The Joy Of Obedience

Joyful are people of integrity, who follow the instructions of the LORD. Joyful are those who obey his laws and search for him with all their hearts.

Psalm 119:1-2

Joy is the hallmark of those who walk with integrity and in step with God’s instruction. God’s law doesn’t weigh us down or hold us back; instead it sets us free. Outside his law, we are making decisions about our behavior based on our own best ideas. But we don’t have the ability to look at situations from every perspective or the power to know what we will encounter next or the wisdom to know the inner workings of the human mind. God created all the complexities of human nature, and he knows how to protect us from self-destruction.

Sociologists and biologists have come to understand that guilt, bitterness, anger, stress—any negative emotions—have a direct effect on the body and the psyche. Those negative emotions actually create chemical and hormonal responses in our bodies that damage our organs and wear out our muscles and compromise our immune systems. Stealth anger ravages our physical systems and spills over into our relationships, poisoning them.

Trying to be our own bosses results in misery at every level. But the by-product of obedience to God is joy. That defies human logic. Shouldn’t it work the other way around? No, thousands of generations of humanity have proved it out.

We are all in a pursuit of joy from the moment we are born. It drives us. We build our lives around what we believe will bring us joy. But anything outside of Jesus is a guaranteed letdown. Walking out our days apart from him and his loving law is a recipe for unhappiness. Spending yourself in pursuit of the joy that eludes you, only to find that it is a dead end, is life’s tragedy. That is what God is protecting you from when he promises that joy is found in walking out his law.

Father, teach me to obey gladly, knowing that the promise of joy flows from walking in your ways.

The loneliest moment in life is when you have just experienced that which you thought would deliver the ultimate, and it has just let you down.

Ravi Zacharias(1946–), Christian apologist and writer