We live.

We live in a fallen, broken world where suffering is inevitable, and the Bible is clear

that Christians aren't immune to pain and sadness.

So what's the secret to finding joy, even in the midst of hardship?

And what hinders that joy?

We'll find out today on Truth for Life, as Alistair Begg teaches from Galatians chapter 5, verse 22.

But the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,

faithfulness, gentleness, self-control against such things. There is no law.

Let me begin in this way. In 2009, speaking at a conference on the West Coast, someone came to me

after the talk. I can't remember what I was addressing, but they slipped me a note, which I have

kept in my file ever since. It reads as follows, Dear Pastor Begg, a friend was suffering through brain cancer and its treatments.

His relationship with Jesus was such that the nurse on duty wrote as a critical comment on his

chart, Mr. X is inappropriately joyful.

Since then, says the writer of the note,

it has become one of my goals

to be inappropriately joyful.

Now, presumably, in that instance,

the nurse was unable to see how joy

could possibly accompany such dreadful and difficult suffering.

It is a fairly understandable reaction, isn't it? And it allows us to make the distinction which we

must make between happiness and joy. Happiness, our English word happiness, is rooted in the Latin

hap, which is chance. And so we tend to think of happiness, indeed the pursuit of happiness,

...