You are currently browsing the tag archive for the 'joy' tag.
Grace substitutes a full, childlike, and delighted acceptance of our need, a joy in total dependence. We become ‘jolly beggars.’ ~C.S. Lewis
There is something about those rare birds who have learned to soar above the ho-hum life many of us have become accustomed to living, knowingly or not. Maybe you don’t know the ones I am speaking of here.
Philip Yancey shares the following:
Not long ago I received in the mail a postcard from a friend that had on it only six words, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’ I smiled when I saw the return address, for my strange friend excels at these pious slogans. When I called him, though, he told me the slogan came from the author and speaker Brennan Manning. At a seminar, Manning referred to Jesus’ closest friend on earth, the disciple named John, identified in the Gospels as ‘the one Jesus loved.’ Manning said, “If John were to be asked, ‘What is your primary identity in life?’ he would not reply, ‘I am a disciple, an apostle, an evangelist, an author of one of the four Gospels,’ but rather, ‘I am the one Jesus loves.’”
What would it mean, I ask myself, if I too came to the place where I saw my primary identity in life as ‘the one Jesus loves’? How differently would I view myself at the end of a day?
Sociologists have a theory of the looking-glass self: you become what the most important person in your life (wife, father, boss, etc.) thinks you are. How would my life change if I truly believed the Bible’s astounding words about God’s love for me, if I looked in the mirror and saw what God sees?
Brennan Manning tells the story of an Irish priest who, on a walking tour of a rural parish, sees an old peasant kneeling by the side of the road, praying. Impressed, the priest says to the man, ‘You must be very close to God.’ The peasant looks up from his prayers, thinks a moment, and then smiles, ‘Yes, he’s very fond of me.’ (What’s So Amazing About Grace?, pages 68-69)
I too, was reminded about this kind of simple dependance upon God yesterday when I stumbled across the following verse that one of my daughters had posted.
Give your entire attention to what God is doing right now, and don’t get worked up about what may or may not happen tomorrow. God will help you deal with whatever hard things come up when the time comes (Matthew 6:34, The Message).
The full life Jesus speaks of is a life of learned dependance .
Jesus was truly free. His freedom was rooted in his spiritual awareness that he was the Beloved Child of God. He knew in the depth of his being that he belonged to God before he was born, that he was sent into the world to proclaim God’s love, and that he would return to God after his mission was fulfilled. This knowledge gave him the freedom to speak and act without having to please the world and the power to respond to people’s pains with the healing love of God.
-Henri Nouwen
We follow Jesus after all—and he was as free a human being as any to ever walk the planet. I suppose that means we ought to be free ourselves to a certain degree if we follow him at all.
Jesus spoke often about the freedom that life in him entails:
17-21 Coming down off the mountain with them, he stood on a plain surrounded by disciples, and was soon joined by a huge congregation from all over Judea and Jerusalem, even from the seaside towns of Tyre and Sidon. They had come both to hear him and to be cured of their ailments. Those disturbed by evil spirits were healed. Everyone was trying to touch him—so much energy surging from him, so many people healed! Then he spoke:
You’re blessed when you’ve lost it all.
God’s kingdom is there for the finding.
You’re blessed when you’re ravenously hungry.
Then you’re ready for the Messianic meal.
You’re blessed when the tears flow freely.
Joy comes with the morning. (Luke 6:17-21, The Message Bible)
Many just don’t get it. It doesn’t sound like Jesus isn’t describing a life of freedom—but he is! To the casual listener it sounds as if Jesus is talking more in terms of jail than he is in terms of freedom. Make no mistake—the free life isn’t one of comfort and ease. It’s not the life of fame and fortune. It’s never about who’s watching or not watching.
The free life is about much more than any of that. The free life Jesus lived was about pleasing his Father in heaven and so it is with us. It is one of the great paradoxes: When we live for ourselves we aren’t exercising our freedom—no—that would be sacrificing the freedom that God has so richly given us in Christ. A free person can skip down the side-walk smiling after just having lost it all and hum a song of delight in Jesus, because in God’s reality—she hasn’t lost a thing.
Who loves not wine, women and song, remains a fool his whole life long.
-Martin Luther
When we value rules over relationships we run the risk of pushing those close to us as far away as Jupiter. We figure we are doing others a favor by mandating that they live within the restraints of what we deem responsible—and even holy. The problem is—we always go overboard. Instead of letting anyone out the side-door for some fresh air and recreation we bolt it shut—because—jimminy-crickets—they might just wander off somewhere they shouldn’t be you know.
We’ll keep them locked up in the house instead (this approach never fails to backfire by the way).
Instead of condoning sex—we figure it’s just safer (and easier I’d confer) to flat out condemn it entirely. It’s no wonder so many run off into the arms of illicit sex and uncommitted physical relationships—if you can even call it that. Kids that are raised to believe that sex is bad—wrong—dirty—sinful, or worst of all—not of God—are the same kids who will struggle mightily as adults. And don’t trust me, the statistics bear it out. If anything is of God here on earth—sex is! I hope that offends someone, because if it does, you need offending in the worst kind of way.
Seize life! Eat bread with gusto,
Drink wine with a robust heart.
Oh yes—God takes pleasure in your pleasure!
Dress festively every morning.
Don’t skimp on colors and scarves.
Relish life with the spouse you love
Each and every day of your precarious life.
Each day is God’s gift. It’s all you get in exchange
For the hard work of staying alive.
Make the most of each one!
Whatever turns up, grab it and do it. And heartily!
(Ecclesiastes 9:7-9, The Message Bible)
May I remind you that God created sex—not Hugh Hefner.
When we sin and mess up our lives, we find that God doesn’t go off and leave us… He enters into our trouble and saves us.
-Eugene Peterson
Things aren’t always the way we are told they are. I was in church this past Sunday and my pastor was going on about the virtue of honesty. During his message he talked about the most well-known story in terms of honesty possibly in American history. It’s a story involving the patriot, war hero and president, George Washington. The story goes that young George was asked by his father about a tree that had been cut down at the family compound and responded: Father, I cannot tell a lie. I chopped down this cherry tree.
Well, the story is a big fat lie—seems the most popular story about honesty is nothing more than a sham.
Religion isn’t shy about trying to convince us that in order to get control of our sin problem (we are saved you know—and sinning isn’t what we ought to be doing)—all we must do is somehow kill our desires. It’s no wonder so many of us consider following Jesus more like living in a torture chamber than we do a daily celebration.
21-22 If such is the case, is the law, then, an anti-promise, a negation of God’s will for us? Not at all. Its purpose was to make obvious to everyone that we are, in ourselves, out of right relationship with God, and therefore to show us the futility of devising some religious system for getting by our own efforts what we can only get by waiting in faith for God to complete his promise. For if any kind of rule-keeping had power to create life in us, we would certainly have gotten it by this time. (Galatians 3:21-22, The Message Bible)
Just as the law (I’ll add religion) was powerless to save us—so it is unable to give us a lick when it comes to living the Christian life. All the law can do is point us to Jesus—it can’t empower us to follow him in a million life-times. We can thank God for the law in that it painfully shows us our utter inadequacy, but we must not then turn around and attempt to live up to it’s standards in hopes that we ever will ever meet it’s demands. To do so is to undermine the faith we placed in Jesus when we gave up trying to earn God’s favor—as if we ever could have. Jesus bridged that chasm.
The big fat lie of religion is that is powerful enough to rescue us when all it does is hinder us, and in the end, it sucks the very life out of us when we put any stock in it. Jesus—the author of liberty—is the only One we need to put our stock in.
Whenever faith seems an entitlement, or a measuring rod, we cast our lots with the Pharisees and grace softly slips away.
-Philip Yancey, Soul Survivor
Pastor Mark Driscoll has laid out what I believe to be the best list I have run across in some time on the distinct differences between the Gospel and religion. Jesus delivered the very Gospel we preach today within the context of his earthly ministry and his fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures. It was the religion of the Pharisees (and any other man-devised system of connecting with the Almighty) that he came to abolish with his very life.
When you get down to brass tacks—Jesus is the Gospel and Jesus is about setting us free. And since I have been outlining what freedom is and what it isn’t (the Gospel shouts Freedom! after all)—I figured it would be fitting to share Driscoll’s list while we are taking the time to expose the fallacies of religion that are constantly at work to undermine the message of freedom.
Religion says, ‘If I obey God, God will love me.’ Gospel says, ‘Because God love me, I can obey.’
Religion has good people and bad people. Gospel has only repentant and unrepentant people.
Religion values a birth family. Gospel values a new birth.
Religion depends on what I do. Gospel depends on what Jesus has done.
Religion claims that sanctification justifies me. Gospel claims that justification enables sanctification.
Religion has the goal to get from God. Gospel has the goal to get to God.
Religion sees hardships as punishment for sin. Gospel sees hardship as sanctified affliction.
Religion is about me. Gospel is about Jesus.
Religion believes appearing as a good person is the key. Gospel believes that being honest is the key.
Religion has an uncertainty of standing before God. Gospel has certainty based on Jesus’ work.
Religion sees Jesus a the means. Gospel sees Jesus as the end.
Religion ends in pride or despair. Gospel ends in humble joy.
As Driscoll so explicitly points out, the Gospel of freedom Jesus embodies and the religion he came to expose are at polar ends of the spectrum—they are at diabolical odds with each other.
Legalism is helpless in bringing this about; it only gets in the way. Among those who belong to Christ, everything connected with getting our own way and mindlessly responding to what everyone else calls necessities is killed off for good—crucified. (Galatians 5:23b-24, The Message Bible)
…To obey the law of the land leaves us our constitutional freedom, but not the freedom to follow our own consciences wherever they lead.
To obey the dictates of our own consciences leaves us freedom from the sense of moral guilt, but not the freedom to gratify our own strongest appetites.
To obey our strongest appetites for drink, sex, power, revenge, or whatever else leaves us the freedom of an animal to take what we want when we want it, but not the freedom of a human being to be human.
-Frederick Buechner, Beyond Words
Some times I get the feeling that I am supposed to be a stone statue when nothing could be further from the truth. I think God would rather we mess up once in a while than never attempt to live at all (and no—for the record and those who consider themselves God’s policemen—I am not condoning that we go out and commit some big fat sin because God has no problem with it—because he does).
We have rules all around us that ask us to do that which we can’t do or to abstain from that which we most want to do—and even when we can accomplish or live up to half of these self-sanctioned rules—adhering to these dictates would mean our ceasing to be human. God never demands we check our humanity at the door—it is religion that asks us to do that. God’s idea of following Jesus doesn’t include doing away with fun, desire, or even good sex for that matter—in it’s proper place of course. Following Jesus is to be a life of joy—not sadomasochism.
As I read my copy of the New Testament I am ever reminded that Jesus went to parties and the like—despite the ire of the religious establishment. And I’m certain that some within his own ranks wished he’d have stayed at home in the Synagogue (but Jesus lived among the people). It could even be argued that he was the life of the party (no pun intended, I promise). Jesus laughed and he really made some people mad (and I’ll go out on a limb and say his laughing had much to do with their being so upset—stiff-necked religious people consider it their God given duty to stop any fun before it begins you know). Jesus may have even teed it up a time or two in his sandals over at the country club—although, I’m not so sure that playing a round of golf in a toga in the middle of the desert heat would have been all that comfortable.
We see Jesus being the first guy out in the morning to go fishing and also read of him taking a nap in the stern of a boat—so it’s not hard to imagine him getting his beard trimmed up or him polishing off a stack of pancakes and going back for seconds.
Although Jesus was fully God—he was also fully human.
This is the family tree of the human race: When God created the human race, he made it godlike, with a nature akin to God. He created both male and female and blessed them, the whole human race. (Genesis 5:1-2, The Message Bible)
We do well to remember that we are free to be human ourselves—as a matter of fact—it is us Jesus-followers who should be most human.
Sin will always keep you longer than you wanted to stay, make you pay more than you ever wanted to pay, and take you further than you ever intended to go.
-My friend Blaine Bartel
A few years ago I ran across a story that still moves me every time I read it. The story is re-counted in Steve Brown’s riveting book, A Scandalous Freedom.
Abraham Lincoln went to a slave market. There he noted a young, beautiful African-American woman being auctioned off to the highest offer. He bid on her and won. He could see the anger in the young woman’s eyes and could imagine what she was thinking, ’another white man will buy me, use me, and then discard me’.
As Lincoln walked off with his ‘property’, he turned to the woman and said, ‘You’re free’. ‘Yeah. What does that mean?’ she replied. ‘It means that you’re free.’ ‘Does it mean I can say whatever I want to say?’ ‘Yes,’ replied Lincoln, smiling, ‘it means you can say whatever you want to say.’ ‘Does it mean,’ she asked incredulously, ‘that I can be whatever I want to be?’ ‘Yes, you can be whatever you want to be.’ ‘Does it mean,’ the young woman said hesitantly, ‘that I can go wherever I want to go?’ ‘Yes, it means you are free and you can go wherever you want to go.’
‘Then,’ said the woman with tears welling up in her eyes, ‘I think I’ll go with you.’
Brown continues…
That is what God has done for us. It is what the Christian faith is all about. We have been bought with a price, the price of God’s own Son. We now have a new master, one who, once he paid the price, set us free.
Do you realize that you are free? Jesus never twists our arm—and he never does a hard-sell on us. He simply sets us free and lets us decide what we will do with that freedom. The question each of us must answer is: Will we turn and walk away—or will we, like the slave girl—follow him?
36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (John 8:36, ESV)
…Indeed if we consider the unblushing promise 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.
-C.S. Lewis (The Weight of Glory)
There is a tendency I find myself falling prey to on occasion. It is the temptation to succumb to the misguided and hell-derived notion that I have to wait until the sun comes out again to enjoy my life—that I have to be miserable until I somehow miraculously get a set of six-pack-abs by doing a few piddly push-ups a day (too much pasta for that to happen)—that I must settle for mediocre living (at the very best) until I can afford to get my bad tooth fixed—or that I can’t find satisfaction in simply trusting Jesus with all of my worries and tomorrows until I have all the answers lined up in some sort of neat little row.
Waiting until I’m a perfect writer to share my gift with a stranger in need of water who is desperately thirsty is one sure-fire way to guarantee I’ll never begin at all.
Jesus never said he came to bring us a full life when we got it all together—not until we straightened out our sorry living or cleaned up our sloppy act. He never hinted that some of us would be the unlucky ones or fall into the category of those less fortunate. He didn’t spell out a secret code that only a handful of spiritually-minded intellectuals would be so smart to figure out that would simultaneously result in their being the ones to live a fairy-tale life riding off into the sunset with a trailer filled with gold hitched to their buggy—arm and arm with their trophy wife (or Mr. Wonderful for that matter)—while the rest of us were subjected to staying at home as we mopped the floors, changed the diapers, and did the dishes.
No—he didn’t say anything of the sort.
10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. (John 10:10, ESV)
Jesus was referring to those who know him in the context of the conversation he was having when he spoke those powerful words of life—not those who don’t know him. The million dollar question always is—do you? Because if you do know him, he never had anything less in mind for you.
One word to the wise though—you can’t find that life anywhere else but in Jesus.
And don’t fall victim to the seductive temptation that says you can.
I am to cling to Christ alone; he has taught neither too much nor too little. He has taught me to know God the Father, has revealed himself to me, and has also acquainted me with the Holy Spirit. He has also taught me how to live and how to die and has told me what to hope for. What more do I want?
-Martin Luther
What else is there? Who else is there? If you have lived one day as a Jesus-follower and spent a thousand without him you know what Luther is getting at. I have enjoyed many of the niceties this world can offer and yet—Jesus is in a class of his own. Even my own children—as much as I dig them—are no match for Jesus.
I adore Jesus—I am learning to appreciate others. But no one else deserves my worship. How often I pay homage to that which competes with Jesus for my affection and it never suffices.
No one else can satisfy my deepest longings.
Third Day sings:
I’ve heard all the stories
I’ve seen all the signs
Witnessed all the glory. Yeah
Tasted all that’s fine
Nothing compares
to the greatness of knowing You, Lord…
I see all the people
Wasting all their time
Building up their riches
For a life that’s fine
What will it finally take for us to learn that any life we seek outside of Christ is sure to leave us hungry, empty, disillusioned, and wore-out? If we’d only seek him before and above all else how full and overflowing our lives and our hearts would be!
Peter, the rough-edged servant of Jesus, knew full well.
67 So Jesus said to the Twelve, ‘Do you want to go away as well?’ 68 Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life, 69 and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God.” (John 6:67-69, ESV)
Teach us to cling to you alone Lord Jesus.
Recent Comments