During the four weeks of June, I’m using a weekly focus based on character qualities and actions that begin with the four letters in the word June:

 

J — Joyful (a very misunderstood quality and a command from God) [6/1–6/8]

U — Understanding (a quality that blends empathy with compassion and love) [6/9–6/15]

N — Nice (a quality that requires sincerity) [6/16–6/22]

E — Excellent (a quality that doesn’t tell us to be the best but to give our best) [6/23–6/30]

A few weeks ago now, I shared a thought that I had regarding the misunderstood nature of joy. (If you missed this short post, you can read it here.) As I have continued to reflect on those thoughts, I am seeing even more that we (I) very often confuse “joyful” with “happy”—well, at least our (my) definition of “happy.” With so much emphasis on being “real” (which I believe is a good thing), it’s easy to think that if someone isn’t sobbing profusely and posting thoughts of sorrow and sadness in every Facebook update when something bad occurs that they aren’t being “real,” or that they are being “fake.”

One thing I’ve tried to do from the outset of this blog is to let what the Bible says be the final answer. Throughout the course of this week, I’m going to share my own thoughts of confusion over these terms—and their resulting thoughts—and then share the Bible’s answers to those questions and thoughts.

Though the words “glad,” “happy,” and “joy” are often interchangeable, it’s the personal filter through which we run them that determines our thoughts about them. I want to look at it more deeply than this first illustration will show, but for today, I need to wrap this up with a simple illustration of the filter through which we run our views of “happy” and “joyful.”

I generally wake up at 4:50 a.m.—not because I’m a “morning person” but because I personally love spending time with the Lord before the simple distractions of my day begin, and unlike my more self-disciplined friends, I lack the discipline to block out those distractions later in the day. Also, I like getting my work done instead of having it hang over my head. I have friends that are the exact opposite, and I have no preconceived thoughts that they are lazy or don’t love God as much as I do—in fact, I would literally find it silly to view any differences through a filter like that. As my mother recently reminded me, “different does not equal wrong.”

When I hear the alarm go off at 4:50 a.m., I’m not happy about it. In fact, I’m probably just not happy. However, I choose to start the day at that very moment by thanking the Lord for life—for the day that lies before me and the opportunities that it holds for learning more of Him. My heart is happy even when my mind is not. To me, that’s the difference. It doesn’t mean that the day ahead won’t hold problems or other things that will make me sad; it just means that in the midst of those things, I can still find joy in the Lord.

The phrase “in the Lord” is a key element of joy—but I’ll write more about that later. For now, just be reminded of the familiar words of Philippians 4:4 (KJV): “Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, rejoice.”

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