On my seventy-eighth birthday, I was feeling sorry for myself. This verse came to mind: “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10) A very familiar verse. What does that mean? Is that the best translation of the Hebrew? Is “joy” a verb or a noun – an activity or a feeling? Who’s joy? The Lord’s – but in the gospel of John, Jesus spoke of both “His joy” and “our joy”. And in the gospel of Matthew, He spoke of “entering into the joy of the master”. What is “the master’s joy”?
So, I had these questions, and searched the Scriptures for answers. This is what I found: Joy is a place – a spiritual place we enter into by faith, and abide therein. Those born of the Spirit have a “foretaste” now, which encourages us, but also makes us long for that which is “set before us” – “our inheritance in heaven”.
