The Joy of the Lord's Salvation

C.S. Lewis once said, "Joy is the serious business of heaven." In today's episode, I talk candidly about how putting together today's episode was a challenge, directly related the word the Lord gave me for the year: Joy. 

Whether it's in a season of needing to confess hidden sin before the Lord, and letting Him dig out deep roots or a season of deepening abiding in Jesus...the Lord's joy is available to us. But it often is cultivated in ways we don't expect.  And it isn't something we can produce on our own. But the good news is that the Lord wants us to have His joy, and He will use whatever means necessary for us to experience His joy in our lives and He will, according to His word, make our joy complete.

Scriptures referenced:

• Psalm 51:10-12
• John 15:1-11
• John 16
• Philippians 4
• Acts 3
• 2 Corinthians 6

You can find me on Instagram / Threads

Transcript

Carrie: 0:05

Hey everyone. Welcome to the first episode of Honey from the Rock in 2026. We made it to the new year. I don't really know what that means yet since it's only six days old, seven days old. That's the see, the whole thing. I don't even know what time it is. I'm still halfway stuck in that indeterminable land where time ceases to have all meaning, which is the week between Christmas Day and New Year's Day. I my brain is still stuck in there a little bit. I feel like I need a permission slip, like when we were in elementary school, to say Carrie needs to be excused from the rest of this week until she can find her brain and declutter some of the fog. That probably will take longer than a week, but hey, we will work with what we've got.

Carrie: 0:54

I am, as always, glad that you are here. And today's episode is going to be interesting. I will confess to you that I have really struggled to put this episode together. Sometimes the Lord is really gracious and kind in the way that he helps me find a theme, figure out what to say, what I'm going to talk about, and it just seems to come together in a snap. And then there are other times when the Lord is still kind and still gracious, but the episode is a wrestle and it is a struggle and it is a fight. And that was today's episode. And so I hope that as we go through this episode and we journey together through what the Lord has shown me this week, what he what he is dealing um with, within me, that you would be encouraged, that we would both be challenged by the Lord in in really beautiful ways, and that by the end of this episode, that the Lord, that we would know that the Lord has shown up and that he has ministered himself to us through his word, and that we come out the other end of this episode together with a deeper, maybe just it's maybe it's just a scaric of knowing the Lord a little bit better.

Carrie: 2:30

So as I was putting together this episode and trying to think about what I wanted to talk about, I I was literally drawing a blank. I it, which is so funny to me because last week I took time with the Lord to really ask the Lord some big picture questions about the podcast, really laying the ministry that he's given me before him. I want to ask him what he's doing. I want to seek his face and his will. I want to know the leading of the Holy Spirit and what he's called me to do. So I was asking some really big questions, and then I was also drilling down into some really detailed uh personal questions, things that I can do to improve, ways that I can grow, all those kinds of things. And it was such a solid time with the Lord. I came, I came out of it really encouraged and feeling like I had a solid sense of direction and the way that I perceived that the Lord is leading me. And then I sat down to record this episode, and it was like every single thing flew right out of my head. Gone. And I have sat staring at the computer screen. The cursor has mercilessly mocked me.

Carrie: 3:46

But where I've landed today is I want to circle back to something I talked about last week. And that's the word that the Lord gave me for 2026. And that word is joy. And on the surface, that probably looks like a real no-brainer. You've listened to me talk about 2025, how it has literally, it literally was the worst year of my life. So much grief and so much loss, and some expected, some not expected, and just a lot of pain for me and my family. And so on the surface, it could look like, well, of course, of course, joy is Carrie's word for 2026. Like she needs joy, her family needs joy. And that's very, very true. But as I have been sitting with the Lord, as I've been reading the word, and I'm reading a couple of books right now actually about joy. And what's hilarious about these two books, and I've I've mentioned one of them before, which is Desiring or Delighting in Jesus, I didn't know picking up that book or Desiring God by John Piper. I did not realize that both of those books are about joy. I had no clue. I liked the premise, you know, and book blurbs are kind of bizarre and super vague now. Like they don't give you a really good picture of what you're reading most of the time. But I just, I just felt like I wanted to read these two books, and both of them are about joy.

Carrie: 5:17

And as I've been studying the word in scripture and as I've been reading these two books, what I have really discovered is where I think the Lord is taking me, at least for now, is that joy is not something that I can produce on my own. And joy is not something that I can find outside of myself, which on the surface sounds funny. But what I mean by it is joy is something that is only produced by the Lord. It is a literal fruit of the Holy Spirit, and it is something that is directly tied to the salvation that the Lord has given us. And when we think about joy, when when you think about the word joy, what comes to your mind? That's the question I want to ask you today and ask you to contemplate as I talk about this today. When you think about the word joy, what comes to mind? Is it a feeling of happiness? Is it a feeling of pleasure? Is it excitability, jumping up and down? What when you think about the word joy, what comes to your mind?

Carrie: 6:36

And when I was doing this exercise by myself of when I think about joy, what comes to mind? I will confess to you that I had a complete blank. And the longer I sat there with just an inability to define joy, I realized that though it is something I have had during different seasons of my life, it's not something that I have experienced in any consistency the last few years. And there are many reasons for that. But I think that the Lord is trying to teach me that joy comes from him, and joy is something I cultivate in him. I can't I'm not in a season where the Lord is showing me joy or how to take joy in things that are external to me. The Lord is showing me that in sitting at his feet, in meditating on his word, in worshiping him, in seeking him out, that joy is something he wants to cultivate between the two of us. Because Jesus tells us in John 15, 11 that he wants his joy to be made full within us, right? These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full or complete.

Carrie: 8:21

And for so many years there were things, there were snatches and glimpses of joy that I got, but I really wanted to find joy externally. I was looking externally for things that I could take joy in. And it was my own definition of joy. It wasn't the scriptural definition of joy that I read to you last week, both the Hebrew and the Greek. But joy is a person, and joy is something that is wholly spiritual. When we look at the word joy in scripture and we look at the places that Jesus used it, we look at where it's it's used in in the Old Testament. There are many, many, many different contexts that the word is used in. But one thing that I have noticed over and over and over again is that it is something that people ask for, and it is something that Jesus desires to give us.

Carrie: 9:31

I really actually like how C.S. Lewis put it in one quote, and I can't remember what book it's from, but he says, Joy is the serious business of heaven. And I I love that because C. S. Lewis was so good at talking in dichotomies, but it's true. I've been studying joy in different contexts and different things. But what has stuck with me are two verses, one out of Psalms and one out of John. And I read both of them to you last week. And one of them I just referenced, that reference of John 15, 11. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made full.

Carrie: 10:18

And then Psalm 51. Psalm 51, which talks about joy, it mentions joy twice, but where my attention has really been caught is when David says in Psalm 51, Create in me a clean heart, God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me away from your presence, and do not take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and sustain me with a willing spirit. It's Psalm 51 is is such a a juggernaut of scripture, right? I mean, there are so many ways that we have quoted from it and and pulled verses from it, and rightfully so. It's an incredible piece of scripture that shows us that the Lord loves a broken spirit and a contrite heart. He loves the repentance of his people. He loves when we come back to him after we have sinned and we and we bow before him and and we confess what we've done, we confess what we are, and he hears it and he forgives us and he brings us back into unbroken fellowship with him. And that union between the two of us is restored.

Carrie: 11:43

But David's language here, there's so much in what he says. Renew these things in me. I love that David he uses that language, right? Because there were many times in David's life before he sinned with Bathsheba, that he had a willing spirit, that the Lord was making a clean heart within him. And yet in his sin, he went back and he had to ask the Lord again, please renew these things in me. By my sin, I've deadened these things within me. I put myself in a place where I couldn't hear you and wouldn't follow you and did what I wanted to do. And if we're honest, you know, we look at David and we're like, oh man, he committed murder and he had, you know, an affair with Bathsheba. And there's lots of dialogue concerning that incident in scripture. But I want to set all of that aside for a second and just look and say, where David landed with what he did with Bathsheba and killing Uriah started in his heart. And it's why he's asking for a clean one.

Carrie: 13:05

You know, we look at David and he's committed this big sin, but it started small within him. And where are there things in our own lives that are starting small that the Lord's trying to catch our attention on that we're not responding to him in? Where is the Lord trying to deal with sin within us? And that sin being not dealt with is actually keeping us from experiencing the joy of the Lord. Walking in peace, walking in unity with the Lord, being able to discern his voice. There are many times where the Lord will withdraw his presence or it's hard to find him, and there are times he does it to build faith. But there are also times that it happens because, you know, again, as as Psalms tells us, if I harbor sin in my heart, the Lord will not hear me.

Carrie: 13:59

And so I want to encourage and challenge all of us today to ask the Lord to examine our hearts. Are there things that we know the Lord wants to give us, and yet we need to make sure that we have dealt with the things that the Lord is requiring us to deal with in order to get them? And I and I'm speaking spiritually. And this this has been my experience because I realized, I realized, and I was sharing this with my mom last week. I think it was earlier this week. Anyway, I was just sharing it with her, that I can look back at my life here recently, and outside of the things that have happened in my life, just looking at my walk with the Lord, one thing that I can see that the Lord is dealing with within me, one thing that He is really trying to uproot from my life is this issue of performance. This issue of trying to be, you know, just I'm doing good works for the Lord and I'm obeying the Lord and I'm you know feeling like I have to be a certain way or be like a certain person, or if my walk with Jesus doesn't look like X, Y, and Z, if it's something that I've seen on Instagram or something, whatever it is, that there's this this unholy yardstick that I have put in my life of performance that is not the Lord and it's not scripture, but it's it's it's a wrong measurement of what spirituality looks like, and he is tearing that down within me. He is making sure that I learn in such beautiful, beautiful ways that I belong to him, that he loves me, that I am called and I have a purpose in his kingdom, but that he desires for me to be with him, that he wants me to rest in him.

Carrie: 16:24

And I know that I talked about this a little bit last week. He wants me to learn these things and to learn according to scripture what it means to walk in him and to walk in obedience and to understand that I was created for good works in the Holy Spirit, and to stop measuring myself by a worldly standard or a false standard in the church, or a standard I have put on myself wrongly and sinfully, by my own personality flaws and character flaws. And you know, you may be listening to this and say, Well, what does this have to do with joy? It has everything to do with joy. It has everything to do with joy. I need the Lord to give me a clean heart. I'm asking for him, and that clean heart comes through confession and repentance and a pursuit of him. I'm asking him to renew a steadfast spirit within me because I know how many times it's easy for me in my flesh to say, I don't want to do this anymore. I'm tired. Or if something, you know, inconveniences me, you know, a modicum of inconvenience comes my way, I lose my mind. You know, all things that we're ashamed to admit, but we all do.

Carrie: 17:53

You know, the the steadfast spirit, the the disposition that was in Jesus to endure until the end, to be willing to fight, to contend for the faith, to know why I believe, what I believe, who I believe, right? And and to say, you know, Lord, in my sin, please don't cast me away from your presence. Please don't take your Holy Spirit from me. When he's dealing with me and he is uprooting junk and sin and rebellion that I have let fester, these are prayers I need to pray. These are things he wants me to ask of him. And they are things that he is willing to give. And that's why I love at the end of those of those two verses, he goes right into, and people quote this verse wrong sometimes. I've I grew up hearing it quoted, restore unto me the joy of my salvation. That is not what David writes here. David writes, restore to me the joy of your salvation. Your salvation. There is, I cannot save myself. Salvation is not found within me. It is not within my grasp to do for myself.

Carrie: 19:17

And so, Lord, I love that David plays, Lord, restore to me the joy that I had in seeing that you are not only able to save, but you are willing to save. The joy I felt in being restored to you initially, the joy I have known in union with you. Restore it to me, Lord. Help me to not forget the gladness and the worship and the exaltation I experienced when your salvation came into my life. And he follows it up with again and sustain me with a willing spirit. Renew a steadfast spirit in me. Lord, help me to stay willing in spirit to hold on to this great salvation and to walk out this great salvation, as Paul says, in fear and trembling. You know, and though David has written this, he's written the psalm in the context of repentance for his rebellion and his wickedness and his sin against the Lord.

Carrie: 20:26

There is so much of it that actually echoes what Jesus says in John 15, the verses that I was talking about earlier, where Jesus says, I want these things I've said to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be made complete. Well, what is that? What does that actually mean? What is Jesus actually talking about there? The the exhortation for the joy of Jesus to be made complete has a few different elements to it, right? So we have Psalm 51, where David has expressed these things. He has cried out, he has repented, and his cry is for the Lord to give him a clean heart and a steadfast spirit, a willing spirit. But he's also asking for his joy to be restored. Restore unto me the joy of your salvation.

Carrie: 21:23

And I want to tie that in with John 15, because where David experienced that on the dark side of needing to come to the Lord in repentance and in confession and the necessity of cleansing, we have the other side of the coin where Jesus talks about joy, and he is talking about joy to his disciples mere hours before he is arrested in Gethsemane. John 15 is comes the night that Jesus is arrested and is taken to be crucified. And these are the things that he desired to talk to his disciples about. And when Jesus says, These things I have said to you, that my joy may be in you, like I talked about last week, he is talking in the context of abiding. And so I want to read some of John 15 to you. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that bears fruit he prunes it, that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. Remain in me and I in you, just as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself but must remain in the vine, so neither can you unless you remain in me. I am the vine, you are the branches, the one who remains in me, and I in him bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.

Carrie: 23:27

When I was reading these verses and realized A, that Jesus is speaking about these things literally hours before he's being crucified, and then B also showing us I am literally giving you the key to my kingdom in this verse. The whole point is to abide, is to abide in the Father, to abide in Jesus, and to abide in the Holy Spirit, to abide in the word and soak up the truth of Scripture, so that when we are walking with the Lord, the Holy Spirit brings that word to our remembrance, right? Jesus says later in John 16 that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth and he will bring to your remembrance all things I have taught you. The Holy Spirit is the one who's Jesus says he speaks of me to you. And so as we walk with Jesus, as we abide in his word, as we abide in the love of the Father, by by seeking to obey what he has commanded out of worship and honor, not out of just duty and like, well, I gotta do this, check, check, check, no, but to obey him because what the Lord has given us to do is the very best thing for us. The commandments of the Lord, abiding in the Lord, is what gives us joy. It is what gave Jesus joy, right?

Carrie: 25:04

Again, the writer of Hebrews tells us, for the joy that was set before him, Jesus endured the cross, despising its shame. What was the joy of Jesus? It was abiding in the Father. That's literally what he tells us here. And because Jesus in his perfection could have uninterrupted abiding in the perfection of his sacrifice, he has now opened the way for us to abide with the Father here on earth. It won't be uninterrupted because we're not perfect. But when we die and we go to be with the Lord, there it will be. But Jesus has also purchased the opportunity for us to abide with the Father in joy now.

Carrie: 25:52

And that's why I said it's the two sides of the same coin. We have we have David's confession and his repentance having sinned and rebelled deeply against the Lord. And he asks for cleansing, he asks for a new heart. He asks for help in walking in a willing spirit and a renewed spirit, but he also asks for the joy of the Lord. And we can pray that prayer. We can use David's Psalm 51 as as a as guardrails for how to pray when we have sinned against the Lord and when we need to repent. Just as we can come to John 15 and read what Jesus says, uh, these things I have said in these things I have said to you, that my joy may be in you. Jesus wants the Holy Spirit to cultivate the fruit of joy within us. And there is no joy apart from abiding with the Lord. There just isn't.

Carrie: 27:02

And that's why I said I know that the Lord is challenging me right now to stop trying to find joy outside of myself, to stop trying to measure the joy that I feel by or the joy that I experience or to have it cultivate within me, cultivated within me by what is happening to me externally. Paul says in 2 Corinthians 6, we are sorrowful, yet we are always rejoicing. When Paul wrote Philippians, he was in a Philippian jail, chained to a Roman soldier 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and yet that man said, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say to you, rejoice. It is no hard thing for me to say these things to you. He wrote about joy. He wrote about joy in the Lord in prison. Jesus, the night before his crucifixion, talks about his desire for his joy to be made full in us, in his disciples.

Carrie: 28:22

And I think that is what the Lord is trying to teach me. And I want to encourage you as well. No matter what you are seeing in your external circumstances, that is not where your joy and it is not where my joy comes from. If the joy of the Lord is to be my strength, if the joy of the Lord is to be your strength, then joy is cultivated within us. It is a gift of the spirit that is grown within us. It's something to be fed and nurtured by the word. It's watered, yes, with our tears and our repentance, and also our tears of gratitude and worship. That's why I love that C.S. Lewis quote. That C.S. Lewis, joy is the serious business of heaven. Because it is. Joy is not something that is dependent on anyone but the Lord. This is why James could write to us, count it all joy when you face trials. Count it all joy. It is why, and I know I talked about it last week, but it is why the disciples could walk out of the temple and rejoice that they had been counted worthy to suffer for the Lord's sake. Because it wasn't something that they found in what was happening around them. The joy that was in them was cultivated and grown within them. It was a gladness and a worshipfulness and a delight in the Lord. In the Lord.

Carrie: 30:25

And so I want to encourage you with these things. And I am preaching to myself. I am telling you, this week, I mean, just like I said at the beginning of this episode, to sit down and try and record this episode, it's been like banging my head against a wall. And there were so many things that were that are happening that I know are opportunities for me to decide in the moment. Am I going to trust the Lord? And I'm going, am I going to thank him when things don't go the way that I want them to? Am I going to be willing to wrestle towards joy being cultivated rather than wrestling in thinking that I can, I have a right to be disappointed, and that my disappointment is something that I can sit in forever.

Carrie: 31:18

You know, and again, I've I've said many times, we can take anything to the Lord. We can take anything to him. He can handle our questions, our disappointments, our struggles, our fears, our anger, our lack of understanding, all of it. We can take all of it to him. But friends, in this year, I want to encourage you and I want to encourage me when these things happen. May we be sensitive enough to the Holy Spirit that we don't wrestle with the Lord out of a sense of entitlement of how we think we get to feel, but that we would wrestle in, Lord, this is how I feel, but how I feel isn't always true. And Holy Spirit, I want your fruit to come through. Lord, I want to grow. I want to grow in your fruit abiding in me, Lord. I want to choose joy. I want to choose patience. I want to choose gentleness. Lord, I want to choose kindness. Lord, I want to grab on and I will be self-controlled. I will be loving. Right? As Paul says, against these things there is no law. Why? Because they are literally part of the law of Christ.

Carrie: 32:42

And so, friends, as I wrap up here, I like I said, I just want to encourage you. Again, the Lord can handle our big emotions. He can handle our big things. But let's let's let's be determined to wrestle forward and and and to make the conscious decision. I mean, to say with Job, Lord, though you slay me, I'm going to trust you. Lord, though though things happen and pop up and come to me, and I don't understand why. And I'm going to feel disappointed, Lord, or I'm going to get angry, or I'm going to be confused, or I will lack understanding, but I'm not going to stay there. Lord, in those things, I'm going to come to you. And I'm going to wrestle forward with you, Lord. I'm not going to give myself permission to wallow in my feelings, which aren't wrong until I decide to do something with it that is sinful.

Carrie: 33:49

But Lord, I want, I want your truth, your joy, your love, your salvation to be louder in within me, to be louder within me than simply how I feel, or simply where I'm looking outside of myself at my circumstances to try and regulate how I feel and how I live my life. And so I I pray, my prayer for you and for me is that wherever the Lord has you, and and whatever he is trying to teach you and me about himself, however he is trying and seeking to open our understanding to gain revelation of his person and his word, that we would make a determination, not even a resolution, but that we would determine to be honest with the Lord about how we feel. But that we would we would not stay there. Instead, that we would we would seek the Lord. That we would I just keep that we would wrestle forward with him. And that through whatever he uses, whatever he requires of us, that we would be willing to trust him with our circumstances, be willing to trust him with what he chooses to do, that we would look at the examples of scripture that in the darkest moments, many, many times, whether it was because of sin or it was sacrifice on the cross or it was persecution or it was being in prison or it was betrayal or difficulty or wounding, whatever it was, that though we feel the things that we feel, we can make the choice. We can make the choice in the Lord to abide in him, to trust who he is and who he's revealed himself to be, but also to trust that in what we are facing and what we are walking through, that he desires to give us deeper revelation of himself and that he wants us to grow in knowing him, and he wants us to grow in the fruits of the spirit.

Carrie: 36:30

I'm gonna close with one final C.S. Lewis quote, "No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. To those who seek, they find, and to those who knock, that door is opened to them." Amen, friends. Thanks for listening to this episode of Honey from the Rock. If this episode or any other episode of the podcast has encouraged you, would you consider taking a moment to like, share, subscribe, or write a review for the podcast? I would greatly appreciate it, and may you be blessed in the Lord.