THE JOY OF SALVATION

The joy of Salvation was brought by the Holy Spirit when He came into our hearts at salvation and is maintained by Him. 

It is the joy that comes from the understanding and appreciation that you and God are now one. 

We did not work for this joy, it came when we simply opened up our hearts to receive God’s gift that was brought to us by the death and resurrection of Jesus and we continue to experience it daily as long as we are in fellowship with the Holy Spirit. 

The joy is with the Holy Spirit, He prompted us the day we got born again to respond to God’s offer and accept Jesus as our Lord and we did. He came with this joy and it continues to flow from Him to us like a stream or river as we continue to yield to His promptings in our lives daily.

Today, the Holy Spirit seeks to play a greater role in our lives than He currently does, His inability to do this is what causes the joy to wane.

Someone may say ‘He indwells us, so we are in fellowship with Him always’. Well yes, it is supposed to be so, only that our will is involved and it is one thing the Holy Spirit does not force. 

Just like a husband and a wife in a contractual and God recognized marriage relationship can stay under the same roof and not talk/relate positively for months, just like a child and the mom or the dad can be under the same roof and not relate positively for years, it is possible for the believer to walk out of fellowship with the Holy Spirit for days, months or even years, even though He indwells them.

Walking out of fellowship with the Holy Spirit cuts off the joy of our salvation because He is the source of it, it flows from Him to us like a stream and the flow is maintained by fellowship and obedience.

This joy that the Holy Spirit gives us cannot be found in anything or anyone else but Him. It is the joy that God desires that His children have always, the joy of His presence and union with us.

The Holy Spirit is God with us here on earth today, He is God working on earth operationally today. If He does not work, God does not work. There is nothing God the Father will do today on earth outside the Holy Spirit.

The kingdom of God is not in meat and drinks (man-made rules and regulations) but God inspired righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit (Romans 14:17). Where these three are lacking, one may not say ‘I am walking or living in the reality of the Kingdom of God’. 

These works of the Holy Spirit keep the Kingdom of God going here on earth and lead to its increase. It is when believers walk and live in this joy that the glory of God becomes common place among them. The bible calls it joy unspeakable, full of glory (1 Peter 1:8).

We must ensure that we keep our fellowship with the Holy Spirit unhindered and alive. He is all the help we have from God here on earth and without staying in fellowship with Him, we cannot have good success.

DOES GOD STOP LOVING HIS OWN?

If we do not experience this joy, it does not mean God does not love us or His love for us has diminished. His love for us caused Him to give us His Spirit, what love can be more than God sharing with us His very essence? 

We only demonstrate our love for Him in reciprocity by allowing the Holy Spirit have first place in our lives. The benefits of God’s love and care can only be fully experienced within the joy the Holy Spirit brings, the reality of which we got to know when He came into our hearts and re-created us.

If you have never experienced this joy, then maybe you have not invited Jesus into your heart to be your Lord and savior. It is beyond feelings, it is an assurance in your spirit that you are now one with God. The Holy Spirit bears witness with our spirits that we are the sons of God (Romans 8:16).

It is the absence of this joy which is peculiar to the saved only (that is, the body of Christ, the spiritual Church), that has led to the pursuit of other things by the physical Church to make them peculiar. The physical Church is a religious institution run by the same system that runs the world. 

To be peculiar, the physical Church now wants to have the most money, control the most people, have and control the most real estate, have the most crowd, control the government, control the economy, if possible control God etc. 

Little do most believers realize that you do not need to be born again to have and control all these things they now chase after. Having these things does not make a believer peculiar, the world also has them!

The joy of salvation however cannot be obtained or attained by the world because the world does not and cannot have the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit and the joy He gives makes the believer peculiar, this should be our pursuit.

When the bible says joy unspeakable, it means joy that cannot be explained by natural understanding or by the mind. It does not depend on anything that is natural, material, financial or man-made. That is what beats the world! ‘How can a people be so joyous and free despite not having what the world seeks to make it happy’?  

This is the question the world will ask when we return to full fellowship with the Holy Spirit in our individual lives and the glory of God radiates through us. 

If you are a believer and still seek after the things of the world to make you happy, you may have temporarily lost the joy of your salvation, a sign of broken fellowship with the Holy Spirit. All you need do is go back to the obeying Him, starting from your personal and most intimate affairs and the joy comes back. 

Then you will realize you do not need all the spooky music that promotes the lusts of the flesh and eyes and the pride of life to make you feel ‘alright’, or the ‘high’ which the drink, prescription drugs, joint or load brings or the approval and company of that person or people who clearly do not love or fear God.

One thing about this joy is that when you have it you know and others know too. Its absence from the believer leaves a void, question marks, discontent, irritation, restlessness, exhibition of hideous tendencies, criticisms of whatever is godly and all such anomalies that typifies when fish is out of water. 

In its absence, the believer finds it difficult to fellowship with other believers, prayer becomes a burden, studying and meditating on the word become a burden, witnessing ceases, pride comes in, arrogance and naughtiness find expression, walking in love becomes difficult, among other such undesirable traits. 

If we ever find ourselves in such a situation, we must not excuse it away or try to resolve it on our own, we cannot. But God understands and is ever ready to help us (Psalms 103:13) if we will simply return to our first love.

In Revelation 2:4, Jesus admonished the Church at Ephesus (and the entire Church through the ages) to return to their first love. There would not have been any need for the admonition if there was no departure in the first instance. Once saved forever saved you say but Christ admonishes to watch yourself.

Who will agree that they have departed from their first love except those that are sincere enough to measure themselves against how things were when they first believed? For most believers, the so many things we do that we try to excuse away would not have been at all, if we have remained full of the joy of our salvation. 

Had we remained full of His joy, we would not separate ourselves from believers that walk in the fear of God (blaming it on them Jude 1:19), we would not be keep malice and excuse it away as minding our own business, we would not hate studying the bible, we would not hate praying without ceasing, we would not be averse to being more involved in our local churches than we are and so forth. 

If you notice, we become like these as a result of occupying ourselves with other things that we think will bring us joy and satisfaction but which never do. These things may satisfy the flesh temporarily, be acceptable to the society and other believers may even do them. But we are not answerable to the society, we are to God, and His Spirit within us watches over His word to ensure we live in line with it. 

Making God’s word the final word in our lives keeps us in fellowship with the Holy Spirit and there is a call for us to go back to our first love. 

God desires that we experience the joy of salvation as a daily benefit because we are His children. Without this joy, we cannot survive in this world that we live in today, this joy is the source of our strength against all evil (Nehemiah 8:10). 

We must go back to walking hand in hand with the Holy Spirit so He can take us into the fullness of God, empowering us to live victoriously in this life. The bible calls this walking in the spirit, the antidote God has given the Church against carnality and the works of the devil. 

The Holy Spirit is willing and waiting to cause a continuous flow of the joy of salvation in our lives, we only need to ask God for restoration and submit ourselves to His Spirit again if we have gone our own way. If we haven’t, let us take our fellowship with Him to the next level, there is never too much of the joy He brings.        

Meditate upon these things; give thyself wholly to them; that thy profiting may appear to all (1 Timothy 4:15). 


Pastor Gboye Omolayo is the Resident Pastor of Church@Allen, Allen TX, USA. He is a prolific writer and preacher who believes the efficacy of the word of God and the potency of the works of the Holy Spirit are still available to the Church today, as were at the Church’s infancy. He is the publisher of this blog.