Beloved Friend,
Last week we talked about despair and how Goliath’s real weapon was never actually his spear. It was his voice. The daily loudness of it. The way he wore the Israelites down before any physical battle even began. This week I want to stay close to that same territory but talk about something specific that I know is under serious attack right now.
Your joy.
Not the kind that depends on things going well. That one is unreliable and honestly not very useful in a season like this. I mean the joy of the Lord, the kind Nehemiah was talking about when he said it is your strength. That one. The one that does not need your circumstances to cooperate before it shows up.
Now I want to be honest with you first. I am not about to tell you to smile through suffering or perform happiness while the world is genuinely heavy. That is not what this is. The Psalms alone should settle that debate. Scripture is full of people bringing God their most unfiltered, unpolished grief and God not once asking them to tidy it up before entering. So when I say guard your joy, I am not asking you to pretend.
I am asking you to notice that something is trying to take it.
Quietly, and consistently. The weight of the news. The exhaustion of caring about things that seem to never resolve. The grief of watching suffering that feels too heavy and too close all at once. None of that is imaginary, and none of it is neutral either, because Proverbs 17:22 says a broken spirit dries the bones. That is not poetry for its own sake. That is a description of what prolonged joylessness actually does to a person from the inside out.
Joy is medicine. Which means losing it is not just sad, it is costly.
This is why Jesus in John 15 said He spoke certain things to His disciples specifically so that His joy would remain in them and their joy would be full. Full joy. Not managed or surviving joy, not joy that hangs on by a thread. Full. He considered it important enough to pray over. Then in John 16 He said, in the world you will have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. He did not pretend the trouble was not real. He just refused to let the trouble have the final word.
Be of good cheer, sitting right next to in the world you will have tribulation. That is the paradox we are all living inside.
The enemy knows that a believer who has lost their joy is easier to exhaust, easier to confuse, and honestly easier to silence. Joy gives stamina. It gives the capacity to keep praying when answers feel slow, to keep expecting God when the evidence is thin. So yes, he comes for it. John 10:10 and all that.
Guarding it is not passive though. It requires the same kind of deliberate attention we talked about last week. Being thoughtful about what you allow to occupy your inner world for long stretches. Returning to gratitude not because everything is fine but because some things are still true and still good. Staying in community, because Proverbs 12:25 says an anxious heart weighs a man down but a kind word cheers him up, and some of your joy is genuinely stored in other people. Worship, even when it is hard. Especially when it is hard, and bringing your real self to God, not the composed version, because He already knows anyway and He meets the tired version too.
Cause here is the thing. The source of this joy is not located in your circumstances. It cannot be, or it would already be gone for most of us. Romans 15:13 says may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in Him. The God of hope. Not the God of smooth seasons. The God who fills, even in the middle of things that have not resolved yet.
That joy can remain, but it has to be guarded.
So guard it, Beloved. Guard it like something precious because it genuinely is. It is your medicine. It is your strength. It is part of how you make it through seasons that were designed to empty you out.
And it is not the world’s to take.
With thoughts of kindness,
ABBA’s Shofar.