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Have you noticed how people pose for pictures? Some have a stern-faced, dead serious look, while some make faces and others are plain happy. Those pictures capture an important moment in your life. And when they are put in an album or saved on your computer – it brings those memories alive. 

Your face is the mirror of your soul. Your face generally describes what goes on – on the inside (unless of course, you are a very good actor). 

So how should a Christian appear? I believe ‘JOY’ is a distinct mark of a Christian soul.

Someone put it this way: ‘Happiness comes from happenings but Joy comes from Jesus.’ We need to understand that the joy the world gives is not the same as the joy the Spirit gives. God’s Joy is supernatural and free. This joy can never be taken away.

Happiness is a state of your emotion but joy is who you are in Christ. It is the gladness of heart that comes from knowing and abiding in Christ. It’s your true Christian nature! A Christian has joy in the midst of his trials and tribulations.

In Nehemiah 8:10, he told the Israelites that the joy of the Lord would be their strength. Galatians 5:22 speaks of Joy as part of the fruit of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 2:42, the early Church believers had the joy of the Lord and gladness of heart. The Kingdom of our Lord is characterized by “the Joy in the Holy Spirit”

Romans 14:17,18 “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because anyone who serves Christ in this way is pleasing to God and receives human approval.”

The Apostle Paul wrote Phil 4:4 when he was bound in chains and imprisoned in a Roman dungeon. He said “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say Rejoice.” What an incredible attitude of a Victorious Christian.

Speaking to the early Christian believers, Peter admonished “Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy” (I Peter 1:8)

I love the lyrics to an old song that goes this way…

“This Joy that I have, the world didn’t give it to me,

And if the world didn’t give it, the world can’t take it away.”

“This smile on my dial, the world didn’t give it to me,

And if the world didn’t give it, the world can’t take it away.”

Christians should be the best advertisement of real joy because our Lord has put it into our hearts and the devil can’t do anything to take it away.