How to Obtain Joy

The fight for joy is a struggle to trust God with the burdens of life. It is a fight for freedom from worry. It is a fight for hope and peace and joy, which are all threatened by unbelief and doubt about God's promises.

It is a fight to join Jesus on the Calvary road and stay there with Him, no matter what.





How was He sustained on that road?
Hebrews 12:2 answers, "For the joy that was set before Him He endured the cross."
In other words, He trusted God and knew that God would not disappoint in death.

How do we obtain that kind of joy in God?
By hearing the Word of the cross and preaching it to ourselves...

I believe in the power of the indwelling Word of God to
solve a thousand problems before they happen,
and to heal a thousand wounds after they happen,
and to kill a thousand sins in the moment of temptation,
and to sweeten a thousand days with the "drippings of honeycomb."
~John Piper

The main art in the matter of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. You have to take yourself in hand, you have to address yourself, preach to yourself, question yourself…You must turn on yourself, upbraid yourself, condemn yourself, exhort yourself, and say to yourself: “Hope thou in God” ---instead of muttering in this depressed, unhappy way, and then you must go on to remind yourself of God, Who God is, and what God has done, and what God has pledged Himself to do.
~Martin Lloyd-Jones


"Blessed [or happy] is the man
who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
nor stands in the path of sinners,
nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and in His law he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree
planted by the rivers of water,
that brings forth its fruit in its season,
whose leaf also shall not wither;
and whatever he does shall prosper."
Psalm 1:1-3



Some excerpts taken from When I Don't Desire God, How to Fight For Joy by John Piper