This week at my church’s midweek Bible study, we read and discussed Psalm 4. Verse 7 says, “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound.” My husband mentioned that there’s nothing that can be added to or subtracted from our lives that can give us more joy than we receive from God.

Earlier this week, I was singing a song (for the life of me, I can’t remember the name or I would tell you) that was talking about the perfect, unending joy we’ll experience when we’re with God in heaven.

Both of these incidents made me think of Psalm 16:11, “In your presence is fullness of joy, at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” 

And then my mind went to the passage I’m memorizing in Isaiah 55: “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?”

I always revert to thinking there is more joy in something besides God. It is my natural bent. This is why I need the truth of God’s Word to correct my thinking and His Spirit to bring me to a place of repentance where I realize that God’s presence + nothing = fullness of joy.
(Or, for when there’s something in my life I don’t want: God’s presence minus nothing = fullness of joy). Full joy is found in His perfect presence, plus and minus nothing. 

The joy is Jesus alone.

Full joy is found in His perfect presence, plus and minus nothing.

What would today look like if you lived in full joy? 
This is what God wants for you! It’s what he offers through his Son, Jesus Christ, and by the power of His Spirit! This joy is not something you can earn (“He who has no money, come buy and eat!” Isaiah 55:1); it’s something you receive by faith when you turn away from the things you thought would bring joy and look to the One who is the Fullness of Joy itself.

Writing for your joy in Him,
Christa