JOY

KEY POINT: God enjoys every aspect of His work, and we should feel the same about our work.

If you're my age, you remember video game consoles.

Forgive me if you were born after the golden years of Nintendo, Sega, and Atari.

But as a child, nothing was more exciting to my friends and me than taking out a boxy electronic unit and the joysticks, connecting them to the TV (with wires!), and playing for hours even though the graphics looked more like a geometry quiz than a video.

My parents must have seen my joy in playing these games, so on my eighth birthday, they presented me with my favorite gift ever - a video game system called Odyssey (don't look it up, it's probably not even on the internet anymore).

My joy when I received that gift was so overwhelming, I think I almost cried.

There is something about the feeling of happiness, joy, and fulfillment that we humans long for and instinctively know we're wired for.

That’s by design.

As God completes every portion of creation, He takes a pause, and you can almost feel His smile beaming as He pronounces each step as "good."

The same can be said when He stops after six days of creation and rests from His labor.

An omnipotent God doesn’t need to rest, but He chooses to stop and enjoy the work of His hands.

In the same way, it’s part of our created nature to desire and seek out joy in our daily work.

This is not simply a call to seek out recreation and pleasure.

In fact, it's the opposite. Most of the references to joy in the Bible are in the context of work, suffering, or sacrifice. You’ll almost never find joy mentioned in the Bible in the context of retreating from the world's cares.

We find joy in our efforts, not by escaping from them.

We exhibit and experience joy as we work, live, and create because we know the result of all efforts is established in the heavens before we ever step into our professions, hobbies, or callings.

Ecclesiastes makes it clear that it’s not the results of our work that bring us joy. We should be experiencing joy as we work because it's a gift from God to do what He does.

Our ability to find joy every day is a sign that God is leading, and directing, and will ultimately be glorified by our daily creative activities.

So, today, choose to look away from the circumstances that might bring doubt or fear.

Take up the joy of the Lord as your strength and remember that your purpose in every creative act is to reflect the joy that the Creator has placed inside you.

My prayer is that you’ll take all five of God’s creative purposes - Relationship, Character Development, Responsibility, Multiplication, and Joy - and apply them to every act you undertake throughout the day.

You'll see a change for sure in your walk with Christ and your creative lifestyle.

ACTION STEPS

Is there a certain activity, task, or creative project you have to do that feels joyless?

Think through what you don't like, then do your best to infuse some type of joy into it.

Be creative and innovative and see if you can't turn your task into a more pleasurable activity.