The Unexpected Path to Joy
Happiness is the most sought after commodity of the modern age. And yet, it's also the most elusive. Many of us are feeling the exhausting side-effects of this restless pursuit. We try to curate our lives, chasing positive vibes and avoiding pain, seemingly, at all costs. But what if our frantic pursuit of happiness is precisely what is keeping us from it?
The New York Timesrecently highlighted our complicated relationship with negative emotions. Journalist Melinda Moyer noted that people who habitually judge feelings like sadness, fear, and anger as "bad" actually experience more anxiety and feel less satisfied with their lives than those who perceive their negative emotions neutrally.
Suffering and negative emotions aren't the enemies of joy; they're invitations to it. As executive coach Joe Hudson beautifully put it on a recent podcast, "Joy is a matriarch of a family of emotions, and she will not enter a home where her children aren't welcome.
Real joy isn't found in capturing the best this world has to offer. It's knowing your life isn't invested in a collapsing kingdom. It's knowing your life is entirely secure in heaven. As the Apostle Paul writes in Colossians 3:3-4, "For you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God." Joy is the profound epiphany of seeing Jesus and knowing you are secure in him.
So, how do we actually experience this kind of joy?
Well, the book of Ecclesiastes offers us some wonderfully accessible and practical wisdom. As we so often learn in spiritual formation, finding true joy isn't about doing more; it is about doing less. It's discovering the deep, settling peace of being rather than the exhausting, endless striving of doing.
Let me highlight two disciplines that help us embrace joy.
The first is to resist control.
Experiencing joy means resisting the urge to be our own gods. In Ecclesiastes 2:24, the writer observes, "There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God."
We don't get joy by earning it and then trying to hold onto it. Whether we rely on strict religious rituals or relentless earthly ambition, treating joy as something we can gather and collect ourselves is, as Solomon says, "a striving after wind." Earning and controlling are forms of vanity. But true joy is about receiving your life with God as a gift. So, we need to resist control.
The second discipline is to confess sin.
Joy requires the removal of vexation. Ecclesiastes 11:10 tells us to "Remove vexation from your heart, and put away pain from your body." Ray Ortlund explains that vexation is a toxic cocktail of bitterness, discontent, self-pity, envy, and fear, all of which either come from or cause us to sin.
So, do we remove this vexation? We confess our sin. We don't try to behavior-modify our way out of misery. Instead, we ask the Lord to forgive and restore you. Nothing is more deeply joyful for a son or daughter than being reunited with our Heavenly Father in reconciliation. By grace he's always ready to forgive (see 1 John 1:9).
The unexpected path to joy requires two things: resisting control and confessing sin. You see, joy is the fruit of trust. It’s trusting the Lord to provide the joy we cannot manufacture, and trusting him to hold us safely in the midst of all our emotions. That's where real joy lives. And that's precisely what Jesus did for us. As the writer of Hebrews reminds us, "For the joy set before him, he endured the cross." Jesus didn't avoid the pain; he walked through it, trusting the Father. And because he did, that same joy is now available to you and me.
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Resources & Further Reading
Lean Into Negative Emotions. It’s the Healthy Thing to Do. Melinda Wenner Moyer’s New York Times article outlines the mental health benefits of emotional acceptance. (You can also read the original 2023 study published in the journal Emotion right here).
Stages of Emotional Development: The Art of Accomplishment podcast episode featuring executive coach Joe Hudson, where he unpacks the profound idea that "Joy is a matriarch of a family of emotions."
Eat, Drink, and Be Merry: A Gospel Call to Bold Enjoyment: Ray Ortlund’s brand-new book dives deep into the wisdom of Ecclesiastes 11:9–10, exploring what it really means to put away "vexation" and receive our lives as a gift from God.
To Be or To Do? A helpful article from Jeremy Linneman (The Gospel Coalition) that wrestles with the exhausting modern addiction to "doing" versus the deep, settling peace of "being."
The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry: John Mark Comer's excellent book on how the modern obsession with efficiency and doing more is the greatest enemy of our spiritual lives.
