This article is an excerpt from Samuel Brengle’s book, The Soul Winner’s Secret. In it, he addresses the need for the believer to recognize the joy that it is to walk with Jesus and work with Him to share the gospel and make disciples. He points out that God desires to fill the believer with joy as he serves, and that the joy of a Christian is often what draws unbelievers to Christ.
“The joy of the Lord is your strength,” said Nehemiah. “Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation,” prayed David. “I feel it my duty to be as happy as the Lord wants me to be,” wrote McCheyne, the gifted and deeply spiritual young Scotch preacher, who was wonderfully successful in winning souls.
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God wants His people to be full of joy. “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full.” said Jesus. (John 15:11) And again He said, “Ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full” (John 16:24). “And these things write we unto you that your joy might be full,” wrote John. (1 John 1:4)
“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,” wrote Paul, and again he writes, “The Kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost.” Joy in the Holy Ghost is an oceanic current that flows unbroken through the holy, believing soul, though surrounded by seas of trouble and compassed about by infirmities and afflictions and sorrows.
We have thought of Jesus [only] as “the Man of Sorrows” until we overlook His fullness of exultant joy. (Luke 10:21, John 15: 11)
Joy can and should be cultivated, as is faith or any other fruit of the Spirit by appropriating by faith the words that were spoken and written for the express purpose of giving us fullness of joy.
“Now the God of hope will fill you with all joy and peace in believing,” wrote Paul to the Romans. It is by believing, by meditating on these words and holding them in our minds and hearts until we have gotten all the sweetness out of them as we would hold honey in our mouths.
[Joy can be cultivated] by exercise, even as faith or love or patience is exercised. This we do by rejoicing in the Lord and praising God for His goodness and mercy, and shouting when the joy wells up in our souls under the pressure of the Holy Spirit.
Many people quench the Spirit of joy and praise, and so gradually lose it. But let them repent, confess, pray and believe and then begin to praise God again and He will see to it that they have something to praise Him for, and their joy will convict sinners and prove a mighty means of winning them to Jesus.
Who can estimate the power there must have been in the joy that filled the heart of Peter and surged through the souls and beamed on the faces and flashed from the eyes of the 120 fire-baptized disciples, while he preached that Pentecostal sermon which won three thousand bigoted enemies to the cross of a crucified Christ?
O Lord, still “make Thy ministers a flame of fire,” and flood the world with Thy mighty joy!
