Audio Transcript

Is joy a choice, or is joy just a feeling that comes and goes? That is a great question, one our culture asks all the time. And if our joy is a choice, whose choice is it ultimately? That actually was the question I attempted to answer in my book The Joy Project. I know a number of you have read that book. I think joy is a better way to frame the essentials of Calvinism, the doctrines of grace, the five points of Calvinism: God’s sovereign joy in pursuit of us.

But here’s the specific question on the table today, as it comes to us from Susan in Chattanooga, Tennessee. “Pastor John, hello and thank you for this podcast. My question is pretty straightforward. Can you tell me if joy in God is a choice that we make? Or is our joy in God a feeling that comes to us after we do a certain something else first that will lead to joy?”

Here’s an amazing fact to start off with. If you consider all the forms of the word choose or choice or decide or decision, the New Testament never applies those words to the act of choosing God or choosing Christ or choosing Christianity. I think that would come as a shock to a lot of people. (One near exception is Mary choosing to sit at Jesus’s feet while Martha did the housework, but Mary is already a follower.)

In fact, the one place where choosing Jesus is mentioned, it’s denied. In John 15:16, Jesus said, “You did not choose me, but I chose you.” In other words, when the disciples chose to follow Jesus, it wasn’t ultimately their choice. It was God’s choice. He was decisive in that event. God’s choosing us is mentioned over and over and over in the New Testament, but our choosing him is not mentioned, not with the words choose or decide.

Incline Your Heart

Now, if you go to the Old Testament, there’s that famous statement of Joshua 24:15, “Choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your fathers served in the region beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you dwell. But as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” Joshua is happy to call for a choice to serve God or not.

But then a few verses later, he says this (in Joshua 24:22–23): “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen the Lord, to serve him. . . . Then put away the foreign gods that are among you, and incline your heart to the Lord, the God of Israel.” Now, why did Joshua add the command to “incline your heart”? He said it because there is such a thing as choosing to serve God while the heart is far from God.

And Jesus said that. He said it in Matthew 15:8, “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me.” They choose to go to church on Sunday morning. They choose to sing, and they choose to pray. They choose to go to the synagogue, or they choose to give tithes. And on the outside, they look like they’ve chosen God.

They have not chosen God. They have chosen religion to hide the fact that their heart wants something else besides God. That’s why Joshua said, “It’s not enough. This is not enough to choose to serve God. Your heart must incline to the Lord. The Lord must be your treasure — not the praise of man, not health, not wealth, not prosperity.”

Deeper Than a Choice

Now, the way all of this relates to Susan’s question is that this inclination of the heart, which both Joshua and Jesus refer to, is deeper than a choice. It’s a kind of joy in God. Joshua was saying what Psalm 100 says; namely, if you’re choosing to serve God, then let that choice be acceptable to God — let it be honoring to God by “[serving] the Lord with gladness” (Psalm 100:2). That’s a command: “Serve the Lord with gladness!” That is, have your heart incline to God; don’t just choose to serve him. Serve him with gladness.

For a choice to be pleasing to God and honoring to God, it must be rooted in the heart’s taste for God, in gladness in God. In other words, a choice for God or a preference for God that honors God must be rooted in the heart’s experience of God as preferable. What makes a choice to serve God real is that the choice expresses the fact that the heart has found God to be preferable, desirable, valuable.

When Jesus said that the people had chosen to honor God with their lips but not with their hearts because their hearts were far from him, he meant that their hearts did not taste God as desirable. They didn’t taste God as valuable. They didn’t taste God as preferable. Their taste was for the praise of man, not God.

So, my answer for Susan is no, joy is not a choice. It is deeper. It is the gift of an experience of God as desirable, preferable, valuable. It’s not a mere choice. It is the God-given, spontaneous response to seeing God as desirable — tasting him as good, as preferable to other satisfactions.

Joy by Looking

That’s what it means in 1 Peter 2:2–3 when it says, “Long for the pure spiritual milk . . . if indeed you have tasted that the Lord is good.” Tasting is not a choice. If you put a lemon in your mouth, no amount of choosing can make it taste like sugar. It’s not a choice. It’s the way your taste buds are designed. And there are taste buds on the soul that are either ruined or alive — which brings us then to the other part of Susan’s question about how our spiritual taste buds might be changed.

She asks, “Is joy in God a feeling that comes after we do something else that leads to joy in God?” Now, the very fact that we’re talking about joy in God — not just joy generically, but joy in God, or experiencing God as our joy — implies that we need to have some knowledge of God in order to have authentic joy in God.

This means that any steps we can take to put ourselves in the way of true knowledge of God may prove to be the very action that leads to joy in God. So, in that sense, yes. Joy in God is a feeling that comes after we do something else that leads to joy in God; namely, listening to the truth about God.

If joy in God is the heart’s experience of preferring God, desiring God, treasuring God, then it’s not surprising that the main thing we can do in order to experience this is look intently at God’s greatness, God’s beauty, God’s worth in his word. Faith and the “joy [of] faith” (Philippians 1:25), Paul says (and I would say), comes by hearing, and hearing (or reading) by the word of God (Romans 10:17).

Joy by Praying

And there is another action — I’ll just mention one more — that we can do and should do in the pursuit of joy in God. We should pray. Pray the following two prayers with the psalmists. They prayed like this because they had the same experience of sometimes feeling what they ought to feel and sometimes not feeling what they ought to feel in regard to the joy we should have in God.

Open my eyes, that I may behold     wondrous things out of your law. (Psalm 119:18)

Satisfy us in the morning with your steadfast love,     that we may rejoice and be glad all our days. (Psalm 90:14)

We should pray to have eyes to see and hearts to feel. So, in summary, Susan, joy in God is not a choice. It is a God-given, spontaneous experience of the beauty, worth, greatness of God. But there are choices that we can make that may lead to that experience, because the Bible says, “Look. Look and pray. Look at the Lord in his word, and pray for eyes to see and a heart to feel.”

My son, eat honey, for it is good,     and the drippings of the honeycomb are sweet to your taste.Know that wisdom is such to your soul. (Proverbs 24:13–14)

“Hey, son. Can I talk to you for a minute?”

“Sure, Dad. What’s up?”

“Thanksgiving dinner is almost ready, but before we eat, I have some Thanksgiving Day advice for you.”

“Okay.”

“It’s pretty straightforward, but it might require a little explanation.”

“What is it?”

“Today, I want you to eat honey.”

“Honey? Why?”

“Well, because it’s good.”

“Good?”

“Yeah, you know what good means, right?”

“Of course I do.”

“Tell me.”

“Good means that you like something.”

“Okay. What does that mean?”

“Um, that it tastes good?”

“So honey is good because it tastes good?”

“Yeah, because it tastes sweet.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere. So you’re saying that honey is good because it’s sweet to your taste?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever thought about how taste works? Like, what does it mean for honey to be sweet to your taste?”

“Not really.”

“Let’s start with honey. What is it?”

“Something that bees make in their hives.”

“Do you know how they make it?”

“Not really.”

“Okay, let’s start with flowers. Have you ever heard of Green Magick?”

“No.”

“That’s what a friend of mine calls photosynthesis and all of the amazing processes that go into making a plant grow. Plants take water and nutrients from the soil, carbon dioxide from the air, and light from the sun and mix and mingle it all together to produce stalks, leaves, and, of course, flowers. Do you know why plants have flowers?”

“In science class, Mrs. Johnson said that that’s how plants reproduce.”

“That’s right. Flowers reproduce through pollen. That’s the fuzzy stuff on the flower. The challenge is to get the pollen from one flower to another so that they can reproduce seeds to grow into new plants. Do you know how they do that?”

“Bees?”

“Exactly. Bees come to one flower. Pollen sticks to their hair. Then they go to another flower, and drop the pollen where it can fertilize it to produce seeds that produce more plants. Do you know why the bees come to the flower?”

“Because of the colors?”

“Partly. The colorful petals of the flower do grab their attention. But the petals are promising something that the bees want: nectar. That’s the sweet sticky stuff in the center of the flowers. Nectar is the bee’s reward for pollinating the flowers.”

“That’s pretty cool.”

“I know. Let me ask you another question. Do you know what the word glorify means?”

“Sort of. But I don’t know how to say it.”

“When we’re talking about created things, one meaning of the word glorify is to take something good and to make it even better. So nectar is glorified water. It’s water that’s been transformed by Green Magick into something even more glorious. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“So the bees eat the nectar, and it goes into their second stomach, called the honey sac. Once they’re full, they go back to the hive and share the nectar with other bees. All of the sharing and digesting starts to transform the nectar into something else.”

“That sounds kinda weird.”

“It’s actually amazing. Eventually, after partially digesting and sharing, the bees deposit the nectar into this wax that they make. Then they beat their wings really fast, which causes some of the moisture in the nectar to evaporate, which completes the transformation into honey. In other words, honey is glorified nectar.”

“And nectar is glorified water.”

“Now you’re getting it. So the move from water to nectar to honey is a move from glory to more glory to even more glory.”

“That’s cool.”

“It is. So now we’re back to my advice. Do you remember what it was?”

“You told me to eat honey because it’s good.”

“And why is it good?”

“Because it’s sweet to our taste.”

“So let’s think a little more about sweetness. Sweetness has to do with the connection between honey and your tongue. So what do you know about your tongue?”

“It’s in my mouth, and it has taste buds.”

“And what do you know about taste buds?”

“Not much.”

“Taste buds are tiny sensory receptors on your tongue that detect different tastes. Do you know the five main tastes?”

“Um, sweet, salty, sour, and . . . I don’t know the others.”

“Bitter (like kale) and savory (like bacon). So your tongue has taste buds, and when different foods hit them, we detect sweet, sour, salty, bitter, or savory (or some combination). So when we put honey on our tongues, we say it’s sweet to our taste. And because it’s sweet to our taste, we say . . .”

“That it’s good.”

“Exactly. Now, do you remember how the water went through an amazing process in the plant in order to become nectar? And how the nectar went through a weird process in the bees and the beehive in order to become honey?”

“Yes.”

“And what did I call that process?”

“Glorification.”

“Well, the honey needs to go through a similar process in you in order to be glorified.”

“You’re not going to make me spit up the honey and share it with people, are you?”

“Ha! No, this process is a little different. Think about this. Is water alive?

“No.”

“And so in order to be glorified, it needed something greater than itself. It needed something alive — the plant. Right?”

“Right.”

“And why did the plant need the bees?”

“Because they can’t move and pollinate in order to reproduce.”

“Exactly. They needed something greater as well — a mobile creature. Well, really, a lot of mobile creatures, a hive of bees. And how did they attract those mobile creatures?”

“With the petals and the nectar.”

“And why did the bees want the nectar?”

“To eat it.”

“And why did they want to eat it?”

“Because it’s good and sweet to their taste?”

“Very good. So in that way the bees are kind of like us, right?”

“Yes.”

“So we’ve moved from water (which isn’t living) through flowers (which live and grow, but don’t move) through bees (which live, grow, move, and taste). And now we come to us. What makes us different from bees (and other animals)?”

“I don’t know.”

“Think about it.”

“I don’t know.”

“No really, think about it.”

“Oh, right. We can think.”

“Exactly. So in order to glorify honey again, we’re going to think. We’re going to use our minds. And that brings me to my second piece of Thanksgiving advice. To do it, I need you to remember the first piece of advice. Do you?”

“Eat honey, because it’s good and sweet to my taste.”

“Great. Now, here’s the second: know that wisdom is such to your soul. Got that?”

“Not really.”

“Since it’s almost time to eat, I’ll give you a little help. The Bible says that ‘the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.’ So wisdom is a way of life that flows from the fear of the Lord. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, then, let’s consider the word such. That’s a comparison word. It means like this. So we can restate the sentence as ‘know that wisdom is like this to your soul.’ Does that make sense?”

“Sure.”

“So what is wisdom like in that sentence? What does this refer to?”

“Honey?”

“Honey is part of it. But not just honey. What else?”

“The goodness of honey?”

“Yes. And why is honey good?”

“Because it’s sweet to my taste.”

“So if such means like this, and this refers to honey’s goodness and sweetness, what does the whole sentence mean?”

“It means that, just as honey is sweet to my taste, so wisdom — the way of life flowing from the fear of the Lord — is sweet to my soul.”

“You’ve got it. And how does sweetness (and other flavors) work?”

“When honey hits our taste buds, we call that experience sweet.”

“And so in order to taste honey’s sweetness, you must have . . .”

“Taste buds.”

“Which means your soul also must have . . .”

“Taste buds?”

“Exactly. Your soul has taste buds, just like your tongue does. But your soul doesn’t taste honey. Instead, it tastes wisdom. As honey is sweet to your taste, so wisdom is sweet to your soul. One is physically sweet. The other is spiritually sweet.”

“I think I’m starting to get it.”

“Well, that’s good news. Because if you’re starting to really get it — not just in your mind, but in your heart — then honey is going from one degree of glory to another.”

“Really?”

“Yes. Nectar is glorified water, transformed through the Green Magick in the flowers. Honey is glorified nectar, transformed through the bees that taste it, digest it, share it, and store it in honeycomb.”

“I still think it’s weird that we eat bee vomit, by the way.”

“And now the sweetness of honey is glorified, taken from glory to glory when you — a human being with a soul that thinks and wills, knows and loves — eats honey, because it’s good, and then connects the bodily experience of honey’s sweetness to the spiritual way of life that flows from fearing the Lord.”

“Wow.”

“Bees may be able to eat honey because it’s good. But they can’t ‘know that wisdom is such to the soul.’ But you can. You can eat honey — the glorified nectar that bees make from the glorified water that flowers make — because it’s good. And then, you can know with your mind and you can heed with your will your dad’s advice. You can connect the sweetness of honey to the life of wisdom. More than that, you can chase them both back to the source.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you remember Psalm 34? ‘Taste and see that the Lord is good.’”

“So he’s like the honey too?”

“He’s better. He designed all of this to show forth his wisdom and glory, and to invite us further up and further in. The water, the flowers, the pollinating, the nectar, the bees, the hive, the honey, the tongue, the soul, the life of wisdom — all of these are from him and through him and to him. To him be the glory forever and ever. And now, I’m hungry. Let’s go eat some honey.”

“Me too. But we’ve got one problem, Dad.”

“What’s that?”

“I don’t think we’re having honey for Thanksgiving.”

“That’s okay. Pumpkin crunch cake will have to do.”

My son loves photography. He knows how to frame the shot just so, using the right amount of zoom to bring out the subject. Looking at original paintings displayed in a gallery, in a similar way, allows you to move yourself both closer and farther away. Your perspective on the whole picture and its detail changes as you move in and out.

Reading Scripture is similar — we need to zoom in and out to understand properly what God is saying. For example, how do you respond to the picture of the vine and branches that Jesus paints in John 15? Is it reassuring or confusing? Stabilizing or destabilizing?

Worryingly, is Jesus saying that we can be truly one with him but then lose our place? Does he intend to leave us feeling shaky and insecure? Thankfully, as we zoom in and out, we see that the answer is no. Jesus teaches us about the vine and branches so that we might know his joy and our joy might be full (John 15:11).

You-in-Me and Me-in-You

“I am the vine; you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). Jesus paints a picture here of a living vine — green, full of fruit, and flourishing. Jesus is together with those he loves, made one. This is real you-in-me and me-in-you connection and relationship with Jesus.

Zoom in closer and you’ll see something else: dead, fruitless branches (15:2), not vitally united by the Spirit to the person of Jesus and his life. They’re on the vine, hanging around Jesus. They might claim to be Christians, but they probably wouldn’t even be comfortable saying to Jesus, “Lord, you’re in me, and I’m in you.” Some people are existing like that lifeless wood. They’re not united to the source of life, not “grafted in.” It’s a precarious position, to say the least (15:2, 6).

Zoom out to the big picture, however, and you’ll find the friendship formula of you-in-me and me-in-you in John 14 and 17 too. It’s how Jesus, in John’s Gospel, describes life as opposed to death. It’s union with him as opposed to being apart from him — or vitally connected, fruit-bearing branches as opposed to empty ones (15:5–6).

That friendship formula of mutual indwelling stands out in John 15 as well. The Greek word for “abide” means staying put. Here’s a good translation of verse 5: “Whoever is lastingly in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” You in Christ and him in you, for keeps. No single translation is perfect, but “lives” or “dwells” also captures the thrust. This is unbreakable friendship and, wonderfully, friendship where he loved us first.

Forever Secure

Zoom out even further and you’ll find the same friendship formula of mutual indwelling in John 6 (and throughout 1 John), describing what it means to be vitally united to Jesus — one with him.

John 6 explains, in effect, how someone becomes “grafted into” the living vine. Changing the metaphor, they’re hungry and thirsty. They come to Jesus (6:35). They trust him, person-to-person, looking to him now for life. They put themselves in Jesus’s hands. It’s decidedly relational. At the same time, from God’s side, the Father is giving the person into Jesus’s hands (6:37). This is so beautiful. Think about it: the Father and the Son agreeing to hold someone, in eternal life, forevermore.

All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. . . . For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. (6:37, 40; my translation)

You actively believe and trust Jesus; his arms embrace and hold you securely, tenderly, within the vine. On that last day, those same arms will be sure to raise you up into glory. Jesus promises here that he doesn’t cast out; he doesn’t abandon. You can’t lose your place in the living vine. It just can’t happen.

Keep the focus on John 6 for a moment longer. You see that if you’re trusting Jesus and his death for you, the eternal life you already have is, at its heart, you-in-me and me-in-you relationship with Jesus (6:54, 56). It’s spiritual and real — the difference between life in the vine and death.

“As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me” (6:57). It is no more possible for his people to fall out of loving relationship with Jesus than it is for him to fall out of you-in-me and me-in-you relationship with the Father. It just can’t happen!

Sweet Invitation

Let’s take our cameras and zoom back in now on John 15. “Abide [live] in me, and I in you,” Jesus says (15:4). It’s the same two-way formula that describes vital union with Jesus. But here, Jesus is urging, even commanding, us to find life in him, in the vine.

For someone who doesn’t know Jesus, this is a sweet invitation to come to him. For those already in real relationship with him, here is the voice of Jesus reminding us what salvation and life are all about. Jesus’s sheep know (and are known by) him, and so they listen to his voice (10:15–16). They need his words, they desire his words, and they listen to him. They ask for the fruit he has promised to produce in and through them (15:7–8), and they step out in love for one another.

Whoever we are, this is a sweet, sweet invitation from the Lord of everything to keep on receiving and returning his love. Paul also urges believers to keep doing what believers do: “Continue in the faith, stable and steadfast, not shifting from the hope of the gospel” (Colossians 1:23).

This hope of the gospel flows from the love of the Father and the Son. And Jesus loves his own as the Father loves him (15:9). So lean in! It’s no burden to rest in the vine and in that love, any more than it’s a burden to drink when we’re thirsty. If you’re somehow fearing Jesus’s rejection, then verse 4 is very good news — someone’s command to dwell or live in him, and him in us, cannot be withholding. Jesus’s command here is the sweetest and most generous of invitations.

To “abide,” then, is not some special spiritual technique, but instead the posture of trust in Jesus, resting in his love (15:9), lived out in glad obedience to him (15:10). It’s joy-full (15:11). And every branch united to him in two-way friendship is guaranteed fruit that will stand the test of time.

Share and Participate

It’s possible to hang around Jesus (and Christianity) and not actually be relating to Jesus. Someone can subscribe to doctrines, but not actually trust and lean into the one who is love and life. Someone can show up, but not love and worship Christ — and so misunderstand the very nature of the Christian life.

What should worry us? Independence, being determined to go it alone, apart from Jesus (15:5). Peril consists in refusing to come and be cleansed, pruned, and beautified by the Father (15:2–3); refusing to lean into Christ’s love; refusing to be vitally united to him. Do you see obedience as a burden rather than the chance to share and participate in everything that Jesus and the Father love (15:10)?

When someone you really want to be with says, “Marry me!” you know it’s not just a sweet invitation for that day or year, but one that anticipates living and dwelling together as one, every day into the future. It’s a statement of commitment, each to the other — to keep inviting the other person in relationally, and to keep making oneself available. It anticipates being reciprocated. And there’s the joy of a beautiful, ongoing dynamic.

“Abide in me, and I in you,” Jesus says. Eternally.

That’s got to be stabilizing, to say the least!