Once I had a friend who dated this woman.
She was nice, as I recall her, smart and extremely studious. She had ambitions to be top of her class. Yet her drive to excel wound her up a bit tight, in my opinion. She had this wide, bright smile — when she allowed her face to relax. She lived braced for the next exam, which, for her, seemed a year-round sport. Comparing her work with mine, it’s almost as if we attended different universities — or as if she were secretly training for the CIA.
My friend dated this woman, and he assured me they enjoyed “fun” times together. But all I remember is their study dates, quick trips to the cafeteria between library marathons, and endless flashcards. They were a power couple, too busy for a normal life, destined to leave their mark on this world. Until they broke up. I don’t have all the details, but soon after the relationship ended, I heard him do what I hadn’t truly heard before: he laughed.
Sure, I had heard him chuckle before, but never laugh. That’s the difference between grinning and smiling, speaking and praying, singing and worshiping. And his laugh was music not easily forgotten. Colorful as Joseph’s coat, alive as a rainforest, the sound of his joy brightened his listeners. His laugh, unkenneled, became a trademark. The contagious sound erupted from far deeper than the chest.
My friend was happier. And to all appearances, that newfound bliss was due to ending the relationship with this woman. The whole situation serves as an illustration of why Satan is so relentlessly after your joy in God. Let’s connect those dots.
Killed Joys Point to Killjoys
The mathematics of my friend’s gladness seem obvious: friend minus girlfriend equals happiness.
Fairly or unfairly, her presence and his deepest laughter couldn’t coexist. As one disappeared, the other appeared — like Clark Kent and Superman. Such a sudden change in demeanor reflected unfavorably upon the relationship and, right or wrong, upon her influence on his life. With her gone, he loosened up enough to laugh his real laugh; the clouds parted.
Back to Satan. He knows all too well about this connection between our joy (or not) in relation to some person, and how onlookers perceive that person. If the other kills our joy, others will see them as a killjoy. And so, Satan seeks to make us look miserable in relation to God.
Our audible joy (or not) says something about our God. No matter how we assure them otherwise, unbelievers assume our Christian lives are little more than morning study dates in Scripture, making flashcards of rules to memorize, and sneaking brief guilty pleasures during the week between Sunday services. They need to see our delight in God, hear the newfound happiness in our voices. Do they? They often see us more serious than we used to be, but do they also see us happier? Do they suspect we were more satisfied in our previous lives, dead in sins and living for the world?
You see, spiritual warfare rages over who appears to make people most satisfied: God or Satan.
Thus, sounds of human gladness in God taunt Satan’s ears. Saints have understood their joy as a polemic: “You have put more joy in my heart than they have when their grain and wine abound” (Psalm 4:7). This kind of combatant joy affronts Satan, especially when the boast comes from the man deprived of all worldly explanations for his happiness. Such a man provokes the darkness. He causes onlookers to wonder, gets them talking: What does he have that we don’t?
Satan’s Sermon
So count on it. If Satan cannot break you from God, he will attempt to make you look as miserable as possible while serving God. He means to preach about God through you, his manuscript. Your sighs and groans and complaints under the lordship of Christ begin his sermon:
Friends, relatives, neighbors, look at this man formerly free of religion now wasting away under its yoke. He was happy once, bright once, knew how to have a good time and carry a normal conversation to entertaining ends. But now the miserable creature has found God, receiving the wage of anxious toil. Further, he would attempt to evangelize you all into his same burdens and groans. He offers all that which he unhappily bears. Mark him well. Beware this uphill, narrow, and laughterless life of the Christian.
The point is not that we audibly laugh in every circumstance. There is “a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:4). The point is that we should be known for bursts of laughter and dancing, not endless weeping and weightiness. Our regular expressions of joy serve as an act of spiritual warfare against one who labors tirelessly to make us curse God to his face and grumble behind his back.
Here is the inconsistency that the enemy loves. God is my Father, you say — yet you’re always fretful. He is the Joy of my joy — yet you’re consistently gloomy. He is my all in all — yet even your children weary from your dissatisfaction. Christ is my Prince of Peace — yet you’re short-tempered. Jesus is my Good Shepherd who gives all by grace — yet you’re seldom grateful. Everyone can see it but us.
In other words, God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him — and God is greatly dishonored in us when we are consistently curmudgeonly and dissatisfied in him.
Laugh, Christian
Our duty, then, is to make it abundantly clear: Our best joys and laughter were had not before coming to Christ but after. We aim to make it plain that before the Spirit made us new, we did not know what real happiness was. But now that we have him, we have more than we could ask for, more than we deserve. We live in the desert, testifying that we have water the world knows not of.
Consider how this relates to the use of our mouths. One reason God hates the grumbling of his children is this relation between our satisfaction and his glory. “Do all things without grumbling or disputing, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and twisted generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world” (Philippians 2:14–15).
Consider what disrespect this respectable sin of grumbling offers to God. It says we have no Father in heaven, no Friend on earth, no Shepherd able to provide for us. The sound of our anxieties indulged ignores the birds of the air and the splendor of the flowers, claiming that whoever cares for these has not been caring for us. Complaining tells the sad tale of the orphan. But our God has not left us orphans.
So laugh, Christian. Make a habit of smiling. Relax those face muscles and rejoice, for he has destined you not for wrath but for eternal life. Put to death those grumbles and petty complaints that consume those without our hope. Yes, weep with those who weep, and sing of God’s goodness to you, of his love for you, which towers over every creeping dissatisfaction of this life. Show a world desperate for answers, desperate for life, desperate for a cure that you have happily found all in him.
