JOY;
HAPPINESS

I am thinking about God’s dear people always praying for joy, praying for light, praying for every benediction, and yet they don’t receive. They work themselves up on Sunday, then go back down and stay on a lower level on Monday. Perhaps they work themselves up a little by Wednesday evening, but it never seems to stick. The bell loses its tongue, its clapper. It doesn’t ring anymore.

Well, the joy and happiness of these disciples was now the joy and blessing and delight of the Holy Spirit. Their happiness was no longer the happiness of Adam—it was not the happiness of nature. Human beings are busy trying to work up a joy of some sort.…

No, the human race is not basically happy—we are anything else but! The joy of the Holy Spirit is not something worked up; it is a post-resurrection joy. Christ came out of the grave, and the Spirit of the risen Christ comes back to His people. The joy that we have is the joy that looks back on the grave.

Acts 2:46–47; Acts 5:41–42; 1 Corinthians 15:19–20

The Counselor, 140, 141.