Rejoice!

 Don't Trip

If you think you are standing firm, be careful that you don’t fall! Be on your guard always. Any temptation can creep up if you let it, and any sin can become a part of your life. An unguarded strength is perhaps your greatest weakness. All the water in all the oceans cannot sink a ship unless it gets inside. Nor can all the trouble in the world harm us unless it gets within us. That is the promise of the psalm: "God guards you from every evil." None of the trouble you encounter has any power to get between you and God, dilute his grace in you, or divert his will for you. Perseverance is not the result of our determination; it is the result of God's faithfulness. We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God is righteous, because God sticks with us.

God is faithful; he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear. But when you are tempted, he will also provide a way out so that you can endure it. God does not abandon us. It is as false as it is irreverent to accuse God of forgetting, overlooking or losing interest in the state and needs of his own people. Christians are not fatigued outcasts who carry righteousness as a burden in a world where the wicked flourish; Christians are people who sing "Oh, blessed be God!... He didn't abandon us defenseless." Christians are not fussy moralists who cluck their tongues over a world going to Hell; Christians are people who praise God who is on our side. I refuse to believe in my depressions; I choose to believe in God.

JOY!

Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian. -G. K. Chesterton-

Joy cannot be commanded, purchased or arranged. But there is something we can do. We can decide to live in response to the abundance of God and not under the dictatorship of our own poor needs. We can decide to live in the environment of a living God an not our own dying selves. We can decide to center ourselves in the God who generously gives and not our own egos which greedily grab. "A Christian," wrote Augustine, "should be an alleluia from head to foot." That is the reality that is the truth of our lives. God made us, redeems us, provides for us. The natural, honest, healthy, logical response to that is praise to God.

Rejoice always! Joy is in spite of circumstances whereas happiness is merely because of circumstances. There is great emphasis on the fact that Christians worship because they want to, not because they are forced to. But it should not be said that we worship because we feel like it. Feelings are great liars. If Christians worshiped only when we felt like it, there would be precious little worship. Feelings are important in many areas but completely unreliable in matters of faith. The bible wastes very little time on the way we feel.

I’m not feelin it…

We think that if we don't feel something there can be no authenticity in doing it. But the wisdom of God says something different: that we can act ourselves into a new way of feeling much quicker than we can feel ourselves into a new way of acting. Worship is an act that develops feelings for God, not a feeling for God that is expressed in worship. When we obey the command to praise God in worship, our deep, essential need to be in a relationship with God is nurtured. God does not reduce us to a set of Pavlovian reflexes so that we mindlessly worship and pray and obey on signal; he establishes us with a dignity in which we are free to receive his word, his gifts, his grace. One of the delightful discoveries along the way of Christian discipleship is how much enjoyment there is, how much laughter you hear, how much sheer fun you find. Gratitude will move anyone who has truly received grace to do as God requires, and daily to cry out His praises.

The emotional side of knowing God is often played down these days for fear of encouraging a maudlin self-absorption. It is true that there is nothing more irreligious than self-absorbed religion, and that it is constantly needful to stress that God does not exist for our comfort or happiness or satisfaction, or to provide us with "religious experiences," as if these were the most interesting and important things in life. But we must not lose sight of the fact that knowing God is an emotional relationship, as well as an intellectual and volitional one, and could not indeed be a deep relation between persons were it not so. The believer is, and must be, emotionally involved in the victories and vicissitudes of God's cause in the world.

Artificiality is one curse that will drop away the moment we kneel at Jesus' feet and surrender ourselves to His meekness. Then we will not care what people think of us so long as God is pleased. Then what we are will be everything; what we appear will take it's place far down the scale of interest for us. Apart from sin we have nothing of which to be ashamed. Only an evil desire to shine makes us want to appear other than we are.

The joy that develops in the Christian way of discipleship is an overflow of spirits that comes from feeling good not about yourself but about God. We find that his ways are dependable, his promises sure. This joy is not dependent on our good luck in escaping hardship. It is not dependent on our good health and avoidance of pain. Christian joy is actually in the midst of pain, suffering, loneliness and misfortune. As Christians do the jobs and tasks assigned to them in what the world calls work, we learn to pay attention to and practice what God is doing in love and justice, in helping and healing, in liberating and cheering.

But what about suffering?

God's wisdom is not, and never was, pledged to keep a fallen world happy, or to make ungodliness comfortable. Not even Christians has he promised a trouble-free life; rather the reverse. He has other ends in view for life in this world than simply to make it easy for everyone. We should not be too taken aback when unexpected and upsetting and discouraging things happen to us now. What do they mean? Simply that God in his wisdom means to make something of us which we have not attained yet, and he is dealing with us accordingly. We may be frankly bewildered at things that happen to us, but God knows exactly what he is doing, and what he is after, in his handling of our affairs. We ought not to hesitate to trust his wisdom, even when he leaves us in the dark.  Even when we cannot see the why and the wherefore of God's dealings, we know that there is love in and behind them, and so we can rejoice always even when humanly speaking, things are going wrong. We know that the true story of our life, when known, will probe to be "mercy from first to last"-- and we are content.

The Son of God suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their sufferings might be like His. Those who work well in the depths of life more easily understand the heights, for indeed in their true nature they are one in the same.  -George MacDonald-

When people know God, losses and "crosses" cease to matter to them; what they have gained simply banishes these things from their minds. Our God is faithful and He is constant. We should remember that God does not change. We are in a relationship with the same Being as the apostles, Moses, Noah, David, and so on. God is personal but He is not a person the same sort as us who are weak, inadequate, ineffective, and a little pathetic. He is eternal, infinite in all his qualities and almighty!

How may we form a right idea of God's greatness? The Bible teaches us two steps that we must take. The first is to remove from our thoughts of God limits that would make him small. The second is to compare him with powers and forces which we regard as great. You don’t go to the grand canyon and exclaim “Look how big I am!”

Let the words of Paul soak in your mind (Phillippians 4:4-20). Paul wrote these words while in one the the worst prisons of his life. Paul was in the inner cell, where he was put in an awkward position after having his back ripped open by flogging. Not only that, but the inner cell was at the bottom of all the prison, so it is said that the excrement from all the prisoners would funnel down and lands in this cell. Talk about poop in the wounds!

^"4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! ⁵ Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. ⁶ Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. ⁷And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

 ⁸ Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. ⁹ Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.

Thanks for Their Gifts

 ¹⁰ I rejoiced greatly in the Lord that at last you renewed your concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned, but you had no opportunity to show it. ¹¹ I am not saying this because I am in need, for I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. ¹² I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. ¹³ I can do all this through him who gives me strength.

 ¹⁴ Yet it was good of you to share in my troubles. ¹⁵Moreover, as you Philippians know, in the early days of your acquaintance with the gospel, when I set out from Macedonia, not one church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you only; ¹⁶ for even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me aid more than once when I was in need. ¹⁷ Not that I desire your gifts; what I desire is that more be credited to your account. ¹⁸ I have received full payment and have more than enough. I am amply supplied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent. They are a fragrant offering, an acceptable sacrifice, pleasing to God. ¹⁹And my God will meet all your needs according to the riches of his glory in Christ Jesus.

 ²⁰ To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen."

No one should seek their own good, but the good of others

What do we do with this joy? What do we do with this perserverence? We bless others! We ourselves have everything we could possibly want. To have everything you need and to have Jesus are one in the same. God is first, others are second… but you are not third. You aren’t even in the picture.

So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God, for we are not seeking our own good but the good of many, so that they may be saved.