What It’s Like to Write a Book About Joy in the Middle of a Pandemic

Joylessness in the Church and culture is an epidemic.

Yet, the God of joy, and therefore the joy of God, are permanently accessible to us through the “It is finished” of the cross, and the absolute victory of the resurrection of Jesus.

Researching and writing the manuscript for my book, The Surprising Power of Joy, has coincided with one of the most personally challenging seasons of ministry that I have ever walked through for a variety of reasons. In addition, conceptualized over a year before publication, it is interesting that this book has been released during a global pandemic that has changed the face of culture like few things have in this generation. Anything and everything that we rely upon for entertainment, comfort, refreshing, and normality has been removed from us.

“ If there was ever a time to rediscover and recapture the fullness of the joy of God in the Church and in our culture, it is now.”

It is ironic then, most of all to me, that I have writen a book focused upon joy during a time in my life and culture, where in the natural joy has been quite difficult to find. God and I have talked extensively about this, and we have laughed. I have cried. Unrenewed parts of my thinking have wanted me to retreat from writing and resume again when joy was dripping from every crevice of my life. But the Father—the everlasting, uncaused, self-existent One, the self-sufficient, self-sustaining, luminous, radiant One—loves to choose the darkest but most opportune times to speak. If there was ever a time to rediscover and recapture the fullness of the joy of God in the Church and in our culture, it is now.

My hope is that the body of Christ – that you – will be inspired to reclaim and rediscover joy on an unprecedented level, because we will need it for the days ahead. Joy for followers of Jesus is not dependent upon or determined by our circumstances, whether challenging or full of ease. Joy, instead, is an inward marking, an inside-furnishing provided by Holy Spirit that is available to us permanently, consistently, and without end. Never diminished in itself, as it comes from Him, is found in Him as an attribute of Himself. Rather, our response to it, our awareness of it, or our ability to cooperate with joy can become tarnished for various reasons. If we let it.

“We are invited to cultivate the internal atmosphere of our lives so that Joy spills over, impacting and shaping the atmosphere that surrounds us, so others get to experience it.”

May we remember that joy is who God wants to be for us; and more than that, a reminder that the Joy Giver lives in us and wants to operate dynamically through us to bring change to our spheres of influence. We are invited to cultivate the internal atmosphere of our lives so that it spills over, impacting and shaping the atmosphere that surrounds us, so others get to experience it. It is almost as if we were created to be God-carriers – imagine that! A people through whom He would dwell in and manifest His presence. Now that is a thought worth thinking.

My prayer for you is that profound measures, dimensions, and atmospheres of joy would emanate from your life so dynamically that earthquakes of joyful change would happen everywhere you walk—just as it did with Him.