason, and that is that we have forsaken fellowship with God.
Yes, even men who profess faith in Jesus Christ, if their hearts are still filled with joylessness, it is because they are still detached from fellowship with God in their inner selves.
Consider this expression of praise to God:
You make known to me the path of life;in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.[2]
Two things stand out: first, that God is the source of everything that is truly joy and pleasure, and, second, that he is at work to make these things known to us.
This means that our starting place is not what we do to find joy, but what God is doing to make himself and his joy known to us. He will reveal to our hearts the whole path of life so we can walk with him both now and forever. He will constantly lead us to know his spiritual presence in the here-and-now so that we have enough taste of returning to joy that we will long for the perfection of joy that waits for us in heaven.
In the same Psalm as I just quoted above, the writer declares,
Therefore my heart is glad, and my whole being rejoices; my flesh also dwells secure.[3]
Why is it that “therefore” his heart was glad and his whole being rejoiced? What he said just before that was,
I bless the LORD who gives me counsel; in the night also my heart instructs me.I have set the LORD always before me; because he is at my right hand, I shall not be shaken.[4]
So, when he later says that it is God who makes known to him the path of life, he had seen this happen in the ways that God counselled him through his word and his Spirit. He had experiences of waking at night to his heart instructing him with the teachings God had placed there.
The morning that this all captured my attention, I actually woke up earlier than usual for a Saturday and found a verse from God’s Book wafting through my mind. It was this:
For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.[5]
In the context of this expression, God was addressing an area of conflict in the church as his children tried to determine how to handle certain questions relating to food.[6] While the apostle Paul shared what the Holy Spirit was giving him about this, he wanted to remind the church that the kingdom of God is not ultimately about what we eat or drink. In other words, the kingdom of God is not primarily about physical and material things even though there are spiritual realities that govern such things.
The focus of the kingdom is on the “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
What does this have to do with joyless men?
It gives us so much hope because it tells us that joy is a chief characteristic of our new life in Jesus Christ, and that our joy DOES NOT RELY ON OUR SELF-EFFORT![7]
The very order of God’s breathed-out words is HUGELY significant. Righteousness first, peace second, joy third.
How is it, then, that joy comes after peace, and peace comes after righteousness?
Simply put, we come to experience a return to joy when we come to experience peace with God in whom there is fullness of joy.[8]
And, we come to have peace with God when we experience the righteousness of God that is by grace through faith, not of any works of our own.[9]
A righteousness that is by faith instead of works is a stumbling block to our sarks as they always want to do everything themselves (hence the need for men to feel competent at something they then make their primary focus in life).
However, it is the most liberating thing in the world to discover that we can be righteous by faith instead of works. This releases us to grow up in faith in order that our attachment to Jesus Christ in faith would make us more like him, and constantly increase our joy.
One of the primary ways God does his work in our lives is through other believers who are gifted to help us.[10] I am quite sure that every man who would ever read this has some other man or men who either have this joy in their lives already and would gladly share it (likely they have been waiting for other men to participate like that), or they would love to meet with other joyless men to return to joy together.
At the same time, I present this sharing to you today in the hope that it fills you with hope. The fact that God put it on my heart to consider these issues of joy, and then to share them with you, means he is at work within and among the body of Christ for our mutual joy. There is something he is doing in this to invite you to know him as your source of joy and then to bless others with the joy we experience in Christ.
In fact, right after Jesus gave his disciples the imagery that he is the vine and we are the branches, he declared, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”[11]
This means that, if men will abide in Jesus as the vine in whom there is fullness of joy, his joy will fill us up as the sap of the vine flows through the branches, and our own joy will also be filled to the full.
Sounds like Jesus returning men to joy, does it not?
When we experience this kind of abiding in Jesus that returns us to joy, we also bear much fruit in the lives of others, meaning that our joyfulness will nurture and encourage the joy of others around us.
Since everything we need for righteousness, peace and joy are found in Christ through the abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, we know that we will experience what God offers us as we turn the attention of our faith away from our sarks and all the self-dependence that has ruined us, to “fixing our eyes on Jesus” as described in God’s Book.[12]
The bottom line is that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and peace.[13] The kingdom of God is about “righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.”[14] So we simply seek to be filled with the Holy Spirit for the building up of our joy.
And, ladies, this is all true for you as well. It would just do wonders to churches if men would lead the way in joy.
© 2018 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517, Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted, Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version. ESV® Text Edition: 2016. Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.)
[1] This can be applied to other family and friend relationships as well.
[2] Psalm 16:11
[3] Psalm 16:9
[4] Psalm 16:7-8
[5] Romans 14:17
[6] Romans 14:1-23
[7] Note: capitals are for emphasis, not anger!
[8] Romans 5:1 with Psalm 16:11
[9] Paul makes this issue of a righteousness that is by faith instead of works a major theme of Romans (ex: Romans 1:16-17; 3:21-26; 4:1-22; 9:30; 10:6). Ephesians 2:8-9 is a clear expression of the way this righteousness is experienced by grace through faith and not of works of any kind.
[10] I Corinthians 12 shows how spiritual gifts work together for the good of the body of Christ, and Ephesians 4:1-16 also shows the working together of each part of the body to build up all the rest.
[11] John 15:11 (context of John 15:1-11, or John 15:1-27).
[12] Hebrews 12:1-3 leads us in this focus, but every reference to setting our minds on the Spirit, setting our minds on things above, letting the word of Christ dwell in us richly, and being filled with the Holy Spirit (), all say the same thing, that we must turn all the attention of our faith on our Savior in order to experience his joy by faith.
[13] Along with the whole expression of the fruit of the Spirit as described in Galatians 5:22-23
[14] Romans 14:17
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