Total Joy

This is our second look at this verse, but we certainly won’t exhaust the riches of the life-changing words Jesus spoke here. It would be an easy thing, especially having previously discussed the path to joy offered by God’s Word, to glibly tack on some advice to pray your way to joy. It would be sound advice, but you and I know that when we try to do those two things—study God’s Word and pray—every distraction possible seems to emerge to prevent us doing so. So, let’s allow that some self-discipline might be needed, but this devotional isn’t about discipline or duty, it’s about joy. If something produces joy, in this case, joy that’s “full,” surely any initial effort required to get to that joy is utterly worthwhile, and ultimately going to be seen as no effort at all.

There is a way to total joy—joy that’s full, joy that’s complete and joy that will sustain us when everything (and everyone) else is falling apart. Jesus said we have to ask, that is we have to pray, and pray in His name. That’s when God pours directly into our lives those things we’ve asked for, and I know if you’ve ever experienced God’s answers to your prayers, you know exactly the joy I’m talking about. Certainly, we need to pray according to God’s will, and pray to bring to pass those things that please and honor Him, but pray we must. Prayer that is based on relationship with Jesus and offered from a heart that is committed to putting Him first, produces—without fail—a response from the Creator of all things. And with that response, comes joy… Total joy!

One of the old Scottish “divines” by the name of John Brown wrote this: “There is a close connection between the two advices given by an apostle under the influence of the Spirit of His Master: ‘Rejoice evermore: pray without ceasing’ (1 Thessalonians 5:16, 17). The second is the means of securing the first. If we cease to pray, we are likely to cease to rejoice—we must ‘pray without ceasing’ that we may ‘rejoice evermore’: and were we, instead of being anxious, careful, and troubled about many things, to ‘be anxious about nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, make our requests known unto God, with thanksgiving’ (Philippians 4:6), assuredly the ‘peace of God, would keep our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus’; and, amid external troubles, our joy would be full.”

Prayer changes things, they say, and so it does. I’d say, prayer changes us, and offers us the opportunity to experience total joy!