Rejoicing Is Not Denial—It’s Resistance
By Judson Taylor, Senior Director of Marketing and Communications
Recently I had lunch with a mentor of mine—someone God used to give me direction when I was in my 20s. It was one of those quietly significant moments, not because anything dramatic happened, but because time itself becomes a teacher. Sitting with someone who knew you when you were young and uncertain has a way of helping you see the present more clearly. The conversation wasn’t heavy. It was warm, steady, even joyful. And it reminded me how grateful I am for the people God has used to shape my life.
After we parted, I sent him a quick text thanking him for his time and encouragement. He replied with just a few words—simple, fatherly, direct—and included an exhortation that has stayed with me: rejoice.
That word has been echoing in my mind ever since.
Not because I’ve mastered it. Quite the opposite. It landed like a gentle rebuke—not harsh, but clarifying. Because if I’m honest, I spend far more time lamenting my life than rejoicing in it. I can quickly list regrets, missed opportunities, conversations I’d redo, and choices I wish I’d made differently. I can compare my life to someone else’s and quietly covet what they have. I can interpret setbacks as evidence that I’m behind. And I can rehearse worries as if repeating them might eventually produce wisdom.
It never does.
Sometimes the spiral goes deeper. I catch myself wondering whether recurring troubles mean something more than hardship. Maybe I’m cursed. Maybe God has decided my life is simply going to be harder than other people’s lives. Maybe this is my “lot.” That’s not just sadness. That’s despair—and it’s also theology. It’s a story I’m tempted to live inside.
But the more I sat with that word rejoice, the more I realized Scripture confronts this narrative—not by denying pain, but by refusing to interpret pain as abandonment.
And rejoicing feels especially hard right now for many people. Not only because of private burdens, but because of the world around us. The air can feel tense. The future can feel uncertain. You might be doing “fine” on paper, and yet still feel unsettled—restless, angry, anxious, weary in a way that sleep doesn’t fix.
I’ve heard people say, “I’m struggling to rejoice right now. I’m trying to trust God, but I feel overwhelmed. Where is he in all this?”
If you’ve felt that, I want you to know: you’re not alone, and you’re not failing the Christian life.
God knows the weight you’re carrying—the personal kind and the communal kind. And the beautiful truth is this: God does not shame his children for being overwhelmed. Scripture is full of his tenderness toward distressed hearts. “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted” (Psalm 34:18). He is near when you have words and when you don’t.
So if rejoicing feels hard right now, begin here: not with pressure, but with honesty. Not with performance, but with prayer.
Trouble Doesn’t Mean You’re Rejected
The Bible never teaches that hardship is proof of divine rejection. Jesus dismantles the assumption that suffering always maps neatly onto sin or punishment. When tragedy struck and people assumed the victims must have deserved it, Jesus refused that logic (Luke 13:1–5). When the disciples assumed a man’s blindness was caused by someone’s sin, Jesus replied, “Neither…but that the works of God might be displayed in him” (John 9:3).
That matters because many of us—even if we know better—still live as though the universe is running on a hidden scoreboard. If things go wrong, we assume God is displeased. If hardship repeats, we assume we’re being singled out. If life feels heavy, we assume it must be a sign.
But Scripture does not teach us to read our circumstances like tea leaves. It teaches us to look at Jesus.
If we want proof that we are not cursed, not rejected, not forgotten, we do not look at our personal history and try to decode it. We look at the cross. Paul says, “He who did not spare his own Son… how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). That is not the language of a distant God. It is the language of costly mercy.
Rejoicing Is Not Pretending
Scripture makes room for lament. The Psalms are full of anguish, complaint, confusion, even disorientation. Jesus wept. Jesus suffered. The cross is not a side note to Christianity—it is the center. Which means joy cannot be defined as cheerfulness or constant positivity that refuses to face reality.
But rejoicing is not denial, either.
Rejoicing is not pretending things are fine when they are not. It is refusing to let despair become a conclusion. It is what you do when sorrow is real, but God is realer. It is one of the ways we resist the temptation to treat our pain as the whole truth.
This is why Paul can command something that sounds impossible: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4). Paul was not writing those words from comfort—he wrote them from confinement. The command is not “rejoice in your outcomes,” but “rejoice in the Lord.” The anchor is not the circumstance. The anchor is the person of God.
And here is one of the most freeing verses in all of Scripture: “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10). Scripture does not tell us we must choose between grief and faithfulness. It makes room for both.
Joy Grows When God Gets Big Again
I’ve noticed something about myself: when my joy diminishes, it isn’t always because my circumstances got worse. Often it’s because my vision of God got smaller. I begin to treat him like a concept instead of a living reality, like an accessory to my plans instead of the center of my life. My prayers shrink into anxiety-management. My faith becomes mostly about problem-solving.
And when that happens, rejoicing feels impossible.
Because joy isn’t something we can simply command out of ourselves. It isn’t a mood we can generate by willpower. It’s a response—born from worship, awe, and the slow re-centering of the soul around the holiness and goodness of God. When God becomes real again—not just believed in, but seen—rejoicing becomes possible again. Not because problems vanish, but because they stop being ultimate.
Eugene Peterson described discipleship as “a long obedience in the same direction.” That phrase becomes more precious as we get older, because we learn that faith is not a series of spiritual mountaintops. Most of it is ordinary. Repetitive. Unseen. And a great deal of it involves continuing to trust God when our lives feel smaller than we expected.
In that sense, rejoicing becomes less like fireworks and more like a steady candle.
Scripture Handholds for the Spiraling Mind
When my mind is spiraling, I don’t need cleverness. I need anchors.
Here are a few I’m returning to—not as slogans, but as handholds:
- “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” (Nehemiah 8:10)
- “Why are you cast down, O my soul… Hope in God.” (Psalm 42:5)
- “Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” (Psalm 30:5)
- “Rejoice always.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16)
- “Count it all joy… when you meet trials… for you know…” (James 1:2–3)
That last one is not a command to pretend suffering is pleasant. It is a claim that suffering does not get to be meaningless. God is not wasting our trials, even when we cannot yet see what he is growing in us through them.
A Simple Rejoicing Practice for This Week
I don’t want this to end with inspiration. I want it to end with something doable, because I’m learning I cannot wait for my emotions to behave before I practice obedience.
Here’s what I’m trying this week—five minutes a day.
Every morning for seven days:
- Name one grief honestly (one sentence).
“Lord, I feel sorrow about ___.” - Name one gift specifically.
Not “thank you for my life,” but something concrete. - Speak one promise out loud. Choose one:
- “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” (Psalm 23:1)
- “The Lord is near.” (Philippians 4:5)
- “Nothing can separate us from the love of God.” (Romans 8:39)
- Do one embodied act of joy.
Sing one worship song. Take a short phone-free walk. Encourage one person. Give something away quietly. Read a Psalm slowly and unhurried.
This is not pretending the pain isn’t real. It is refusing to crown it.
And I think that’s what my mentor gave me in that simple text: not a new idea, but a summons back to the truth. God has given me far more mercies than I have acknowledged. I have far more to celebrate than I have practiced.
And if you’re reading this, I suspect the same is true for you—not because life is easy, but because Jesus is alive. And because God is still at work.
Judson