It's quite important to know where our joy comes from. It'll help us stabilize. Ministry needs ministers with clear heads. The challenges are many and they have the tendency of wearying the soul and recreating the person of the minister even negatively.
Each of us seeks happiness and comfort. The worst that can happen to a minister is to seek happiness in the wrong things. The disappointment will be enormous. Of course, the people of the world have their ways of seeking happiness. If things don't go as they desire, they have their own ways of creating it.
Many seek happiness from substance abuse, from financial prosperity and from other external sources.
Of course, the world has recognized happiness as man's ultimate desire and has used that desire to enslave and control man. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes and the pride of life thrive by the false hope and promises of happiness they give. And day by day the cost of happiness increases as man pursue it in its elusiveness. The cost of entertainment keeps increasing yet the happiness they bring don't last. Consider how long the joy of your favourite soccer team winning their last match lasted and the cost of following the team?
Our joy is in God as children of God. That may sound simplistic. The truth however is that joy is part of the fruit of the spirit. It is a result of a spiritual reproductive process. Just as in the process of producing physical fruits. Fruits are results of a process. They aren't instantaneous, they don't come just by casual engagement with God. Our spirit and the Spirit of God must be in very close intimacy to produce the fruit of the spirit that brings joy to us.
The kingdom of God isn't in external religious rites of eating and drinking, and other activities, these can only drain us of spiritual vitality and excitement making our forms of godliness cumbersome and tiring. Rather the kingdom of God is in righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. That's where zeal, excitement and enthusiasm for the things of God come from. Ultimately, that's where joy comes from to the child of God.
Or how do we explain our being able to rejoice in tribulations and enjoying comfort in afflictions?
[My Offline Bible] Romans 5
3. And not only so, but we glory in tribulations also: knowing that tribulation worketh patience;
Or how can you be exceedingly joyful in tribulations except you are out of this world? And yes, we are!
[My Offline Bible] 2 Corinthians 7
4. Great is my boldness of speech toward you, great is my glorying of you: I am filled with comfort, I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation.
How does that make any sense? That's because our source of joy isn't in things that perish or that are transient. We are comforted by an ever bubbling joy of the Spirit of God from within.
[My Offline Bible] 2 Corinthians 1
4. Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God. 5. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.
Without this phenomenon, we can't survive the organised and the stray tribulations we are subjected to. Even the sufferings from 'Brethren' alone are excruciating enough to decimate a person but for the consolations that are in Christ that keeps us in shape against the pressures that seem to deform us spiritually and physically.
That's why we can rejoice again and again. Apostle Paul, gave the instruction to the Philippians, it wasn't a suggestion but a command: not so as to fake it or be hypocritical about it but to take advantage of a prosperous life in the spirit to keep hope alive and to be joyful beyond the circumstances and the happenings around us.
Depression is real. And it isn't that those who fall into it are weaker vessels, rather, it is the direct repercussions of the troubles and the tribulations of this life and its cares.
It isn't anything beyond being infected by paramecium that causes malaria or being infected by any other disease-causing parasite, once one is exposed to it. It is equally a result of human weakness to dealing with the troubles of his environment. But God has answers to both malaria and depression. God who made us also heals us. He has created for us a system by which we can soar above the troubles of this world and still keep our joy. A system beyond paying a fortune to a comedian or subjecting ourselves to obscenity to be able to laugh.
We have the Holy Spirit within us who engages our spirits in the time of troubles to trigger bubbles of joy within us. We are not careless but we must be carefree to permit the Spirit of God to do His work. We have to trust God with our lives knowing that He is in control, casting all our cares upon Him, because He truly cares. Learning to be content in all things and to maintain our identity in Christ Jesus either we abound or abased... We have the assurance that He will always come through for us, no matter what!
So I join apostle Paul to issue the call to you today to rejoice, and again I say rejoice...
Good morning
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