2026 Sacred Whispers Blog

“The joy of the LORD is your strength.”

Nehemiah 8:10

There is a strange and beautiful mystery at the heart of Scripture: joy is not an emotion we chase, nor a fleeting surge of happiness that rises and falls with the conditions of life. Joy, in the biblical sense, is something far deeper. It is a spiritual substance, a divine inheritance woven into the life of every believer. It is not the thin smile we offer the world to mask our struggles, nor the shallow optimism that pretends everything is fine. Joy, as heaven defines it, is a settled confidence rooted entirely in who God is.

When Nehemiah declared, “The joy of the LORD is your strength,” the Hebrew word he used for joy is chedvah, a word that appears only a couple of times in the Old Testament. It does not refer to excitement, amusement, or emotional uplift. Chedvah describes something far richer: a deep internal gladness that flows specifically from God’s presence, God’s goodness, and God’s victory on behalf of His people. It is joy that does not originate in us at all; it is joy that belongs to God and is shared with us. In other words, Nehemiah wasn’t telling the people to “cheer up”; he was reminding them that God’s own joy is what sustains the human soul. His joy becomes our strength.

C.S. Lewis once declared, “Joy is the serious business of Heaven.” He meant that joy is not playful or fragile; it is weighty, eternal, and born from the very nature of God Himself. To become a person of joy is to be reshaped from the inside out, re-formed by the truth of God’s character, grounded in salvation, disciplined in thought, strengthened in battle, and transformed into a living witness of Christ’s life within us.

JOY BEGINS WITH THE CHARACTER OF GOD

An old East African proverb says, “When the roots are deep, there is no reason to fear the wind.”

It is a reminder that stability does not come from calm winds but from a secure foundation. Joy operates the same way. It does not rise or fall with circumstances, nor does it depend on the predictability of our days. True joy is born from the depth of its roots, and those roots are planted in the unchanging character of God.

Joy always begins with God. Not with outcomes. Not with blessings. Not with seasons where life aligns in our favor. Joy begins with beholding the God whose nature does not tremble when circumstances change. Psalm 16:11 declares, “In Your presence is fullness of joy.” That fullness is not partial or seasonal; it is complete, abundant, overflowing, lacking nothing. The presence of God produces a joy that fills up to the brim, and then spills over the edge!

This kind of joy becomes possible when we stop attempting to anchor our lives to shallow things that shift beneath our feet. Our joy deepens as our vision of God grows clearer. When the sovereignty of God becomes more than a doctrine on paper and begins to sink into the core of our faith, joy becomes a natural response to His unchanging rule. When the goodness of God is no longer a theological idea but a lived conviction, joy rises in places where sorrow once lived.

Dr. Gardner C. Taylor once wrote, “There is a divine steadiness beneath everything that shakes us. When we remember that, joy becomes possible again.” That one truth alone has carried saints through prisons, wildernesses, diagnoses, betrayals, and seasons of silence. Joy is not born in the absence of struggle; joy is born in the presence of a God who cannot be shaken.

JOY IS ROOTED IN OUR SALVATION

If joy begins with who God is, it grows through what God has done. The Scripture paints salvation as a well, deep, eternal, inexhaustible. Isaiah 12:3 promises, “With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” Every time we return to the truth of the gospel, joy rises again.

David understood this deeply. When he had fallen into sin with Bathsheba and felt an aching and agonizing distance from God, he did not ask for the return of his throne, his dignity, his crown, or his reputation. He prayed, “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation.” David was teaching us a profound truth: joy is not the result of moral greatness; joy is the result of merciful grace. When the sinner comes to God, battered, bloodied, bruised, and beaten by the choices he has made in his life, and God touches his heart with the refreshing spring of His forgiveness and mercy, the unbridled result will be pure joy.  The relief that it brings; the hope that it births; the fear that it erases; the peace that it offers; this is pure, unadulterated joy.

Theologian Jonathan Edwards said that believers experience joy because they “taste the sweetness of the Redeemer.” Joy is the soul’s natural response to being loved, rescued, redeemed, and adopted by God. It is the assurance that Christ has accomplished everything necessary for our salvation, and therefore nothing in this world has the power to undo the security we have in Him.

When the Spirit produces joy within the believer, He anchors us to a finished work that cannot be reversed. Our salvation is secure, and so is our joy.

JOY FLOWS FROM AUTHENTIC WORSHIP

Joy is not something we manufacture; it is something we encounter. It rises naturally in the soul that has truly had an experience with God. Whenever Scripture pulls back the curtain on the worship of heaven or the worship of God’s people on earth, joy is never far behind. Revelation 4 and 5 is loaded with breathtaking images of the exuberant and sacred worship of God.  Authentic worship, the kind that turns the heart of man fully toward God, awakens joy because worship places us in the only environment where joy can live: the presence of the Living God.

Psalm 100 reminds us, “Serve the Lord with gladness; come before His presence with singing.” The gladness does not precede His presence; His presence produces the gladness. Worship shifts our focus from what is happening to us to the One who reigns over us. It is impossible to behold God rightly and walk away unchanged. Worship realigns our desires, resets our perspective, quiets anxious thoughts, and opens the heart to receive divine joy.

In Hebrew thought, worship was not merely singing or ritual; it was the offering of the whole self, mind, body, soul, and strength, in response to the revelation of God. This is the truth behind Deuteronomy 6:4, a verse traditionally known as the “Shema”.  It incorporates all of the faculties of the human soul when it says that we should “love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our might.” This leaves no part of the human experience outside of the act of worship. When the people encountered God’s glory in the Old Testament, they wept, they bowed, they shouted, they danced, they trembled… and woven through all those responses was the unmistakable thread of joy. Why? Because joy is the ‘emotional recognition’ of the nearness of God.

One of the most beautiful examples of this comes in 2 Chronicles 20, when Jehoshaphat and the people of Judah faced an overwhelming army. God’s instruction to them was surprising: “You will not need to fight in this battle.” Instead, the singers and worshipers were placed at the front of the army. And as they began to sing and praise, the Lord Himself scattered their enemies. Joy broke out long before God delivered them, but it came in tidal waves as they worshiped. Worship became their weapon, and joy became their victory cry; all of this before any soldier’s foot ever touched the battleground floor. This is the essence of worship-born joy. When worship reintroduces us to the God who is greater, joy rises as a natural, spiritual reaction.  It becomes the soul’s acknowledgment that God is here, God is able, and God is worthy.

Joy grows best in hearts that bow low in worship. Worship is not an escape from reality; it is the revelation of a greater Reality. It pulls us out of the narrowness of our fears and opens our spirit to the vastness of God’s grace and mercy. And in that holy epiphany, joy flows effortlessly, like water gushing forth from a mighty spring. This joy has always been there.  We were created with it.  But only in pure, passionate, prayerful, and purposeful worship does that joy begin to emerge from the dark corners of our souls and out onto the open daylight of our hearts. Joy is not something you must have given to you; it is the natural disposition of the innocent, pure heart before a holy and awe-inspiring God.

When we worship with authenticity, not performance, not pretense, not routine, but with the full weight of our attention and affection turned toward God, joy, like fruit on the tree, begins to grow. Joy is the voice of worship in the human heart, the overflow of a soul that has heard the whispers of God and have been refreshed.

A STORY OF JOY DEEPER THAN SUFFERING

In 1973, during the Watergate hearings, journalist Malcolm Muggeridge traveled to interview Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Russian author imprisoned for years in the Soviet gulags. Muggeridge expected a broken, embittered man, crushed by suffering. Instead, he encountered a gentle, radiant joy that startled him. Solzhenitsyn told him, “Bless you, prison, for being in my life.”

His joy had not been born in comfort but in loss, not in ease but in affliction. It was in prison, stripped of everything he once thought essential, that he discovered the nearness of God. He found a joy “that suffering could not take, and death could not touch.”

Jesus mastered this type of joy flawlessly on the cross. The Bible says that “for the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despised the shame, and is set down at the right hand of God the Father Almighty.  This is the essence of transcendent joy.  Jesus was able to look beyond the crippling pain of the cross, to see the eternal joy of the Throne. This is biblical joy; a joy that does not depend on comfort, or happiness, or circumstances, but utterly depends on the blessed fulfillment of the Promises of a Holy God.

PRAYER

Father, lead me into a joy that cannot be shaken, joy rooted in Your character, grounded in my salvation, strengthened through holy thinking, fortified in battle, and revealed to the world as evidence of Your life within me. Form me into a person of joy, not by changing my circumstances, but by transforming my heart. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

DAILY SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINE

Sit quietly with God and ask Him to reveal one place where your joy has been misplaced. Let Him redirect your focus from circumstances to His character. Recall the moment of your salvation and allow gratitude to rise. Meditate on a Scripture that realigns your thinking with truth. Let joy become not just something you feel, but something you practice, a rhythm of trust, a posture of surrender, and a daily agreement with heaven’s perspective.