Take with you the joy of Easter to the home, and make that home bright with more unselfish love, more hearty service; take it into your work, and do all in the name of the Lord Jesus; take it to your heart, and let that heart rise anew on Easter wings to a higher, a gladder, a fuller life; take it to the dear graveside and say there the two words “Jesus lives!” and find in them the secret of calm expectation, the hope of eternal reunion.
Joy
James H Aughey
Cheerfulness sharpens the edge and removes the rust from the mind. A joyous heart supplies oil to our inward machinery, and makes the whole of our powers work with ease and efficiency; hence it is of the utmost importance that we maintain a contented, cheerful, genial disposition.
Charles R Swindoll
Deep contended joy comes from a place of complete security and confidence [in God] – even in the midst of trial.
C S Lewis
The most valuable thing the Psalms do for me is to express that same delight in God which made David dance. I am not saying that this is so pure or profound a thing as the love of God reached by the greatest Christian saints and mystics. But I am not comparing it with that, I am comparing it with the merely dutiful ‘church-going’ and laborious ‘saying our prayers’ to which most of us are, thank God not always, but often, reduced. Against that it stands out as something astonishingly robust, virile, and spontaneous; something we may regard with an innocent envy and may hope to be infected by as we read.
Mother Teresa
Joy is prayer – Joy is strength – Joy is love – Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls. God loves a cheerful giver. She gives most who gives with joy. The best way to show our gratitude to God and the people is to accept everything with joy. A joyful heart is the inevitable result of a heart burning with love. Never let anything so fill you with sorrow as to make you forget the joy of the Christ risen.
Francis Chan
The Bible teaches that true joy is formed in the midst of the difficult seasons of life.
Andrew Murray
Love and joy ever keep company. Love, denying and forgetting itself for the brethren and the lost, living in them, finds the joy of God. ‘The kingdom of God is joy in the Holy Ghost.’
Alan King
Jesus remains the absolute point of everything. He is the one our eyes fasten on, the one our heart longs for and the one who is worth losing everything to gain. That eternal perspective, that intimacy with Him, that hunger and longing, that romance and that realization that He is everything we could ever need, is the constant answer to every assault from the devil. We laugh in the face of adversity, knowing that we have a perfect Saviour who brings a joy that few ever truly experience. We cannot function without that joy. It is the driving force that both sustains and nourishes us. It is indeed our constant strength. When we lack answers, His joy lifts us above the questions and positions us in a place of perfect peace. We remain childlike because we trust Him with every fibre of our being. We play at the feet of the One who is love. We dare not stray into our own intellect but pursue the wisdom that simply says ‘Yes Jesus.’ As we drown in the tidal waves of His love, we find a footing that is solid, secure and beautiful.
William Law
Receive every day as a resurrection from death, as a new enjoyment of life; meet every rising sun with such sentiments of God’s goodness, as if you had seen it, and all things, new-created upon your account: and under the sense of so great a blessing, let your joyful heart praise and magnify so good and glorious a Creator.
Elton Trueblood
The Christian is joyful, not because he is blind to injustice and suffering, but because he is convinced that these, in the light of the divine sovereignty, are never ultimate. The Christian can be sad, and often is perplexed, but he is never really worried, because he knows that the purpose of God is to bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ.