Monday, January 11, 2010

A Random Thought About Joy

Our professor said that JOY is Jesus and You with nothing (0) in between. At first thought I agreed with this, but I must change my perception of it. Because we are called to have joy now, we experience joy here and now where we are in our sinful bodies. Certainly, our joy will be far greater once there truly is nothing between us and Jesus, but we have joy now, here, in our sin we are graced with joy. So how? Why?

I propose JOY is the promise of Jesus and You with nothing (0) in between. We have joy now, when we throw so much garbage between Jesus and ourselves. But we have been promised through the eternal grace and mercy of God that one day there will be nothing between Jesus and his bride. That is joy. Joy is a promise.

Without this promise, what would we draw our happiness from? We could draw happiness from money for a short time, maybe sex, maybe alcohol, maybe drugs. But there would be complete emptiness in all of us without the promise of joy.

In Christ,

Ben

2 comments:

  1. Thank you for your post Ben. I really hadn't thought much about that quote until I read what you had to say about it. Durring our earthly lives, we are engaged in a constant struggle between what the apostle Paul calls our old man (serving sin) and our new man (serving Christ) (Colossians 3:9&10 KJV) Our old sinful nature comes between us and Jesus while we are still on this earth, but we have the promise of Christ's defeat of sin on the cross. The joy that we experiance on this earth will be a perfect joy only when we get to heaven and experiance the final reality of the defeat of sin and are able to love and serve Christ perfectly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. "Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart." Ps 37:4 - I'm convinced we don't begin to understand what brings us joy; our desires are flawed. But as we delight ourselves in Him, and follow the journey He has designed for us, we do discover joy: "You have made known to me the path of life; you will fill me with joy in Your presence." How blessed we are to be able to experience his joy here, too! And as you point out - how amazing it will be to experience it completely in heaven!

    ReplyDelete