If you haven’t read my previous post where I discuss and define JOY from my own perspective, I highly recommend that you read that post before you proceed with reading this post. Just a suggestion. :)
Dancing.
1 Samuel 18:6
“When the victorious Israelite army was returning home after David had killed the Philistine, women from all the towns of Israel came out to meet King Saul. They sang and danced for joy with tambourines and cymbals.”
The young women will dance for joy, and the men—old and young—will join in the celebration. I will turn their mourning into joy. I will comfort them and exchange their sorrow for rejoicing.
Let them praise his name in the dance: let them sing praises unto him with the timbrel and harp. (KJV)
My hap-hazard definition: “When it comes to JOY, it has to do with excitement, enthusiasm in Jesus that creates such a high that the person is unable to physically contain it, so he/she must do something physical for release. It's better than the high of any drug or human emotion/feeling. It can only come from God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit. And when it comes, you wanna dance, jump, sing, shout, leap, clap, play, eat, feast, cry, celebrate, praise the Lord, laugh, run, and even forgive!
There is no way to contain JOY in your physical body! It must come out in some way, shape, form or fashion!! If I'm happy, I might smile or simply just BE. But if I'm JOYFUL, I have to DO!! BEING simply isn't enough!!!”
I can’t dance. It’s true. I have no rhythm. This white girl seriously cannot dance. I watch ballet dancers or hip hop dancers or whatever other kinds of dancers and I am in awe at their moves. They are simply a-mazing! The only kind of dancing I have ever succeeded at doing is the kind done to a Richard Simmons exercise VHS/DVD. And that was after working out to the same DVD over and over and over again!
But I love Dance. I love to move my body. Sometimes I just can’t help but move in some form. It doesn’t matter that I have no rhythm. I just gotta move! I just gotta “Shake” (by MercyMe)! The JOY of the Lord gets ahold of me and I have to move my body in whatever way I can. (MercyMe also has a song called "Happy Dance" that fits appropriately! I just couldn't get it to fit in as part of my paragraph! LOL!)
I have to Dance before the Lord and let my JOY out! Yes, just like Happy Feet: "You must resist! Stand your ground" But the more the penguins watch Happy dance with JOY, the more they can't help but join him in dance!!! (Honestly, before that movie came out, did you ever in your wildest dreams ever think that you would enjoy a movie about penguins DANCING?! LOLOLOL!!! But we LOVED it!!!)
Do you remember in the 1980s the television show Perfect Strangers? My favorite part of that show was when Balky and Cousin Larry would do the "Dance of JOY"! It was a dance that Balky taught Larry that was from his country. Larry pretended to hate it, but the camera would always catch his smile of JOY as he couldn't help dancing with his beloved cousin. My sister and I actually wanted to attempt to learn the "Dance of JOY," but, as I said, I can't dance.
Do you remember in the 1980s the television show Perfect Strangers? My favorite part of that show was when Balky and Cousin Larry would do the "Dance of JOY"! It was a dance that Balky taught Larry that was from his country. Larry pretended to hate it, but the camera would always catch his smile of JOY as he couldn't help dancing with his beloved cousin. My sister and I actually wanted to attempt to learn the "Dance of JOY," but, as I said, I can't dance.
A week or so ago, I watched a video of a young man, Andrew, who went on The Greatest Dancer, a reality contest show. Andrew is special needs (autistic), but when he gets on the dance floor, everything disappears; he’s in another world and his JOY shows. As I watched the video, the evidence of his JOY in dance is clear and everyone watching him saw it, too. The applause for Andrew and his dance was thunderous. I have no idea what happened with Andrew as far as the contest is concerned, but I sure did get an awful lot of JOY out of watching that boy dance, as have millions of other viewers!
Another video that has gone viral as we have all watched is of an amazing young woman, Katelyn Ohashi, who does her dancing acrobatics with pure and utter JOY. One newsman said that she got her perfect 10 for her JOY! Just watch the video. Her JOY is in every move she makes, as well as in her teammates in the background, performing right along with her. I myself have watched the video a number of times because I love the smiles on her face! I revel in her JOY as she dances.
Have you ever danced and not felt wonderful afterward? Seriously. Maybe you’ve felt winded, of course, but dancing is a physical activity that brings great JOY and pleasure to a lot of people. If that isn’t true, then why are there so many bars that offer dancing? Why are there so many [young] people going out dancing [all night]? Why is the pull to go dancing so strong among our young? Why does the enemy use dancing as a siren call to our young people?
Dancing brings great JOY because JOY involves action; dancing is simply one physical expression of JOY. As I say in my definition, it’s better than any high or drug and the enemy knows that, so it’s easy for him to use dancing to get to our young people and use it to entice them to sex and all other means of turning away from a life with God. God created dancing for JOY and praise. But the enemy uses for his own glory instead.
Remember the movie Footloose? That’s what that movie is all about. Dancing is an expression of JOY. That’s what it should be. But the enemy uses it to disgrace the physical body and to make what is beautiful a very ugly act. We can’t stop dancing just because the enemy attempts to use something beautiful for evil. Kevin Bacon fights to prove that dancing is an expression of JOY, not a way to get in each others' panties. Granted, he is having sex with the preacher's daughter in a quite ironic twist to the story, but that is not because they're dancing.
God created dancing. It’s a JOYFUL act. It’s beautiful. It’s wonderful! It’s a physical expression of our JOY. The enemy wins if we stop dancing or if we dance suggestively. We have to dance with JOY and in the JOY of the Lord. We have to dance as David danced before the Lord! When we dance with JOY, we invite the presence of the Holy Spirit and we draw ever closer to our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Just because we don’t have any evidence in the Bible that Jesus danced while He was a physical man on earth, that doesn’t mean He didn’t dance or that He didn’t want to dance. Jesus had a specific job, ministry, to do in the three years of ministry He had. We know He attended at least one wedding where He performed a miracle: He turned water into wine. We can assume that He danced at that wedding, but beyond that, it is difficult to imagine that He partied, let alone danced for a lot of people.
When you consider the fact that Jesus grew up in a village and would have known everyone and would have been very social, He had to have been to a lot of social gatherings. It is very plausible to imagine that Jesus would have danced at many social gatherings as He grew up and prepared for His ministry. It simply doesn't make sense to me that Jesus would have sat and watched everyone else enjoying the party or that He would have stayed home. Or that He would have gone to the Temple instead of the party.
Jesus knew the people. He interacted with them during His years prior to His ministry. He lived among them, doing the same things that they did, and that included weddings, birthday parties, celebrations, and especially all of the Jewish celebrations which would have included dancing because the Bible very clearly tells the Israelites to celebrate with dancing and tambourines!
I think that we’ve put Jesus and His disciples in a box and haven’t allowed for anything beyond what is written in the scriptures. The Bible tells us that if they had tried to write down everything that happened while Jesus was alive and in ministry, there simply wouldn’t be enough time or paper:
John 21:25 New Living Translation (NLT)
Jesus also did many other things. If they were all written down, I suppose the whole world could not contain the books that would be written.
But yet, because it’s not written about, some theologians and other
And that He danced with great JOY. . . .
