Joy – Gladness of heart; exuberance
When I look in a thesaurus for the word “joy“, the words that flowed were almost non-stop. If you cross-reference each of the words that you find for “joy”, you find yourself coming up with more and more definitions. Now these were just a few of the words that I found when I cross-referenced joy:
Jubilation
Beatitude
Gladness
Delight
Exultation
Rapture
Satisfaction
Bliss
Elation
Contentment
A good friend of mine likes to cross-reference words in Greek and define the meanings of these Greek words to gain a better understanding. I tried this and found out there was a “method to his madness”. The Greek word for joy is “Euphrainio”. This is where the word “euphoria” must be derived from. Euphoria is defined as “be gladdened, enjoy oneself, take delight in, be merry”
Just as there seemed to never be an end to all of the synonyms of joy, there should never be an end to our actual feeling of joy. We should have joy everlasting because the “joy” of the Lord is our strength.
After all of these definitions, is there any wonder why “Joy” is the second most important Fruit of the Spirit?
This post can be cross-referenced with an earlier BS post about Fruits of the Spirit-Love
More to follow…
