Irrepressible Joy

Keeping the lid on something ready to explode isn’t easy. As kids, we’d get baking soda and put it in old medicine bottles, add water, shake and try to hold the lid on. You can’t. The pressure builds up to such an extend it outperforms the strength of your hands trying to hold it back. The mess inside is going everywhere.

Someone once told me if you held a firecracker real tight in your fingers and lit it, it couldn’t explode. They were wrong.

There is a point at which the force within exceeds the power without and an explosion is on its way.

Joy is irrepressible. It cannot be held back. If the abundance of the joy in your life overflows it will begin to show up in your life. Not as a grinning, mindless puddle of don’t worry, be happy—but a strength that shows up in your character, attitude and manners. It even has influence over my speech, whether I complain, grip, whine or seek pity.

Paul described the Fruit of the Spirit in terms of actions that would define your life if the Spirit of God is overflowing from your life. These were characteristics that, if we’re being honest, are not natural to most of us—they need supernatural influence.

“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23)

Joy is on the list. It is one of the evidences that the Spirit of God has a dominate place in our lives. Paul’s argument is: if we are filled to overflowing by the Spirit of God, joy becomes irrepressible. It shows up. We can’t hold it back.

It’s not something we have to work up, or fake, or force out of us. It is evidence we are walking with God.

Question: Have you found times you have been overwhelmed by the Joy of the Lord? Comments?