“When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!” (John 15:10-11 NLT)

As we enter the Easter season, I want to reflect on a couple of passages from Jesus’ last words with His disciples prior to His crucifixion.

Here we are at what is known as the Last Supper. The disciples are not yet getting it. The betrayer has gone out into the night. Jesus has a few final hours to give to His disciples words that will carry them through the coming hours, days, weeks. “I am the vine,” He says. “Remain in me, and I will remain in you” (vv. 4-6).

And then the amazing statement, “I have loved you even as the Father has loved me” (v. 9). That statement alone should give us pause. How odd that He then has to say, “Remain in my love.” Are we that prone to stray from true love? Apparently so. And the way to remain in His love? Obedience. “When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love” (v. 10). And when we obey? “You will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!” (v. 11).

Joy and obedience. One sounds like freedom; the other sounds like rules. But in reality, both are freedom. Obedience protects us from false joy–from following after something that makes us feel good but might be wrong or sinful. Consider the woman who falls into an affair because the other man “makes her feel like she’s never felt before.” Maybe she feels a level of “joy” and so mistakes this for God’s will. Obedience would tell her not to follow after that feeling and thus commit sin (along with causing a host of other problems). It might “feel right,” but it’s wrong. A commitment to finding joy along with obedience helps us to find true joy because we are following God’s will for our lives. We are remaining in His love.

Joy is found in obeying and obeying is discovered in God’s Word and seeking God’s guidance daily. There is no greater joy than staying within the boundaries of obedience to our Savior. You save yourself a whole lot of pain and regret, you don’t hurt other people by sinning against them, and you live the life God called you to live.

Obedience is the way to true joy. With these final sayings before His death, Jesus showed us the way to find the joy He Himself had. Such a gift to us.

This Easter, let’s recommit ourselves to discovering that joy through our obedience. It’s a gift that’s ours for the taking.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” (Galatians 5:22-23 NIV)

It’s a rainy day in Chicago today. I should be used to this by now after almost 28 years. Spring means rain, cold, clouds, thunderstorms. Yeah, yeah, I know that all this rain just gets us ready for the blooms of spring, but on these dark mornings, I need a good dose of joy to get me going. Care to join me?

It’s probably an overused metaphor, but those gray rainclouds do indeed connote sadness and depression. And when those clouds encircle us, it’s difficult to find a ray of joy at all, much less to feel and act joyful. Even as winter winds down and spring approaches, you might feel a bit melancholy. Maybe this economy has affected you and your family. Job loss. Tight finances. Sorrow. Hurt. Illness. Dare I go on? We’re all dealing with something that seeks to rob our joy.

My friend, I’m here to tell you not to try to manufacture a feeling of joy–you’re only working against yourself. Life is tough and if you’ve been facing great difficulty, you need not berate yourself for just not being in a joyful mood. I am here to encourage you, however, to reach deep down into your soul and discover that you already have a dose of joy there, for if you are a Christian you have the Holy Spirit who promises that “the fruit of the Spirit is . . . joy.” You see, joy is already there, deep in your heart. So whether you feel joyful is not the starting point. The starting point is to quietly sit before God and express to Him your deepest hurts and concerns and to ask Him to grow in you His fruit of joy.

If you do that today, your spirits will lift and your mood will lighten. Why? Because by seeking God and taking Him at His word, you are trusting in His promies. And the more you trust, the more you comprehend that whatever is happening in your life is indeed part of His plan, it will result in good, it will give you a future and a hope. The promises, far from being stale or pat answers, are instead living and breathing promises that are true for you today.

Take a deep breath. Let the Spirit of joy make its way to the surface today of your life. I promise you–you’ll feel better and you’ll bless someone else who needs a dose of joy along the way.

This past year, 2008, I turned 50 (yikes!) and a dear friend (who also happens to be a publicist at Tyndale House) asked me if this would be my Year of Jubilee. Hmmmm . . . hadn’t thought about it, but what a great idea! 

In the Old Testament, God called upon His people to celebrate what He called the Year of Jubilee every 50 years. At that time, all debts would be cancelled, all slaves would be freed, and all land would return to the original family of owners (Leviticus 25:8-17). What an amazing concept—it would have kept people out of the cycles of poverty that we see today. Imagine the joy of such a year! Yet there is no indication in Scripture that the Year of Jubilee celebration was ever carried out. 

In any case, I decided that I would indeed have my own personal Year of Jubilee. A year of letting go, a year of clearing up the past, a year of freedom. As I began this process, I went to Scripture (of course) to discover more about the concept of joy. I invite you to travel with me in coming weeks as I share verses from Scripture that talk about joy, along with some of my personal insights. I’ll be updating about once a week, so be sure to check back for a weekly dose of joy! 

Let’s learn together what God means when He talks about joy and calls us to rejoice. 

And I wish you a joyful day!

When I was studying graphic design at Carnegie-Mellon in the late sixties, it was a breath of fresh air for me to discover the work of InterVarsity Press whose design was in step with the radical graphics of that time. Already committed to Christ, I determined to help present God’s truth with such relevance and passion.

I remember, however, the long string of book cover rejections in my early years at Tyndale. I had to balance my desire to be relevant with the culture of CBA at that time. Vogue in the 1970s meant quirky new typefaces with shadows and very tight letter spacing, posterized photos, and closely-cropped images. I remember being told that it was disrespectful to crop off the top of someone’s head!

Thirty-five years later I am amazed at the 12-point type titles approved on some covers. My training had prepared me for communicating the main thrust of the text as faithfully as possible. Today, post-modern thinking has encouraged irrational, humorous, and irreverent solutions to arrest the book buyer’s attention. Still, the basic principles of visual communication remain: simplicity, contrast, the element of surprise, and unity of text and image—to name a few.

I consider one of my greatest contributions to the industry to be the added care and embellishment of book interiors in unity with the approved cover. Like the increased numbers of sidebars that have crept into books, I recognized the need to visually entertain readers who were spending more time watching television. The pendulum has swung and today we are creating more conservative, standardized layouts with fewer “bells and whistles.”

Bible design has continued to be my greatest love; I desire to find new ways to communicate its truths to each new generation. I am personally proud of Tyndale’s history of innovation beginning with the conversational style of The Living Bible. Then there was The Book, whose one-column format was designed not to look like a Bible. The One Year Bible dared to rearrange the text so that people could read through the whole Bible in a year without getting bogged down in Leviticus.

In response to my own need to spend more time in the Bible, I began creating word pictures of familiar texts. As illustrated in Doorposts, I tried to make the words look like what they mean helping me, a visual learner, to see the Word.

Inspired by the book Purple Cow, I recently made a list of success stories in our industry from the last 50 years and discovered some common threads: maintaining a laser-like focus to communicate the gospel, removing the barriers to faith by making it plain and simple, and visualizing what has only been verbal communication in the past.

I look forward to seeing what “purple cows” are waiting around the bend!

Timothy R. Botts has designed more than 600 books at Tyndale House Publishers since 1972 where he is currently senior art director.