Irrepressible Joy

Sometimes, joy just doesn’t make sense! It simply doesn’t make sense to the natural, logical processes of our mind to be experiencing joy when the circumstances tell us it’s time to panic, or worry, or cry, or quit. Yes, you may be surrounded by crisis, or you may be facing a great need, or grieving a great loss, but, somehow, joy continues to wash over your spirit. You haven’t lost your mind or your grip on reality, you just have that irrepressible joy, joy that knows no bounds and it won’t be dispelled no matter what the circumstances are—well, I hope that’s what you have anyway.

There’s only one source of that kind of joy. Paul gets to the heart of the matter in this part of his second letter to the Corinthians. He acknowledged that he’d been hard on them in his previous epistle, but only because he loved them and he wanted to keep them from serious error. Paul regretted it in the natural, but he didn’t really regret it because the outcome was exactly what God wanted—the people turned to God with “repentance that leads to salvation.” (2 Corinthians 7:10).

Experiencing the joy that only salvation can bring is incredible, but Paul expresses something even deeper. “But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus.” (2 Corinthians 7:6). Paul and his team were enduring “fighting without and fear within,” but Titus brought news that gave them the comfort and the joy they needed. That news was the repentance of the Corinthians—they had received Paul’s correction and turned towards God, and to “salvation without regret.”

Paul had his own salvation to rejoice about, but his joy was turbocharged over the salvation of others! He was in the midst of tremendous difficulty, but Paul knew that to focus on those difficulties rather than his mission of winning the lost was to lose the joy of giving joy to others.

As followers of Christ, we already have joy in abundance just from being His, yet there is “joy that knows no bounds” when we refuse to let difficult circumstances keep us from bringing the joy of knowing Christ to others. Do you need to experience joy today? Give it away! Irrepressible joy is found in salvation, and then sharing that salvation with everyone we can!