The Joyless and Merely Existing

Don’t let your past dictate your future. God intended for you to have the abundant life—not lifelessness.

March’s Awakening, Day 15

The joyless Christian reveals himself by having negative thoughts and talk about others, in a lack of concern for others welfare, and a failure to intercede on others behalf. Joyless believers are self-centered, selfish, proud, and often vengeful and their self-centeredness inevitably manifests itself in prayerlessness.

 —John MacArthur

Too unconcerned to love and too passionless to hate, too detached to be selfish and too lifeless to be unselfish, too indifferent to experience joy and too cold to express sorrow, they are neither dead nor alive; they merely exist.

 —Martin Luther King Jr.

We all desire to be happy. That is something that is innate in human nature; nobody wants to be miserable, though I am aware of the fact that there are people who seem to enjoy being miserable and some who seem to find their happiness in being unhappy!

 —Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Either the day must come when joy prevails and all the makers of misery are no longer able to infect it, or else, for ever and ever, the makers of misery can destroy in others the happiness they reject for themselves.

 —C. S. Lewis 

fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart. Hebrews 12:2–3 NIV 

When I said, “My foot is slipping,” your unfailing love, Lord, supported me. When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought me joy. Psalm 94:18–19 NIV  

            The joyless. The merely existing. Those who are miserable and unhappy for the sake of being miserable and unhappy. And maybe the worst—the makers of misery, inflicting their misery upon others. We all know those individuals, and maybe one of those describes you.

We have all had to endure pain and hardship, and some of us have had to endure abuses of every kind. It is most difficult to overcome genetic predispositions to anxiety, depression, anger, addictions, and many other of the maladies that plague us. It is also extremely difficult to overcome those emotional and experiential events that have traumatized us in our past. Many of us need not only the help of God, but also professional help in the form of counseling and medicine. God has given us all of this and more to help us overcome the seemingly impossible. As difficult as all this is, we cannot give up and succumb to being those joyless, miserable, unhappy, merely existing, misery-makers. It certainly is of no benefit to us to be that way and it assuredly affects everyone around us in negative ways.  The first step of every cure is recognition that you have the problem and then seeking out all available help and options. Remember, sometimes God removes the thorn, sometimes He does not. Somehow, someway, God can work it for His good—if we let Him.

What is God’s Spirit, the Divine Whisper, speaking to you? Let God work the evil for good, and seek help in every way. God never intended for you to exist in a negative and oppressed way.