I was recently working on memorizing Philippians 4:4, which says, "Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice." This passage does not recommend being joyful; rather, it commands us to be joyful and gives us the object of our joy, namely the Lord. This reminded me of a teaching from Pastor John Piper, where he encourages his listeners to fight for joy. The ideas that we are commanded to be joyful and that we should fight for joy seem counterintuitive because joy appears to be an attitude or emotion that we cannot simply generate spontaneously when we want it. Yet if God does command it (see 1 Thessalonians 5:16 as well), then God also gives us the ability to fulfill His commands.
So, how can we rejoice always? First, we have to understand our own limitedness and the brokenness in the world, which means being happy or having the emotion of happiness all the time is not realistic, at least at the beginning of our joy journey. I have conducted several funerals in the last year, and while there is often smiling and laughter as we consider the good times, there is certainly a time to cry and not be happy when sad things happen. Likewise, there are times when we are simply tired and worn out from long days of life, and even if we are not exactly sad in those moments, we are not exactly happy either. On the other hand, the words for joy in the Bible are about having the emotion of joy, so how can we be joyful always? The answer must lie in finding a deeper sense of joy in life that flows beneath all the day-to-day events and shapes how we view the events of life. Therefore, the command is not simply to be joyful on its own, but rather to be joyful in the Lord and establish our foundation of joy on Him.
To maintain this constant state of joyfulness, we need to nurture our relationship with the Lord. We need to incorporate practices into our lives where we spend time seeing the glory and beauty of the Lord, allowing Him to remind us of who He is, who we are, and what our eternal purpose in life is. A famous Christian teacher from the 19th century, George Müller, learned the lesson of daily finding his joy in the Lord. He said, "I saw more clearly than ever that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was to have my soul happy in the Lord... Now, I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the Word of God and to meditation on it, so that my heart might be comforted, encouraged, warned, reproved, instructed, and that through the Word of God, while meditating on it, my heart might be brought into experiential communion with the Lord."
Even if we have a morning practice of finding our joy in the Lord, we will often lose our joy throughout the day when we encounter difficult situations, difficult people, boring times, pain, and temptations to find joy in other things. So, another practice of joy that God is working on in my life right now is that when I become aware of a non-joyful attitude, I need to stop and fight for my joy in the Lord. I need to reflect on the truths that I know. I need to pray and ask God for help. I need to preach to myself and believe what He has said. In each situation, by stopping and reminding myself of the truths I have learned from Him, I can release the cares and concerns and be reminded of the big picture where God is in control, and I am in His hands. I can then rest in peace and have joy in the Lord.
No comments:
Post a Comment