The Bible Study Podcast, episode 47. This is the sixth episode about what the church is and what it's called to be. This episode will focus on joy.

Welcome to the Bible study podcast.

I'm your host, Chris Christensen.

This episode, as I said, is about the church being joyful.

And it's interesting because depending on where you grew up in or out of the church,

this may seem like something to you that is very obvious,

or this may seem like something that has nothing to do with the

church.

So let's look at what the Bible says.

When the Bible lists the fruit of the spirit, those characteristics that we should expect

to see in mature Christians, the very first thing on the list is love, which we talked about before. And the next

thing is joy. Love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, long suffering,

and self-control. Often during the church's history, there has been an emphasis on piety,

which is good, but sometimes to the expense of joy,

there seems to be a belief that to be religious, you need to not show joy. You need to be very,

very serious, which is interesting because if you open up your concordance, or if you look on Biblegateway.org, which is where I do a lot of my studying, and you search for the word joy, it's all over the Bible, old and New Testament.

As something that is expected as a natural byproduct of our faith, we are expected to show joy.

And let's look at some of those verses.

One of my favorite verses about joy comes from 1st Peter, verses 3 through 8 of chapter 1.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In his great mercy, he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an

inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you, who through faith are

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