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From Easter to Pentecost and beyond our Sunday morning services focusing on the Fruit of the Spirit

Sunday 7th May
Love

Sunday 21 May
Joy

Sunday 4 June
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Sunday 18 June
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Sunday 25 June
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Sunday 2nd July
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Sunday 9th July
Patience

Sunday 16 July
Kindness

Sunday 13 Aug
Generosity

Sunday 20 Aug
Faithfulness

Sunday 27 Aug
Gentleness

Sunday 3rd Sept
Pyramid Rock
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Sunday 17 Sept
Self-Control

Sunday 24 Sept
Harvest

The Fruit of the Spirit 2) Joy
Joy in a suffering world?

I have problems with joy.  I am not thinking of anyone whose name is joy.  I am thinking of that state of joy the dictionary defines as ‘intense gladness; rapture, delight; rejoicing.”

Intense gladness is hard to come by, rapture rarely experienced; delight and rejoicing seem inappropriate in many circumstances I find myself in.  Perhaps I am becoming a Grumpy Old Man.

I don’t believe it!

I guess one of my biggest problems with joy is that it is one of those things I feel as a Christian I ought to have.    I ought to be joyful.  I ought to have joy, real joy, deep down in my heart.

The More I feel I ought to have Joy the more elusive it becomes

My problem is that the more I feel I ought to have joy, abounding joy, the more elusive it becomes!

It goes deeper than that.  I sometimes feel it is offensive to say that I ought to have joy deep in my heart when I experience something that is devastating, when I see suffering that is awful, when I hear of more fatalities in Iraq, when I see the reality of HIV Aids in the Christian Aid material.

Statistics are one thing: stories quite another.

Abebech Mekonnen is one of those mothers who has witnessed the death of her own children as HIV AIDS has swept across Africa and across her own Ethiopia.

I do not have joy in my heart when I see those things.  I take offence when someone tells me I ought to have joy in the face of those things.

I find it intriguing to find that joy is one of those things we often feel Christians ought to have that comes as part of that list that Paul describes as ‘fruit of the Spirit’.  It comes in at second on the list.

The fruit of the Spirit he says in Galatians 5 is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience.

I find that helpful.

Maybe ‘joy’ is not something to strive after.  It is rather something sown as a seed by God’s unseen presence which then grows within me unwittingly and manifests itself not so much as the end product of my striving but as the fruit of God’s Spirit.

Joy - not something to strive after - sown as a seed it is grown by the Spirit

Sown as a seed it is grown by the Spirit.

But how does that happen?  How is the seed grown by the Spirit?

In our coming together as in Christian worship God gives us something to help the seed grow.

It is one of the most important things we do in our worship.  And yet even that is something I sometimes have a problem with.  Our worship invariably gives us the opportunity to sing our praises to God.  And yet that sometimes is difficult to do.

When I don’t feel joy in my heart, how can I sing praise to God?

That’s one of the curious things about our Christian faith.  It is precisely when I don’t feel joy in my heart, that I need to praise God..

As we come together in our worship to sing our praises, praise draws us beyond the circle of our own consciousness, beyond the horizon of our own world.  Praise directs us to God.



Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice.

Part of me bridles straight away.  God must be a funny kind of god if he depends on us singing his praises.  Surely he does not depend on that!

Why does God need our praise?

I am drawn to a phrase coined by the Cambridge theologian David Ford in the book he co-authored with Daniel Hardy [David F.Ford and Daniel W.Hardy, Living in Praise - Worshipping and Knowing God (Darton, Longman and Todd, 2005)]

Praise perfects perfection.

Something can be complete and perfect in itself – fully accomplished, job done.  Praise that follows does not make a difference to the job that has been done … but in a very real way it rounds it off.

Praise perfects perfection.

A case in point occurred at 9-37 on Thursday evening.  There may have been no goal scored in a needle match with our neighbours down the A 40, Wycombe Wanderers, but the rapture, the joy the adulation, the praise that greeted the referees final whistle was felt on three sides of the ground.

All the cheering did not make one jot of difference to the result of the game.  By 9-37 none of the cheering could change a result that for the Robins on Thursday night amounted to nothing less than perfection.

Had there been silence from the crowd something would have been missing.!

Praise perfects perfection.

Christian praise focuses on the magnificence of God’s creation, on the extent of the forgiving love of God made real in Jesus Christ, and on the unseen power for God unleashed in the world by the Holy Spirit of God.

All that God has done in creation in the love of Christ and in the power of the Spirit amounts to perfection … and our praise as it were rounds it off … our praise perfects perfection.

There’s something more to praise … that was also apparent on Thursday night!

Praise Points in a Particular direction.

All the praise showered on the Robins was pointing in the direction of Cardiff and the Millennium Stadium.  Cardiff here we come were the banner headlines on the front page of Friday night’s Echo.

It’s quite some weekend for Leicester Tigers supporters who follow the Robins – praise for the Tigers victory over London Irish points to Twickenham, and praise for the Robins points to the Millennium Stadium.

Praise in our Christian worship points us in a direction determined by God.   Praise in our worship leads us on to reflect on God’s word for us and the direction he intends us to take in this world.

Praise points us in a particular direction.

Praise points us in the direction God wants us to follow.  Nowhere is that more apparent than in Psalm 146.



It starts in the praise of God,

Praise the Lord, my soul.

And then invites us to look beyond our horizons, and not to put our trust in human leaders.

Instead we are to depend on the Lord our God.

It is the very nature of the God we praise to keep his promises, to judge in favour of the oppressed, to give food to the hungry, to set prisoners free, to give sight to the blind, to lift those who have fallen, to protect the stranger to help the widow and orphan.

Psalm 146

Praise of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, perfects perfection.
Praise of God points us in the way God wants us to take.

And as we praise seeds are being sown in our hearts – they are the seeds that will come to bear fruit as the Holy Spirit works in us … and the fruit of the Spirit’s working that is nurtured by our praise is nothing less than that joy we spoke of earlier.

As we praise the seeds of JOY are sown and JOY, the fruit of the Spirit begins to appear.

I come back to Abebech Mekonnen’s story.  Her story is told by Christian Aid because she is one whose life has been turned around by the support Christian Aid’s money raising has given to the Ehthiopian Orthodox Church and its Hope Centre.  With help from the Hope Centre of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, Abebech Mekonnen has been able to adopt her grandchildren, Meheret and Matewos, who were orphaned by HIV.

As our praise of God perfects perfection and points us in the way God wants us to take the seeds of JOY are sown and JOY, the fruit of the Spirit begins to appear.

Let’s reflect on some of the words from Psalm 146 once more …