Always Be Joyful…Really?

“Always be joyful.”
1 Thessalonians 5:16 (NLT)

I recently attended a wonderful conference in the Tennessee mountains full of powerful worship, compelling speakers, and sweet time with friends. As I perused the merch store looking for a memento of the weekend, a T-shirt caught my eye. I saw “always be” in white, scripted letters above the word “JOYFUL” typed out in large alternating letters of pink, yellow, and teal. Plus, the “O” served as a smiley face. Perfect! I made my purchase, enjoyed the remainder of the conference, then headed home to resume normal life with the resolve to always be joyful.

However, by the end of the month, I struggled to put that T-shirt on. My sister-in-law was in the ICU fighting for her life. My brother woke up every day on a roller coaster, uncertain whether the day was going up or down. Children were without their mom.

Always be joyful? Joyful in this God…really? It just didn’t seem right to walk around with a smiley face on my shirt with my family’s world in crisis.

Well, the man who instructed us to “always be joyful”, the apostle Paul, endured a slew of crisis moments. He experienced multiple imprisonments, near death beatings, stoning, shipwrecks, dangerous conditions, hard work, sleepless nights, hunger, and anxiety for those he loved. (2 Corinthians 11:23-28)

Joy is not the logical human reaction in hardship so there must be more than meets the eye for a man with these circumstances to remain joyful.

Indeed, there is. Paul’s joy, and the Christian’s joy, is grounded in the person of Jesus and the Holy Spirit dwelling within us.

Jesus experienced more suffering than any of us will ever know. In addition to physical suffering, he experienced the full wrath of God in taking the penalty for the entire world’s sins. Though his circumstances were excruciating, “the joy set before him,” of rescuing sinners and restoring the relationship between Holy God and fallen humanity, propelled him through the crisis to future glory. (Hebrews 12:2, emphasis added)

In this, Jesus exemplified that joy and suffering are not mutually exclusive.

We can hold both. In fact, we must hold both.

You see, joy is not a Pollyanna denial of difficulty and pain. We can feel sorrow and grieve the realities of living in a broken, sin-filled world.

Yet, we can still rejoice because joy is a gospel-rooted denial of suffering having the final word. We have inner hope and confidence that this is not the end of the story.

That inner hope is cultivated in us as we remain in relationship with Jesus through trust, prayer, and obedience. His joy is transferred to us as we stay connected with him and his Spirit bears the fruit of joy within us. (John 15:1-11, Galatians 5:22)

Christ’s joy is our joy. That was the key to Paul’s perpetual joy. This is the key to ours.

As I’ve processed this truth, I realize that walking around with “always be joyful” sprawled across my T-shirt does not make light of a difficult situation. It shines light on a difficult situation.