Glory and Joy

For who is our hope or joy or crown of exultation? Is it not even you, in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His coming? For you are our glory and joy.

1 Thessalonians 2:19-20 (New American Standard Bible)

In his book Simple Prayers, Ken Boa directly relates this to passage the people who he has the privilege to have a ministry with.

I have to admit, I do not often think that way, but I like where Dr. Boa has taken this. Clearly the glory and joy in our life should be from God, all joy emanates from pleasing Him, all glory should be His, and His alone.

But can a source of it in our lives come from ministering to people He loves, working that they may grow closer to Him as he draws them in, using us as His tools?

Oh yeah, it sure can.

So by ministering to others, I can generation a continual source of glory and joy in my life. By being obedient, I can be rewarded through His love with more than I can ever generate on my own.

My joy.

His glory.

That works for me.

Settle for Less

It occurred to me recently that we are quick to accept society's standards for what is acceptable to watch, listen to or read. Well, maybe not quick, but we are easily influenced and often do not even realize it. The message of our culture is so pervasive, so invasive, bombarding us during almost all of our waking hours, we become unaware that it is happening. Never immune to it, but clearly unaware.

I think that is why quite time before the Lord is so crucial, why daily reading of the Word is so necessary. Because without it, we show we are so ready to settle for less. Ready to settle for man-made values and not God-ordained ones. To settle for the less challenging (and following Jesus is a challenge to a sinner) for the more comfortable (living as a sinful being in a fallen world is clearly a situation that would put us in a false, and temporary, peace of mind).

Settle for less. The fleeting, the temporary, the here and now. Ignoring the better part, the eternal, the lasting, the forever. It is offered freely, it is offered as a gift. It is offered to you and I. Have you accepted it? Do you grasp it in your hand? If so, are you trying to make sure you do not settle for less while you are waiting for more than you can ever imagine?

I think I need to try harder not to settle for less in my life. I think I have been listening more closely to the world lately, and as a result have deafened myself to the soft sure voice that will point me to the everlasting joy that awaits me.

I need to look more closely at my path down The Narrow Road.

A Daunting Thought

We are living in our lives in the place (physically, spiritually and mentally) where God permits us to be. Make no mistake about the sovereignty of God, about His ability to move us into new situations, a new place, to permit our lives to go into new directions as He so purposes for us. God can do this with an ease we cannot really understand for He is divine and in complete control over our lives.

If you are not at that place where you want to be in your life, ask yourself these questions:

• Are you seeking Him out, seeking His will?
• Are you actively resisting the will of God?
• Have you done things in the past that you know were in rebellion to God, so now He has permitted you to be in a place that is not where you would have wanted?
• Are you learning anything about yourself from where you are in your life?
• Are you growing closer to Him?
• Are you still in rebellion?

I think God so loves us that He permits us to be in rebellion to Him because that is the choice we make. He allows us in situations that can harm us because it is where we have chosen to go in our lives. It doesn't mean He loves us any less; it means He loves us enough to give us the choice to come to Him or not.

If you are in a situation in which you would rather not be, it may mean God has something for you to learn, it may mean you are facing the consequences of your decisions; it may mean God is planning to use you in ways you cannot imagine, to His greater glory. And for the growth of your character and love for Him.

I am not saying life is always easy or fair. It is a fallen world inhabited by sinful beings, and not always pleasant to deal with. But He has a place for us in His mansion, a life to come so joyful we cannot truly comprehend it. And all He asks is that we turn to His Son for our salvation, that we trust in Him alone and no one else.

For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us.
Romans 8:18 (New American Standard Bible)

It might not make your world any different now, but it should make it a bit more bearable. Where you are is where He has permitted you to be, based on the purposes of His will and the choices of your life. A daunting thought.

Continue your walk. I do, as I seek out my path on The Narrow Road.

Technorati Tags: Jesus, God, sovereignty, joy, life, rebellion

Presently Happy

"Let each of us examine his thoughts; he will find them wholly concerned with the past or the future. We almost never think of the present, and if we do think of it, it is only to see what light it throws on our plans for the future. The present is never our end. The past and the present are our means, the future alone is our end. Thus we never actually live, but hope to live, and since we are always planning how to be happy, it is inevitable that we should never be so."

Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Two years ago, my first theology professor suggested we read Pascal. I finally started a read. I am glad I did, but this guy can be harder to understand than C S Lewis, and that is saying something.

But this passage hit me with amazing clarity. Which was nice because after over a dozen pages of huh?, it was nice to have something click finally. This passage immediately brought a verse of Scripture into mind:

So do not worry about tomorrow; for tomorrow will care for itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.
Matthew 6:34 (New American Standard Bible)

Our happiness requires to live within the present, content with the provision of the day as the Lord has given it to us. Our joy comes from the eternal security that is ours in Jesus. I wrote some time ago about the difference between the two on this blog. I do not know if my old buddy Blaise had this Scripture passage in mind, but as I read him I did.

We are often surrounded with unhappy people, we are often that person. When that person is me, it is because I have focused too much on the future, too much on myself and not enough on living in the Lord in the present. He is sufficient, in His sovereign grace, for me each and every day. I would do good to remember that more regularly.



Technorati Tags: Pensées, Blaise Pascal, C S Lewis, Jesus, Lord, God, happiness, joy, present, past, future

What Is Easy, What Is Hard

There is nothing easier than getting saved, because it is solely God’s sovereign work— "Look to Me, and be saved . . ." ( Isaiah 45:22 ). Our Lord never requires the same conditions for discipleship that he requires for salvation.
Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: February 2 Devotional

Read this yesterday and it hit me hard. There really is nothing easier than salvation because God does all the work. There is nothing harder than discipleship because following hard after Jesus, living like Christ, cuts against our sinful and selfish nature.

What is His alone is easier for He is sovereign. What is ours to do is hard for we are sinners. Yet the first brings great joy to any who He calls in for it is eternal salvation that we face. The second pleases God because being like His Son is the highest goal we face and it is what He wants for us more than anything else.

You can have the easy through faith, you can get closer to the hard through faithful obedience. You cannot lose the first, but you will never achieve the second until He brings you home.

Technorati Tags: God, Jesus, faith, obedience, joy, salvation, discipleship

Happiness vs. Joy

I am doing a bible study on Philippians. We just started it, still in Chapter 1. We spent a lot of time discussing the differences between happiness and joy.

happiness –noun

1.	the quality or state of being happy.

2.	good fortune; pleasure; contentment; joy.

joydʒɔɪ/ Show Spelled Pronunciation –noun

1.	the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; keen pleasure; elation: She felt the joy of seeing her son's success.

2.	a source or cause of keen pleasure or delight; something or someone greatly valued or appreciated: Her prose style is a pure joy.

3.	the expression or display of glad feeling; festive gaiety.

4.	a state of happiness or felicity.

The dictionary definitions do not quite make the distinction needed when studying the biblical concept of joy, especially in a letter like the one Paul wrote to the church at Philippi. In this context, happiness is a state of mind brought about by present circumstances one finds pleasurable. When the circumstances change or weary you, the pleasure dims or disappears. Joy is the state brought about by the assurance one has because of faith in Jesus Christ. It is a confident assurance in God's love and His sovereign ability to work in your life, no matter the present set of circumstances you find yourself in. It is why Paul could express joy in a letter written while he was in prison (probably in Rome). Paul wasn't happy to be in prison, but he was joyful at the opportunity to share the Gospel with people he would not have come into contact if not imprisoned:

¹²Now I want you to know, brethren, that my circumstances have turned out for the greater progress of the gospel,

¹³so that my imprisonment in the cause of Christ has become well known throughout the whole praetorian guard and to everyone else,

¹⁴and that most of the brethren, trusting in the Lord because of my imprisonment, have far more courage to speak the word of God without fear.

Philippians 1:12-14 (NASB)

What faith to have: to be incredibly joyful in the face of personal unhappiness. What strength of faith to feel that way, and live that way, in the name of Jesus.

To Be With Him

We must now examine this question. How do we receive those benefits, which the Father bestowed on his only-begotten Son-not for Christ's own private use, but that he might enrich poor and needy men? First, we must understand that as long as Christ remains outside of us, and we are separated from him, all that he has suffered and done for the salvation of the human race remains useless and of no value for us. Therefore, to share with us what he has received from the Father, he had to become ours and to dwell within us.
John Calvin - The Institutes of The Christian Religion 3.1.1

Jesus must be in us for us to fully experience what He has to offer. What that is quite frankly, is incomprehensible to us as finite beings, that is where the faith and trust in Him comes in. But there is such richness and joy, eternal joy, awaiting those who allow Jesus to step into their life, into their very core.

He is waiting patiently, lovingly. But He will not wait forever. One day He will come back. One day you will leave this earth and lose the opportunity to come to him anymore.

No one but God knows either of those days, but they are both coming. You can run from Christ in your heart and mind but not from that final day.

But with Him within you boith can be faced with calm, with peace and yes with the joy of being with the Lord.

In God We Must...

Have faith,not emotion. It may sound a little strange that faith is what it takes to be in proper relationship to a relational, personal God. You would think the emotional would drive the relationship. Some excerpts from Mr. Chambers, an old friend of The Narrow Road:

A self-assured saint is of no value to God. He is abnormal, unfit for daily life, and completely unlike God. We are here, not as immature angels, but as men and women, to do the work of this world...But what God wants us to do is to "walk by faith." How many of us have set ourselves aside as if to say, "I cannot do anything else until God appears to me"? He will never do it. We will have to get up on our own, without any inspiration and without any sudden touch from God. Then comes our surprise and we find ourselves exclaiming, "Why, He was there all the time, and I never knew it!" Never live for those exceptional moments— they are surprises. God will give us His touches of inspiration only when He sees that we are not in danger of being led away by them...

Oswald Chambers - My Utmost For His Highest: May 1 Devotional

In our faith God will reveal ourselves to us. I am not saying we shouldn't have joy and deeply intense and personal feelings about our relationship with God. On the contrary, the deeper, the more personal, the better.

But let your feelings be driven by your faith,, and not your faith driven by your feelings.