Quotes about Joy

Bishop Ryle assured his flock, "Those whom you laid in the grave with many tears are in good keeping: you will yet see them again with joy. Believe it, think it, rest on it. It is all true."[9]

Wesley said, "Every Christian is happy; . . . he who is not happy is not a Christian.

Our degree of happiness in life largely depends on: the amount of happiness we believe should be rightfully ours our ability to find delight in a fallen world God will redeem our ability to see the little things—the ten thousand reasons for happiness that surround us that we easily ignore

What if one day we discover that God has wasted nothing in our life on Earth? What if we see that every agony was part of giving birth to an eternal joy?

In the mid-1600s, Puritan John Gibbon said, "God alone is enough, but without him, nothing [is enough] for thy happiness."[218] Whether or not we're conscious of it, since God is the fountainhead of happiness, the search for happiness is always the search for God.

Thomas Watson (1620—1686), a Puritan preacher and author, said, "He has no design upon us, but to make us happy. . . . Who should be cheerful, if not the people of God?

In the truest sense, Christian pilgrims have the best of both worlds. We have joy whenever this world reminds us of the next, and we take solace whenever it does not.

John Wesley said, "A sour religion is the devil's religion."[284] The sure way to have a sour religion is to believe in a sour God. We play right into the devil's hands when we fail to recognize and teach the happiness of God.

So look out a window. Take a walk. Talk with your friend. Use your God-given skills to paint or draw or build a shed or write a book. But imagine it - all of it - in its original condition. The happy dog with the wagging tail, not the snarling beast, beaten and starved. The flowers unwilted, the grass undying, the blue sky without pollution. People smiling and joyful, not angry, depressed, and empty.

Being happy in God and living righteously tastes far better for far longer than sin does. When my hunger and thirst for joy is satisfied by Christ, sin becomes unattractive. I say no to immorality not because I hate pleasure but because I want the enduring pleasure found in Christ.

We should thank God for every stream of joy in our lives while recognizing that Christ is the ocean from which every stream flows.

God alone is the Fountain of Life. Without Him there could be neither life nor joy, neither abundance nor delights.