Good Morning! How is your joy-level these days? Are you running on empty? Has life sucked it right out of you? Reflect on the following and regain what is yours eternally because of Jesus. Happy reading!
“Joy is a state of mind and an orientation of the heart. It is a settled state of contentment, confidence and hope. It is something or someone that provides a source of happiness. It appears 88 times in the Old Testament and 57 rimes in the New Testament.”
Trials, suffering and joy. One of these things seems not to belong. Yet James tells us in chapter 1, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. 4 Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
Joy is this settled state of contentment, confidence, and hope that transcends the chaos of our lives because it is rooted in the Hope of Glory, Jesus, and not in the vaporous life we now live on earth.
All the pain and anguish we see in this world, which is dying under the curse, cannot compare to the glory that awaits us in eternity with God. Yet the pressures of life, many times, cause our vision to become myopic causing us to miss the joy that awaits us both now and in eternity.
Paul tells us that the converse of the suffering in present time is the immensity of the glory that awaits. The whole world is groaning under the weight of sin, yet, in the waiting, there is eager anticipation, hope, that God has put things right and our redemption is near.
For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
C.S. Lewis reflected on this passage in his famous sermon The Weight of Glory,
If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased. (26)
The promise of glory is the promise, almost incredible and only possible by the work of Christ, that some of us, that any of us who really chooses, shall actually survive that examination [of standing before God], shall find approval, shall please God. To please God . . . to be a real ingredient in the divine happiness . . . to be loved by God, not merely pitied, but delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father in a son — it seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory which our thoughts can hardly sustain. But so it is. (38–39)
This world is peddling false joy, wrapped in Christmas red and tied with chains of bondage. We are “far too easily pleased” chasing after fleeting moments of happiness, when “infinite joy is offered”. Christmas causes us to “look (sic) unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the JOY that was set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and has sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”
His sufferings, on our behalf, allows us to find “divine happiness” and “infinite joy” because we can know that we are loved by God, that we are “delighted in as an artist delights in his work or a father as son” and He is pleased in us. This grandiose truth, as Lewis puts, “seems impossible, a weight or burden of glory that our thoughts can hardly sustain”, yet this is where our peace, our hope and our joy is found, resting in the knowledge that “God so love the world that He gave”.
Have a joyous day knowing that your Father delights over you!