Saturday 5 October 2013

Where is your joy?

    This is a question Paul asked the Galatians ( Galatians 4 v 15) and one that I ask myself from time to time. The Galatians lost their joy through a legalistic corruption of the gospel. We may not have that problem in our contexts, but the devil will still try to rob, steal, and kill our joy in the Lord. Sadly, we are often better at doing this to ourselves and one another without any assistance.
   Joy is one of those words, rather like 'blessing' and 'grace' that has been so misused and wrongly trivialized that it is in danger of being relegated to being a Christian cliche. Definition and meaning are important, and I have found The New Bible Dictionary definition of joy very helpful:

'Both in the Old and New Testaments joy is consistently the mark both individually of the believer and corporately of the Church. It is a quality, and not simply an emotion, grounded upon God Himself and indeed derived from Him ( Pslam 16 v 11, Phil 4 v 4, Rom 15 v 13), which characterizes the Christian's life on earth (1Pet 1 v 8), and also anticipates the joy of being with Christ for ever in the Kingdom of Heaven.'

   Jesus is the dictionary to interpret and understand all things, and the presence of joy is a clear litmus test that the Kingdom of God is at hand. In John 15 v 11, the gift of the Lord's joy is promised to all those who are abiding in the Father's love. This quality is evident even in Jesus's darkest hour on the cross, something picked up by the writer of Hebrews:

'Let us fix our eyes upon Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God'.

                                     Hebrews 12 v 2.

    It is in those dark moments in life that we can sometimes lose our joy and peace in the Lord, but this verse suggests that even in those dark moments there can still be access to a joy in the Holy Spirit that goes beyond our circumstances. The Book of Psalms was Israel's 'Book of Common Prayer and Worship', and provides some excellent insights into how we can be real with the Lord in life's difficulties and still remain buoyant in the Lord's joy. It is worth looking at one or two of them.

1. Honesty with the Lord.

   The Psalmists didn't hold back on how they felt about life in all its complexities. Here are just a few references to look up:

a. Psalm 3 v 7. David asking God to break the teeth of the wicked.

b. Psalm 5 v 10-11. David being less than loving towards his enemies.

c. Psalm10 v 12-15, Psalm 73 v v 1-3. David and Asaph frustrated at the apparent prosperity of the wicked.

d. Psalm 41 v 4-9. David perhaps in one of his more melancholic moments.

     David and the other Psalmists were real about how they felt, and had no problem expressing that to the Lord. If you look at some of Jeremiah's laments the language is even more striking, on one occasion even accusing God of deceiving him! (Jeremiah 20v 7). This is spiritual therapy.
   Rather than burying our anger, hurts, and frustrations, we take them to the Lord first. When I am feeling angry or negative about something or someone, I have found that praying and talking it through with the Lord privately has been of enormous value. Once offloaded, you are then able to see more clearly and remain in the Lord's joy. As I pray and wait on the Lord, the reassurance of his presence becomes the foundation to my thinking again. I begin to see things and hear things from a heavenly perspective.
    This was the experience of Asaph in Psalm 73. Having offloaded his frustrations about the apparent prosperity of the wicked, he then enters the Lord's rest, and sees things from heaven's perspective their eventual end- Psalm 73 v 12-24. When we see things from heaven's perspective, joy and peace are restored to our troubled souls. Sometimes we may need a trusted friend to help us rediscover the joy of the Lord's presence, but we need to be careful that we aren't using friendship in an inappropriate way to wallow in self pity.

2. Valuing the Lord's presence more than anything or anyone else.

    It is the Lord Himself who is our source of joy. When David's sin with Bathsheba was uncovered, his primary concern was that he would not lose the Lord's presence in his life. The Lord's presence meant everything to David. After being confronted by Nathan, he comes out with this amazing cry from the heart:

'Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit to sustain me'.

                                 Psalm 51 v 10-12.

   David knew it was the Lord's presence in the Holy Spirit that brought the joy of salvation, and he didn't want to lose that at any cost. Sadly, if you read the account of Saul having his sin exposed by Samuel, you will see that Saul was far more concerned about what people would think of him than how the Lord felt..see 1 Samuel 15 v 24-30, especially verse 30.    David wanted the Lord's presence as priority. Saul was more concerned with saving face before people. David wanted the joy of the Lord's presence to remain, and to help others learn from the error of his ways (Psalm 51 v 13). Saul was only concerned with receiving the continued honour of the people.
   We lose our joy when, like Saul, we are more concerned with how people see us than how the Lord sees us. When we are wanting and striving for the affirmation of people over and above the Lord's presence, we lose our source of joy. All of us have to watch this. It may be our marriage, our parenting, our performance at work, our church service, our friendship groupings. We can all be tempted to be more concerned at what image we are projecting for the people audience, than desiring the Lord's affirmation and presence.
   Some of the most insecure people are church leaders, desperate to tell you how well their church is doing, how many people they have baptized, and who they know in the national church scene. When these words are in the mouth of one like David, it is a real blessing. When in the mouth of one like Saul they are toxic.

3. Not taking ourselves too seriously.

    'My heart is not proud, O Lord, my eyes are not haughty; I do not concern myself with great matters or things too wonderful for me.' Psalm 131 v 1.

   David is the 'man after God's own heart', Israel's greatest King, one who was promised 'a house and kingdom that shall endure for ever', author of over seventy psalms, and ultimately a pattern of the Christ who was to come. For David to say that he didn't concern himself with great matters is a terrific understatement. He did concern himself with the Lord's matters, but in making the Lord his preoccupation David was able to put his life and insights into their proper perspective. No matter how great the experience or insight that David had, they were as nothing compared to him knowing and intimately enjoying the Lord's presence.
     The same is true of Moses who had some many shock and awe moments with the Lord, but his advice in Psalm 90 v 12 seems a little bit of an understatement in the light of those experiences:

'Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom'.

    Moses, like David and any man or woman of God, knew that no experience or revelation could ever be a substitute for personal intimacy with God Himself. When we have a glimpse of the Lord's greatness we begin to take ourselves a lot less seriously. As one wall poster pointed out in my university days, 'There is a God....and you aren't Him'. When we learn to not take ourselves too seriously, the joy of the Lord's presence becomes a greater reality.

4. Delighting in our salvation.

a. Psalm 16 v v 8-11.

     Fullness of joy is only found in the Lord's presence. We are the Lord's servant first before we are the servant of men. One of the primary causes of joy leakage is when we allow other people, projects, and purposes to be promoted before the Lord's presence in our priorities.

b. Psalm17 v 15.

An eternal perspective on life puts everything into its proper place. Seeking the Lord's face and not just the hand of His favour was David's priority. He knew significant favour from the 'Right Hand of God', but it was no substitute for the longing in his heart for face to face intimacy with the Lord. His hand had been trained for battle (Psalm144 v 1), but that was no substitute for delighting in the vision of one day seeing the Lord's face.

c. Psalm 37 v 3-4.

    Our salvation is past, present and future. We have been saved (Titus 3 v3-7), are being saved (Phil 2 v 12-14, 2 Peter 1 v 10-11), and will in the future be fully glorified in resurrection ( Romans 8 v 18-30). As we delight ourselves in the Lord's salvation today, we are thankful for the initial act of salvation in our past, and excited about the prospect of future glory. As we delight ourselves in the Lord, his desires become our desires, his priorities become ours and we never lose sight of our amazing and thoroughly undeserved salvation.

d. Psalm 84 v 1-2.

     We worship a living God who speaks and answers prayer. We enter into the joy of prayerful communion with the living God (Isaiah 56 v 6-7), into the joy of heaven's priorities (Luke 15 v 7, 10, 32), and the joy of Jesus's victory over Satan, sin and death (Luke 10 17-20). The Kingdom of God is righteousness, joy and peace in the Holy Spirit (Rom 14 v 17).        When we prioritise seeking first the Kingdom of God, joy will always be the hallmark of our lives. That joy is the Lord's presence with us, God Emmanuel, in every season of our lives. That joy is not first and foremost an emotion, feeling, or light hearted approach to life, but a person- Jesus Christ.
    His presence will bring laughter and light heartedness. He will also be the anchor of hope joy and peace in our grieving, hurting, fears, uncertainties and pain. In those more sorrowful moments, we can still know joy when we know that it is Jesus with us who is our ultimate source of comfort.
   I will finish with a personal testimony to that end. Some time ago the Lord revealed to me how he felt about something that had happened in my life. The pain, tears, and agony of soul came like waves of the sea throughout the day. I did not feel any joyful emotions at that time. However, by the evening the Lord had lifted this burden. The lightness and joy of the Lord's presence was so tangible that it was difficult to believe it was the same day.
   The Lord's presence was my joy. I can remember the day because it was so extraordinary, but also because we had a small fall of snow. The snow was significant, because I was under deep conviction of sin in my attitude to another brother, and when breakthrough finally came, the Lord used the snow to remind me that 'though my sin (my attitude toward this person) was like scarlet, it was now as white as snow' (Isaiah 1 v 18). On the back of conviction and repentance came a greater release of the Lord's presence, and with that His joy, in my life.

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