True Joy

 

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Sometimes our desire for true joy is sabotaged by our pursuit of selfish, foolish and temporary pleasures. True joy comes from pursuing righteousness.

Blessed or happy is the man who seeks to find joy in the right place.

"1 Blessed is the man
    who walks not in the counsel of the wicked,
nor stands in the way of sinners,
    nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
² but his delight is in the law of the Lord,
    and on his law he meditates day and night. " (Psalm 1:1-2).

To be blessed means to be filled with a true and abiding joy, a deep and grounded happiness, and to be in good favour with the Lord. Through the pursuit of what is good, what is beautiful, and what is true we can experience the kind of joy we seek in life.

The mistake many people make is looking for this joy in all the wrong places. Or even the right places, but in the wrong way. What I mean by that is if you look for joy in the things of this world, but don’t bring that under a banner of recognition that all good things come from above, then we will often find that the things of this world grow dimmer and that they don’t satisfy. However, when we recognize that all these good things are gifts from our loving heavenly father, then the joy is made more real, deep and firm.

Delight in what is good, what is from God, and true and abiding joy will be the fruit.