Joy does not simply happen to us. We have to choose joy and keep choosing it every day. —Henri J. M. Nouwen 

When I was young, I thought that following God and being a Christian would lead to a life that was kind of easy, filled only with happiness and free from pain and sorrow. Silly me. I’m not even sure where I got that idea, except maybe from teachings spouted by TV evangelists who espoused a prosperity “name it and claim it” doctrine that was popular when I first chose to follow Jesus. It tickles the ears, doesn’t it? It’s so appealing, this thought that if you are a true believer you are spared suffering and gifted only with a positive existence. 

It is also completely contrary to what the Scriptures teach. 

If Jesus was perfected through His suffering, who are we to think we won’t be perfected through the same means? (Hebrew 2:10). 

Now, don’t get me wrong, Jesus came that we might have life and life to the full (John 10:10), and it’s the joy of the Lord that is our strength (Nehemiah 8:10). It’s just that this promised joy and life come to us in the midst of the easy and the hard, the triumphs and the travails. The key, then, is to intentionally cultivate that joy in our hearts—to choose it—no matter what season we’re in, the easy or the hard. And life is hard a lot of the time. This world we live in is not Eden. We are not in heaven. Not yet. But, in the middle of this often difficult journey, God “has taken great measures to preserve our freedom of choice.” We have the freedom to choose to grow in joy or to retreat from it.

Said another way, life will inevitably be hard, and as maturing believers with our eyes set on Jesus, we will constantly be presented with opportunities to make choices that will either lead to a deeper joy or not.

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