How Does Joy Lead to Strength for the Missional Enterprise Leader?

In the last few M3 Weekly articles, we’ve been discussing the demonstration of the Fruit of the Spirit in the context of missional enterprise. Today, we focus on “joy.”

Bill Job, an entrepreneur and general manager of a large manufacturing company in Asia, learned to take God’s joy seriously in his life and work. As Bill describes on a recent episode of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast, his experience in manufacturing taught him to think about what needs to be measured and how often to measure it. Bill realized that God was measuring Bill’s level of joy, and was measuring it every second.

This insight began Bill’s journey of trusting God moment by moment for the gift of joy.

Joy at Work

Since the Bible identifies joy as one of the qualities of the Fruit of the Spirit, it’s not surprising that it’s also recognized as an essential characteristic of effective leadership.

In a 2021 Harvard Business Review article “Recover Joy at Work,” organizational and social psychologist Rebecca Newton highlights that “research has shown that joy is an emotional response and outlook that’s vital to our well-being, cognitive functioning, and our performance at work.”

Jim Wilder and Marcus Warner, co-authors of Rare Leadership: 4 Uncommon Habits For Increasing Trust, Joy, and Engagement in the People You Lead, further emphasize the importance of joy. They identify the ability to “Return to Joy” as a critical leadership habit.

The Joy of the Lord is Your Strength

You may recall the scriptural affirmation that “the joy of the Lord is your strength.”1 But how many of us remember that these words come from the book of Nehemiah, spoken on the day that the people heard God’s law and celebrated following the completion of their great wall-building project?

Notice the relationship between joy and strength in the passage: it’s not that the strength God gives us enables us to feel joyful. Instead, the joy God provides gives us strength.

A practical approach Bill Job has learned to both gauge and experience God’s strength-giving joy is what he calls a “joy meter.” When he senses that his joy level is not where it should be, he asks his heavenly Father to increase that level and waits on him to provide.

We highly recommend taking the time to explore further this critical topic of joy by listening to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast episode, “Rediscovering Everyday Miracles,” featuring a conversation with both Bill Job and pastor Mark Batterson. It’s a rich conversation on how God’s joy can transform the context of the enterprises we lead.

Verse of the Week:

Nehemiah said, “Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Nehemiah 8: 10 (NIV)

May we, as children of the King, increasingly find our strength in his joy as we lead enterprises for His glory and the blessing of many people in His name.