Dan and Wheaton Illinois writes in to ask this, Pastor John, I have greatly appreciated

your emphasis on joy in the Christian life.

Indeed, the psalmist tells us to rejoice always.

Paul describes himself as sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

Since the Bible commands us to have joy in God, are we in sin to the degree that we lack

joy or could our lack of joy sometimes be the result of sin but not a sin in itself?

Whenever we're dealing with the emotional dimension of the Christian life, which is most of

it, I think, a simple yes and no answer is seldom adequate.

And I was thinking about why this is and it might be helpful for me to just think out

loud with Dan for a minute.

Why endless qualifications sometimes seem to be necessary.

One is that words that refer to emotions are so flexible because they carry meaning,

but the meaning, the name of an emotion has to correspond with your experience of the

emotion because that's the nature of emotions and our experiences of emotions are so different.

So the words, when we say them to each other, may not correspond to exactly the same thing.

For example, if you've never experienced anger and I use the word anger, it just won't

carry meaning for you.

Same thing would be pity, fear, guilt, lust, pride, greed, joy, admiration, hope, thankfulness,

all of those, the hard words, the negative words and the positive words, they all refer

to experiences that you may or may not have and that you might have very differently than

someone else.

So it's hard to give simple answers regarding emotions when people's meanings for the

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