The Joy of the Lord

God intends for us to be happy, successful and fulfilled through Jesus Christ and God’s Word. But, ask yourself: "Are you happy?" I mean truly, absolutely, at all times, never ending, fully and completely, deliriously happy?
It’s been my experience that the response by most of us would be: Well, of course not. I’ve had my moments and hope to have more in the future, but each experience I’ve had like that has to end and I have to return to reality. Not only is the world not structured to make me permanently happy, but to even desire that my personal joy should be pursued and obtained would be selfish.
But guess what? Never ending, pure exhilarated joy for every human being is precisely what God desires for us and makes available to us when we understand how it’s connected to our relationship with Him, growing closer to Him and uncompromising worship of Him! Consider the following from John Piper:

All men seek happiness…it is a simple given in human nature. It is a law of the human heart.
This persistent and undeniable yearning is not to be suppressed, but to be glutted – on God! [In fact,] it is what our Creator commands: Delight yourself in the Lord – Psalm 37:4.

This command, both directly and indirectly, is found repeatedly in the Bible, but is consistently misconstrued and twisted by the nature and ruling forces of this world as well as our sinful nature. As the result, we tend to set our attainment of joy and happiness as the primary objective. We also believe we can attain our happiness on our own through the pursuit of worldly pleasures – much as King Solomon expressed in the book of Ecclesiastics, meaning, money, sex, alcohol, drugs and power. Such are the false idols or goals by which we are tempted and drawn off course by Satan.
The great business of life is to put our mouths out of taste for those pleasures with which the tempter baits his hooks. There is no other way to triumph over sin long-term than to gain a distaste for it because of superior satisfaction in God. Feast on God – to find your joy and happiness, not on the things of this world.
However, it is not a bad thing to desire our own good. The great problem, though, of human beings is that they are too easily pleased. And so, they settle for mud pies of appetite instead of infinite delight.
Before I continue with these thoughts, let me back-up for a moment and make something clear about the teachings of the Bible on this subject. First, the full text of Psalm 37:4 is: Delight yourself in the Lord, AND He will give you the desires of our heart. The goodness of God, the very foundation of worship, is not a thing you pay your respects to out of some kind of disinterested reverence. No, it is something to be enjoyed: “Oh, taste and see the LORD is good.” (Psalm 34:8) “How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” (Psalm 119:103) His point is that the pleasure or joy we receive from seeking God is the by product rather than the catalyst for the action.

The deepest and most enduring happiness is found only in God. Not from God, but in God. Thus, only one thing ultimately matters: glorifying God the way He has appointed.
What could God give to us to enjoy that would prove Him most loving? – Himself. What do we do when we are given something beautiful or excellent? We praise it. All enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it.
I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment. So, if God loves us enough to make our joy full, He must not only give us Himself; He must also win from us the praise of our hearts – because the fullness of our joy can only be found in knowing and praising Him. God’s pursuit of praise from us and our pursuit of pleasure in Him are the same pursuit.

Think of it this way: if there has ever been an occasion when you were engulfed with spontaneous, everlasting (at least for the moment) delirious joy, did anything else matter or even pull on your senses while that all-consuming joy was in play? Of course, not. Also, when that state of joy struck, was it, in and of itself, the focus of your pursuit, or was that explosion of feeling caused by something else? Exactly! Something else produced the joy that was so intense nothing else mattered as long as it lasted.
If you could identify a treasure like that – something that provides absolute joy, contentment and fulfillment forever, what would it be worth? How much would you be willing to pay for it? Everything you’ve ever had or could ever acquire, right – because there would be no need for anything else. Well, that source, that treasure is God.

Once we had no delight in God, and Christ was just a vague historical figure. What we enjoyed was food and friendship and productivity and investments and vacations and hobbies and games and reading and shopping and sex and sports and art and TV and travel…but not God. He was an idea – even a good one – and a topic for discussion; but He was not a treasure or delight.
Then something miraculous happened. It was like the opening of the eyes of the blind during the golden dawn. First the stunned silence before the unspeakable beauty of holiness. Then the shock and terror that we had actually loved darkness. Then the settling stillness of joy that is the soul’s end. The quest is over. We would give anything if we might be granted to live in the presence of this glory forever and ever.
Happiness in God is the end of all our seeking. Nothing beyond it can be sought as a higher goal.

Our Aim is to please HIM! (2 Corinthians 5:4-9)

4 For while we are still in this tent, we sigh with anxiety; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life. 5 He who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who has given us the Spirit as a guarantee. 6 So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, 7 for we walk by faith, not by sight. 8 We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. 9 So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.

We closed our lesson this morning at church with this passage of scripture. It is the explaination of why we suffer from anxiety. However, if our aim is to "Seek ye first His Kingdom and HIs Righteousness" then life is not really a problem. We can, in fact, be of good courage! The ultimate proof is Acts 2:38! No, it is not baptism. It is the "gift of the Holy Spirit" which is God's "guarantee"! What more could one ask for!

The Anxious Christian

Mike Runcie and I will be speaking on Sunday morning, January 29, 2006 at the McKnight Road Church of Christ, located at 2515 McKnight Road, St. Louis MO 63124 at the corner of Litzsinger and McKnight Road at 10:00 a.m. We want to encourage everyone to bring their friends and neighbors to hear this lesson on how to deal with anxiety. We think that it will be a good outreach lesson for anyone who is searching for the truth. We are looking forward to sharing what the Bible has to say about this subject that effects all of us.

Solomon's End (1 Kings 11: 1-12)

1 Now King Solomon loved many foreign women: the daughter of Pharaoh, and Moabite, Ammonite, E'domite, Sido'nian, and Hittite women, 2 from the nations concerning which the LORD had said to the people of Israel, "You shall not enter into marriage with them, neither shall they with you, for surely they will turn away your heart after their gods"; Solomon clung to these in love. 3 He had seven hundred wives, princesses, and three hundred concubines; and his wives turned away his heart. 4 For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods; and his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father. 5 For Solomon went after Ash'toreth the goddess of the Sido'nians, and after Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. 6 So Solomon did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and did not wholly follow the LORD, as David his father had done. 7 Then Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Molech the abomination of the Ammonites, on the mountain east of Jerusalem. 8 And so he did for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and sacrificed to their gods. 9 And the LORD was angry with Solomon, because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice, 10 and had commanded him concerning this thing, that he should not go after other gods; but he did not keep what the LORD commanded. 11 Therefore the LORD said to Solomon, "Since this has been your mind and you have not kept my covenant and my statutes which I have commanded you, I will surely tear the kingdom from you and will give it to your servant. 12 Yet for the sake of David your father I will not do it in your days, but I will tear it out of the hand of your son. 13 However I will not tear away all the kingdom; but I will give one tribe to your son, for the sake of David my servant and for the sake of Jerusalem which I have chosen."

I have always wondered how a man who twice stood before the Living God, who was granted his request for wisdom, could end up at the end of his life worshiping idols? The same man who built the temple and dedicated it to the Lord, saw God's Glory fill the temple, and worshiped Jehovah God could also worship pagan gods. The key is that his heart was changed by others. It is a warning that whether we old or young, that our lives will be effected by those to whom we give our hearts. The apostle Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 6: 14-18:

Do not be mismated with unbelievers. For what partnership have righteousness and iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Be'lial? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, "I will live in them and move among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Therefore come out from them, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch nothing unclean; then I will welcome you, 18 and I will be a father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty."

I see Christians who fall in love with those who do not know Christ. And, instead of teaching and bringing a loved one to the knowledge of the truth, they allow the nonbeliever to influence their life pulling them away from God. If Solomon with all of his God given wisdom could not withstand the influences of his foreign wives, how is it that believers today continue to ignore this warning? Love can make us blind. That is why we need to trust in the word of the Lord in all of our relationships.

The Most Quoted Author in the Bible

Whose sermons are quoted most in the Bible? The answer may surprise you. Just as the New Testament epistles are our primary interpretive commentary on the historical narratives (the Gospels and Acts), the most venerated portion of the Old Testament - the Torah - has, within it, its primary commentary in the form of three sermons by its principal author, Moses. Moses was eminently qualified to speak for God. He was more than Israel's human Lawgiver: he was the founder of Israel's religion; he was the mediator of the covenant at Sinai; he was Israel's first prophet. (Though God called Abraham a prophet, Israel did not then exist as a nation.) Through Moses, God set such a high standard for the people that all subsequent prophets lived under his shadow, never attaining to it, until the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Not surprisingly, the New Testament authors mentioned Moses more frequently than any other Old Testament person. His concluding remarks after a 120-year lifetime have been handed down to us as the Book of Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy is essentially a series of sermons by the greatest Old Testament prophet. Jesus Himself quoted more from Deuteronomy than from any other portion of the Old Testament. (In a sense, Deuteronomy is the "Book of Romans" of the Old Testament.) The Hebrew title of the book is 'elleh haddebarim ("these are the words") in keeping with the Hebrew custom of often titling a work by its first word(s). The English title Deuteronomy stems from the Septuagint's mistranslation of Deuteronomy 17:18, "this repetition of the Law." The Septuagint translated those words deuteronomion (deutero means "two" or "second," and nomion is "law"; lit., "second Law"), which were rendered Deuteronomium in the Vulgate, Jerome's fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible. Moses' words were addressed to all Israel, an expression used at least 12 times in the book. Its frequent occurrence emphasizes the unity of Israel which was brought about by God's mighty deliverance of the nation from Egypt, and by her acceptance of His covenant at Sinai. They were uniquely God's people, the only nation on earth that had as its "Constitution" the Word of God. Sometimes very crucial progress occurs at an excruciatingly slow pace. From Horeb to Kadesh Barnea was only about 200 miles. The Israelites turned an 11-day journey - from Horeb (another word for Mount Sinai) to Kadesh Barnea, the first site for entering into the Promised Land from the south - into a 40-year wandering in the wilderness before they came to their second potential site for entering the land. It took only three days to get Israel out of Egypt; but it took 40 years to get "Egypt" out of Israel! As Stephen pointed out centuries later, the Israelites had always been slow to believe God. Moses' review of the Law includes many crucial issues such as the legitimacy of war, the role of capital punishment, divorce, as well as the proper forms of worship, keeping the Sabbath, etc. But the surprise for many are the prophetic aspects of this foundational book: the future history of Israel-including an astonishing prediction of the Holocaust, etc. However, all Scriptures are Christ centered, so perhaps most challenging for the dedicated students are the "types" and "macrocodes" throughout the book. We find them in the roles of the goel, the Kinsman-Redeemer, the cities of refuge, the levirate marriage, and the many calendar issues. God has not changed since then. Man has not changed since then. And God's primary message through His servant Moses was Love. Not a list of do's and don'ts, not legalism, but relationship. And, of course, the ultimate consummation of all these things was, and is, fulfilled in our Kinsman-Redeemer, the Lord Jesus Christ. God always rewards the diligent student, and a careful review of this foundational book is guaranteed to be life-changing!

The Anxious Christian

Mike Runcie and I hope to present a lesson on January 29, 2006 at the McKnight Road Church of Christ on this subject. I have been studying what the Bible has to say about anxiety and wanted to give you a prelude to the theme of our lesson.

Anxiety is the generic mental illness of our society today. Almost everyone I talk with, whether a teenager, or an older adult living with the ravages of the aging process, will share with me how worried they are about life. We stress out about all kinds of things. Test results, teachers, employers, fellow employees, appointments, medical conditions, financial matters and the number 1 stressor.......relationships! We tend to think of stress as coming from the outside of us. Most people think that stress is caused by conditions in our surrounding environment. The Bible suggests something else. Stress comes from the six inches between one's ears! In other words, stress or anxiety is an internal "feeling".

Psalms 127 puts it this way:

Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.

There is only one way to avoid the stress of life that comes from living. That is to put oneself under the the protective watch of the Lord. Those who fail to turn their lives over to Him who made us will labor in vain and find "anxious toil". The reward for those who trust in God is "sleep". When you know that your life is in the hands of the God who made you, you can sleep through the storms of life trusting that God is in control.

May God grant you the "peace that passes understanding" as we look to Jesus as our Lord and Savior in the midst of our anxieties.

Payback

Then Jesus told his disciples, "If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit a man, if he gains the whole world and forfeits his life? Or what shall a man give in return for his life? For the Son of man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay every man for what he has done.

[Matt. 16:24-27]

I have been reading the gospels of late and a principle that I am seeing in scripture keeps jumping out at me. The principle is this: The way we treat one another will be the way we are treated by God. I used to think of this as a threat and it would create dread within me. But, of late I am beginning to see this more in the light of a promise that is an opportunity. It is much like the story of the rich young ruler. When Jesus asked him to sell everything he had and give it to the poor and come and follow Jesus, he went away sad because he was very rich. But, if he had seen that God had just invited him into eternal fellowship that would last for eternity....what a blown opportunity! I realize that I blow opportunities daily to lay up treasures in heaven. I get so absorbed in the demands of my practice and life, that I can't see the good deeds that God has created for me to do. The good news is that we all get a fresh start every morning. God cares about our conduct. The way we treat others makes a big difference in how we will spend eternity. What God wants most from us is to show compassion and mercy to those around us, and to humbly live a life in contact with the Creator on a daily basis.

Forgiveness - The Oil of Life

And forgive us our debts, As we also have forgiven our debtors;

Matthew 6:12

Today in our prayer class at the McKnight Road Church of Christ we focused on this portion of the Lord's prayer. These words are a dangerous prayer for a believer. We are always quick to ask God to forgive us our debts, but seldom do I hear people pray "just as we also have forgiven our debtors"! The measure by which we forgive others is the measure by which God forgives us! But, wait, you say! That would mean that God's grace is conditional upon our conduct? Grace is not some sacrament that an earthly priest gets to dispense through religious ritual. Look at the words of Jesus in Matthew 7 beginning in verse 1:

Judge not, that you be not judged. For with the judgment you pronounce you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.

Jesus seems to make it very clear that our conduct and the way in which we treat others will control our relationship with God. It is so easy to spot that speck in my neighbor's eye; but, I can't seem to visualize that beam sticking out of mine own eye. Or, again as Jesus put it in Matthew 6:14-15:

For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

The way we treat our neighbor makes a BIG difference. Forgiveness is the oil of life that lubricates our human relationships which allows us to co-exist. Without it, there is great pain, friction and strife. Peter understood the principle when he asked our Lord, "How many times do I have to forgive my brother?" Seven times Seventy was not the answer he wanted to hear!

Hating someone, or refusing to forgive someone, is the equivalent to eating poison. You have the freedom to choose not to forgive; but, the consequences of that decision will effect your relationship with the Father. And, if one does not learn this lesson in how to live, it may doom us to eternal separation from our Creator. The positive side to forgiveness is that it frees the one who forgives. Letting go of those painful memories by forgiving the one who caused the pain is the secret to abundant life. Our Lord and Savior, while dying on the cross for my sin, asked God to forgive those who crucified him. Can we do anything less? Try this experiment: Pray for someone who has hurt you and ask God to help you to forgive that person. Do something nice for that person. Go the extra mile. Turn your cheek when you get slapped or insulted. See what happens. These are universal laws of nature that are immutable. You will be rewarded in ways that you cannot visualize when you forgive someone.

Trials and Tribulations

A common question I hear often repeated among those who believe is "Why did God let this happen to me?" Sometimes we act as if trials and tribulations are unexpected?

God loves us so much that He literally came to earth, died for our sins, was buried and rose again the third day. Searching the world over, there is absolutely no greater love than that. And because God loves us so much, He wants the absolute best for our lives. However, only He knows exactly what that "best" is and only He knows what it will take to implement it in our lives. Consequently, we need to unconditionally trust Him and know that everything He allows into our lives comes only as a result of His Love. In other words, all the circumstances in our life, every single event, occurs only by His loving permission. There are two major errors we can make regarding trials: The first mistake is the failure to anticipate trials. Jesus suffered trials. Jesus promised us trials (John 16:33). All the apostles suffered trials. Trials are an expected part of the Christian life.

And, like all storms, preparation can be critical in successfully enduring them. A second mistake is to harbor a morbid fear of trials. Remember 1 Corinthians 10:13: "There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it." The Apostle Paul certainly knew sufferings (2 Corinthians 4:7-11, 16-18; 2 Corinthians 11:23-28; Hebrews 11:32-40). And he regarded them as opportunities. There are many reasons why we face trials. Here are just a few:
To glorify God (Daniel 3:16-18, 24-25)
Discipline for known sin (Hebrews 12:5-11; James 4:17; Romans 14:23; 1 John 1:9)
To prevent us from falling into sin (1 Peter 4:1-2)
To keep us from pride. Paul was kept from pride by his "thorn in the flesh" (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
To build faith (1 Peter 1:6-7)
To cause growth (Romans 5:3-5)
To teach obedience and discipline (Acts 9:15-16; Philippians 4:11-13)
To equip us to comfort others (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)
To prove the reality of Christ in us (2 Corinthians 4:7-11)
For testimony to the angels (Job 1:8; Ephesians 3:8-11; 1 Peter 1:12)
When faced with times of trouble remember that God loves you, He knows what is best for you, and He has a plan for your life (Jeremiah 29:11).

"Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? ... I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." – Romans 8:35, 38-39

The Emotionally Healthy Church

1 Corinthians 13

1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give away all I have, and if I deliver my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing. 4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never ends; as for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away. 9 For our knowledge is imperfect and our prophecy is imperfect; 10 but when the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. 11 When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became a man, I gave up childish ways. 12 For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood. 13 So faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.



I borrowed this from Mike Cope's blog of last week:

"Something is desperately wrong with most churches today. We have many people who are passionate for God and his work, yet who are unconnected to their own emotions or those around them. The combination is deadly, both for the church and the leader's personal life.""It is not possible for a Christian to be spiritually mature while remaining emotionally immature. For some reason, however, the vast majority of Christians today live as if the two concepts have no intersection. Our standards of what it means to be 'spiritual' totally bypass many glaring inconsistencies. We have learned to accept that:-You can be a dynamic, gifted speaker for God in public and be an unloving spouse and parent at home.-You can function as a church board member or pastor and be unteachable, insecure, and defensive.-You can memorize entire books of the New Testament and still be unaware of your depression and anger, even displacing it on other people.-You can fast and pray a half-day a week for years as a spiritual discipline and constantly be critical of others, justifying it as discernment.-You can lead hundreds of people in a Christian ministry while driven by a deep personal need to compensate for a nagging sense of failure.-You can pray for deliverance from the demonic realm when in reality you are simply avoiding conflict, repeating an unhealthy pattern of behavior traced back to the home in which you grew up.-You can be outwardly cooperative at church but unconsciously try to undercut or defeat your supervisor by coming habitually late, constantly forgetting meetings, withdrawing and become apathetic, or ignoring the real issue behind why you are hurt and angry."We've all been able to see this incongruency with others, haven't we? One of the most angry people I've ever met in my life is especially angry when he talks about the immature anger of others. One of the most toxic persons I've ever known is a therapist who probably has helped people in her office but leaves bodies along the road in her out-of-the-office life.

He suggests certain principles of emotionally healthy leaders and churches: (1) look beneath the iceberg; (2) break the power of the past; (3) live in brokenness and vulnerability; (4) receive the gift of limits; (5) embrace grieving and loss; and (6) make incarnation your model for loving well. "

In the end it all comes down to faith, hope and love. What do you think?