“Don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!” –Nehemiah 8:10

So what exactly is the joy of the Lord? I’ve been struggling with this somewhat nebulous concept since we started this series last week. It seems so trite and cheesy. Almost as if it’s overuse has diminished its value or potency. But it’s a theme repeated throughout the Scriptures. There is a strong connection between our strength and the joy of the Lord. So what does it mean “the joy of the Lord”?

I’m beginning to see the joy of the Lord as being related to burden. Jesus said that his burden is easy and his yoke is light. This idea is hard to swallow sometimes. We tend to make following Jesus a difficult and unnecessarily burdensome thing. We like to measure our relationship and devotion to Jesus in terms of do’s and do not’s. And so our faith becomes a works based process that is completely sterile. Furthermore we justify and rationalize and compare our devotion to Jesus with the perception of how well others are keeping up with the game. So we degenerate into a competition of morals. “They can’t do that.” “I would never.” “They call themselves Christians.” Through these statements we make subtle agreements that our own morality is somehow superior to that of those around us. All the while we shift our focus from the freedom of God’s grace to the burden of man’s behavior.

The end result: We’re grumple pusses.

Yup. We keep mental scorecards and if you don’t measure up your out and we’ll either let you know forthrightly or through more subtle gestures like gossip, or boycotting or passive guilt. (My stomach turns.)

How can we chose the joy of the Lord over our self-centered burdens of following him?

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