Christmas Devotional

Here is a Christmas devotional I wrote for Church. I hope you enjoy it.


What is Joy?

And it happened, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, " Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! But why is this granted to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For indeed , as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who believed, for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the Lord." -LUke 1:41-45


In Luke 1:44 we see that John the Baptist leaped with joy when Mary came into his presence. This happened while both John and Jesus were still in the womb. So what is joy and how do we obtain it?

According to the Webster dictionary joy can be defined as a delight of the mind from the consideration of the present or assured approaching possession of a good. And is also a glorious and triumphant state. C.S. Lewis called it ( in Surprised by Joy) an "unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable that any other satisfaction." He goes onto say that it "must be sharply distinguished both from happiness and and from pleasure." You can be filled with joy while suffering.

Next we tackle how we can obtain this joy. The simple answer to this question is by trusting in the Lord and all that entails. God is the source of our joy and He will fill us with it if we only let Him. You only have to at Paul and Silas as they were in prison. They still sang hymns and praises to the Lord and had the inner peace to knowing that God would take care of them. Another example of can be found in Luke 24. It tells of the disciples after Jesus' Ascension "worshiped Him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the temple praising and blessing God." They knew and trusted in the promises of Jesus and looked forward to day that He would come back for them. In short they were filled with joy because of this trust.

So as we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, this Christmas season we should be filled with joy. For we too are heirs to these promises because we have been grafted into the tree by our faith in Jesus. Be filled with joy and sing praises hymns to the Lord as we remember and celebrate why Jesus came into this world some 2000 years ago.

'Till next time- THE GREAT ONE