Full of Joy

 DEVOTION

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO LUKE

FULL OF JOY

Luke 10:21

21 At that time Jesus, full of joy through the Holy Spirit, said, "I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this was your good pleasure. 

NIV

There are two great truths within this passage. We want to deal just with the first one now and look into the second one later. We see that Jesus was full of joy through the Holy Spirit. Before Jesus ascended back into heaven, he promised that he would send the Holy Spirit to his disciples and to all who believed. All of us are aware of that day of Pentecost and what happened. However, the point is that we have the Holy Spirit dwelling within us. Whether we believe He inspires us to speak in tongues is not the real issue. However, if we take speaking in a new language as how our words were different before we were saved through Jesus Christ and filled with the Spirit and how we talk now as born-again Spirit-filled followers of Jesus Christ, we are speaking a whole new language, and our vocabulary has changed. Nevertheless, what we want to focus on is that Jesus was full of joy through the Holy Spirit. Because we have the Spirit, we should also be full of joy. This word joy intrigues us, so we looked into the Greek to find, agalliaoo, which means to jump for joy, i.e. exult, to rejoice exceedingly. Therefore, we would think that we would be always in this frame of mind, and therefore our faces would reflect this abundant joyfulness that is in our hearts and minds. In fact, joy is one of the gifts of the Spirit. Even in the midst of any of our aches and pains, sicknesses, or other infirmities, if we have the Spirit, we will also have this joy overflowing within and through us. When we get into those funky times, when we get this ugly attitude, complaining, wailing about our problems, we might just be quenching the Spirit. In Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians, he says, “Do not put out the fire of the Spirit” at least in the NIV. The KJV uses “Do not quench the Spirit”. Let us always be aware of the Holy Spirit and his influence upon our hearts and minds. Just as the Spirit filled Jesus with joy, he fills us with that same joy. Let us reflect the joy of the Lord all the days of our lives. Let us live full of joy.