Pursuing Joy

It's Not Always Easy to Feel Joyful, but it's Always Worth Fighting For

It pains me to see the downcast face of my second born every morning. More than anything else in that moment, I want to help him choose joy. But alone, I’m really helpless in that regard. I can’t make him be happy. So, I offer him the only real weapon I have against a cheerless heart. In the car, on the way to school, we pray together. And while outwardly, it’s a prayer for him, inwardly, it is also a prayer for me.

Oh Father, we know that in light of all eternity, these days of school are so small and insignificant, but in the present, they feel very heavy and burdensome. We ask You to fill us with Your joy, Heavenly Father. Help us to sense Your presence in the darkness. Remind us of Your incredible love and care for us.

I am often the one in our family to speak encouragement and remind others of God’s Truth, and I am grateful to God for that gift. But there are times when I am so mentally worn out, I can barely string enough words together to pray for myself. Lots of starts and stops and apologies for a distracted mind and long gaps of silence trying to formulate adequate supplication until I finally give up and start to cry because I just want to feel close to God!
In those times I surrender to my exhausted mind and ask instead for God’s Spirit to pray for me. I just bow my head in silence and the tears run down my cheeks because I know that He is. His wordless groans articulate my needs more perfectly than I would ever know how to—tired or not.¹ It brings such comfort to know He is praying for me—right now in fact, as I attempt to share this with you. I’m imagining you’ve been in my shoes—so worn out you can’t think straight. That’s where I am right now.

This past week has been a struggle. My husband has had a very busy work season. Of the last 55 days, he’s been home only eight—mostly one- or two-night spurts at a time. And while we are truly grateful for God’s abundant blessing, it takes a toll.

Last Thursday I found myself clawing for joy. But it felt as though my mind resisted it at every turn—like it wanted to wallow in unhappiness. It is in these times I’m reminded of why it is so important to prepare for the battle ahead of time. When the feelings of hopelessness and despair close in on every side, we must have in hand a pre-sharpened Sword of Truth with which to fight against the darkness.

The morning I prayed for my son’s heart, I came across this encouraging note in my Substack feed:

“Joy isn’t passive. It’s defiant.
It’s the holy habit of choosing hope when heaviness tries to settle in.
Joy looks the storm in the eye and says, “You don’t get the final word.”
So today, laugh, sing, notice beauty, thank God out loud.
Let joy rise—not because life is easy,
but because He is always good.”
-Em Tyler

I often remind my children: “the world isn’t going to encourage your walk with Jesus.” No, the world will have you looking for hope everywhere but in God. So, Em’s decision to describe joy as defiant resonated. In the face of a dark, cruel world, be defiant and choose joy. And if joy eludes you at the moment, pursue it. Doggedly pursue the joy of the Lord.

Fight discouragement.
Fight temptation to give up.
Fight the lies of the enemy.
Fight with the Word of God.

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Psalm 42 is a beautiful example of pursuing God in the midst of deep spiritual depression. In this honest, even raw, prayer, the psalmist “pours out his soul,” wrestling with sad memories, taunting unbelievers, and feelings of being far from God.

He honestly lays it all out, but, as Tim Keller explains, “the psalmist is not merely listening to his heart but also talking to it.” And this is something I do with my own heart, and I would encourage you to do it as well. “We should listen for the premises of the heart’s reasoning but we should challenge those premises where they are wrong, and they often are,” Keller adds.²

The psalmist says to his heart: “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me?”

Yes, it’s important to seek to understand why we feel the way we feel—particularly when we are disheartened. Our emotions can be very informative, but they don’t always point us to truth. And that is what Keller means by “challenging those premises.”

The psalmist has legitimate reasons for being depressed, but interspersed throughout his reasons, he reminds himself of truth. He is not ignoring or trivializing his suffering—it is real!—but he is setting it in right relationship to God.

In a way, he is preaching to himself. For immediately after he asks himself why his soul is so downcast, he tells himself to “Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise Him.”

Quoting 20th century Welsh minister, Martin Lloyd Jones, Keller says this is an important strategy the discouraged must use:

“We must talk to ourselves instead of allowing “ourselves” to talk to us. In spiritual depression we allow our self to talk to us instead of talking to our self…
Have you realized that so much of the unhappiness in your life is due to the fact you are listening to yourself instead of talking to yourself?
[You] must go on to remind yourself of who God is, and what God is and what God has done and what God has pledged himself to do…
Then end on this great note: defy yourself, and defy other people, and defy the devil and the whole world, and say with the man, “I shall yet praise Him…for he is my God.”³

In that vein, the psalmist says to his heart again: Yes, I hear you but listen to me. In the following verse we read: “My soul is downcast within me; therefore I will remember You…” He is “lighting up the lamps of the past,” as Spurgeon encouraged.
Remembering God has been a light in the darkness for me so many times. We must remind ourselves of Who God Is. What He has done. What He will do. And who we are in Christ.
Just like the prophet Jeremiah reminded himself in the midst of his own despair: “Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope: His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. I say to myself, “The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.”⁴ These men knew the answers were not within themselves, they are in God. Don’t look within; look up.

“Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey towards it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us…It lends promise to the future and purpose to the past. It turns discouragement to determination.”
—Samuel Smiles (19th century British author)

The suffering we endure in everyday life is not the end of the story. As Paul declares in Romans 8:18, “the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us.” We cannot possibly understand right now what it will be like to be glorified but we must trust and believe the Word of God that it will far surpass and outweigh whatever we are suffering now.
Therefore bring your feelings under the jurisdiction of your mind. Take every thought captive and make it obedient to the Truth.⁵ Tell yourself: yes, this is hard—but this is what I know to be true of God… and pray that God would “send forth His light and His truth” (Ps 43:5) and that they would guide you (not your feelings).

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Last week was tough. I miss my husband. My boys are struggling. And I’m worn out. As I closed my eyes for sleep, feeling all kinds of defeat, words from Psalm 30 offered me encouragement:

“Weeping may tarry for the night,
but joy comes with the morning.” (v. 5)

The Lord is faithful. He is good and kind and compassionate. He is near the broken-hearted and crushed in spirit. The depths of God’s love call to the depths of our sorrows.⁶ “God will not require anything of you…that he will not give you the grace to endure and perform—even with joy.” —John Piper

Eyes on Jesus, my friend, eyes on Jesus.

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1. “In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans that words cannot express. And He Who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints in accordance with God’s will.” Romans 8:26-27

2. Timothy Keller. Walking with God through Pain and Suffering. (Penguin Books, 2016) p. 289

3. Ibid., p. 290

4. Lamentations 3:21-24

5. “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.” 2 Corinthians 10:5

6. “Deep calls to deep in the roar of your waterfalls; all your waves and breakers have swept over me.” Psalm 42:7