God has hard-wired us for joy. This fruit of God’s Spirit sits ready to surprise and even overwhelm us, and is a sure sign of God’s presence.  

If we work at plumbing deeper depths of intimacy with God.

If we fuel that ambition with love, with our hearts open to another shore.

If we boldly approach the throne, and believe we belong there, behind the veil.

Then a double happiness, some call joy, will be the reward.

The fruit of joy is a deep sense of well-being in the moment.  It’s been likened to foam left after an ocean wave recedes.  It’s what we feel when God brings us into an unmistakable encounter with himself. Joy is our birthright, and reward for keeping in step with the Spirit. How can we touch heaven without some of heaven leaving an impression?    

Last week while speaking to an auditorium of young people, God surprised me by taking my prepared notes in a different direction.  He acted like a teleprompter, giving words I hadn’t known he wanted me to say.  While I left the stage I wept, because without warning joy had filled me.

It happened again this morning while studying in the book of Hebrews. God’s spirit pointed out an area I had drifted in, and overwhelmed by his grace, I quietly shed tears.  This response of God meeting us, this residual of joy, this tap on the shoulder from heaven, is what is called a double happiness. 

Where does this unexpected residual of double happiness come from?  The Bible tells us from the heart of God. “In His presence is fullness of joy, at his right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

Though joy shows up different for all of us, there’s one common thread true in each moment, the idea of awe.   God will use mystery to reveal Himself through the ordinary and mundane moments of life. Why did He decide to alter my speech to the young people?  The simple answer is that it turned out better because he did?  But there’s a deeper more lasting explanation.  He was nudging me away from sight, and into faith. 

Do we give much thought to the invisible world all around us?  He wants to remind us, and often uses moments where he breaks in with joy, that He’s walking along side as the Comforter.  Even when times come, and they will for all of us, when our options have run their course, and we find ourselves at wits end.

My friend Larry used to say, ‘God has me in a fix, and won’t fix it until he’s fixed me.’ There’s not a person I know in all the world that suffered as much as him. But he always said that seasons where the lights grew dim, prepared him for the times when sight seemed endless, and he would describe for me how, in spirit, he walked above the sea by a cliff, where hundreds of feet below, the roaring surf crashed upon stone and sand.  ‘I feel like a kite, lifted by the wind of the Spirit,’ he would say.  ‘But I’ve walked with God long enough to know, these seasons, or moments aren’t meant to last forever.  The kite comes down to earth, and instead of crash landing, it’s caught by the Hand that hoisted it in the first place.’ 

The kite caught in the wind of an endless sky that Larry described is double happiness, the joy birthed because God decided to remind us of the invisible which transcends our senses and moves our heart to a deeper adoration. 

So today, I ask myself, do I see with eyes that draw substance from the invisible? 

How about you?