Every Longing Heart
Sunday, December 14, 2025
Today’s Reading: Philippians 4:4-13
As someone who has struggled with depression on and off for most of my life, I hardly feel qualified to speak on joy. Or now that I think about it, perhaps I feel more qualified. It really depends on how you define joy.
I know joy is essential to and characteristic of the Christian life. So why do I feel like it’s so challenging to define correctly? Joy is not just happiness. I’m not sure it’s even an emotion or state. It’s not just a quantitative measure, like the upper end of some smile scale. It’s not just a reaction. It’s not just an outward expression. Maybe it is those things, but it’s definitely not only those things.
I recall leading worship many years ago and half-jokingly chastising the congregation: they might be singing about joy, but they didn’t look like they had it. I wish I hadn’t done that. The more I mature in my faith, the more I realize how misguided that comment was. Joy is not facial expressions and body language. As a matter of fact, those who are more concerned about appearing joyful than about actually being inwardly content are not only going to exhaust themselves, they’re usually going to be found out.
In ruling out what joy is not, can we come to a satisfactory definition of what it is? What makes this difficult is that many verses speak of joy in the imperative. Many of the Biblical writers are instructing us to have joy. So we know we should have it, but we may not understand how to get to a place where it is natural and not forced. I think Paul could help us here:
“I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. I can do all this through him who gives me strength.” (Philippians 4:11-13 NIV)
It is worth noting that he speaks of contentment, because there is a link between the two. When life is unpredictable, good or bad, depressing or uplifting, scary or safe, we have an unwavering contentment and assurance that grounds us in joy. I can be sitting through a season of depression and simultaneously have joy. Joy is deeper, richer, and more abiding than any emotional reaction to life’s circumstances. For the Christian, our joy is being fully content in Jesus. The goal is that we need nothing else and that we desire nothing more.
So Christian joy is contentment in all circumstances, but it is yet more. There is an element of joy in expectation. My favorite picture of “joy” is the face of a child giddy with anticipation: kids looking down the street for the parade to start, looking out the window for Dad to pull in the drive, closing their eyes while Mom brings out their surprise puppy. I borrowed this idea from CS Lewis. He wrote in his book Surprised by Joy that joy is not so much something to find within us as it is the desiring of something to be found outside of us:
“Joy itself, considered simply as an event in my own mind, turned out to be of no value at all. All the value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring. And that object, quite clearly, was no state of my own mind or body at all.”
Lewis basically argues that if there is no expectation, no desire or longing, there is no joy. So then the question would be, for what are we longing? If we long for earthly things, our joy would extinguish as soon as that item is crossed off the bucket list and found to be unsatisfactory (as is always the case). Worldly pleasures and pursuits hold no joy because they lead to nothing more enduring. When the high is over, it’s just over. We can “count it all joy” (James 1:2) because there is a longing for the end, the return of Christ, the restoration of all things.
You see, Christ is, again, the anchor. We are content in Him despite circumstances, and we long for Him more deeply than anything. It is from this intimate relationship with God that we experience joy organically. Joy is having Him walk beside us through this life and longing to see Him face to face in the next.
“In your presence there is fullness of joy.” (Psalm 16:11 NIV)