Joy, in the Spirit of God

The Spirit of God changes all concept of ‘life’ because God is Spirit.  It means that life is alive, in that, it is full of life and hope and good, that there is fundamental goodness about life.

It means that we, as we think and feel and know, exist as we truly do, nothing is unreal, and all has meaning.  Worshipping in spirit and in truth, this is joy, just as it is joy that God brings us (to) this reality.  Joy in the Spirit of God is the representation of heaven on earth.

How fundamentally GREAT is God?
This is meant to overwhelm and humble us.
When it does, we KNOW we are alive.
He, in fact, has brought us to life.

When we are tempted to think and feel and know life in all manner of worldly ways, we kick against the goads of the evil of the days (Ephesians 5:16).  Being sucked INTO this world takes us absolutely nowhere in the knowledge of God or in the power of life.  The knowledge of God is fundamental joy, it is power for this life, and it is always a little removed from this life.  And THIS is life—not being overly connected to the evil of the days.

Life is in the Spirit, and once we face this truth, we will no longer be satisfied with languishing where there is no life and no joy.  Life in the Spirit is a life abundant even in the grips of loss that sends us to the hell of grief—indeed, often because of it.  That is, loss.

Who can understand it other 
than the living Lord, Himself?

Our role at the time of trial is to take stock 
of the enormity of what we do not know.

The transcendent thing in the time of trial is we 
get a taste of the enormity of what we do not know.

There is JOY deeper down below what we know.
There is a deeper joy available beyond suffering.

~

DEEPER JOYS HIDDEN IN HEARTACHE

Some things in life need to be experienced to be believed.  Those of us who have been to a higher heaven through the hell of our days have been shown a thing that humbled us to a life welling up to eternal life itself.  Jesus spoke of this to the woman at Jacob’s well (John 4:13-14):

Jesus answered [the woman], 
“Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 
but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. 
Indeed, the water I give them will become in them 
a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

Truly there are greater things to know through experience than many of us presently know. 

By faith, at our depths, 
when nobody can understand, 
there is ONE who understands.

The ONE who understands 
helps us understand and accept
what we cannot understand.

The ONE who understands will take us there.

The key is to remain hopeful that 
the mystery will be unlocked to us.

In time it will... in the meantime 
we express humility accepting 
what we cannot change, 
and this leads to JOY.

The things of life that were meant to bring death, through Jesus’ resurrection, are the very portals to spiritual life on this physical earth.  See, death has been overcome!

Nobody wishes the hell of loss to visit them and pledge its permanency.  Nobody.  God knows that none of us desire that land, just as all of us enter a spiritual battle once we set foot on grief’s shores.

And yet, in the Spirit of God we are given to transcend this locale of death in the life of Jesus, even as we LIVE His death (2 Corinthians 4:10) which only draws us closer still to His eternal life. 

Do you sense the deeper joys about to be bestowed?

Do you FEEL the undergirding of the wind 
beneath your wings as you fly through uncertainty?

These are not mere fancies of the imagination.
These are spiritual actualities possible amid grief.

The Spirit of God, which is joy unrelenting, holds us even as we traverse what seems to be a living hell, for what we are shown that we never knew.

ACCESS TO DEEPER GRACE

Faith amid life experience at the depths 
will take us to deeper graces 
than we have ever been to.

The Spirit takes us deeper into Him who sent the Spirit to the physical lands of creation.  The Spirit and He are ONE.  The Spirit takes us to deeper graces than we can ever contemplate or imagine.

These graces are meant to level us in awe, 
to humble us in the courts of God’s power, 
to compel us to worship with our all.

This amongst it all is our purpose and our life.

Lostness to grief is merely the gateway to a deeper humbler life, which in and of itself takes us to mysteries that leave us utterly disinterested in all manner of petty things we get concerned about in this world.  None of our concerns warrant the distractions they make of themselves.  And yet, an empathy is taught in the process that understands and accepts that these distractions are the temptations of life.

See how the worst of things opens 
the way to the best of things?

And this, of course, is joy.
True, indefatigable joy.

Through the doorway 
into the first rooms of grace 
is but access to a mansion of joy.

When this life ceases to give us the pleasures it once did, we go searching in different places to find what is discoverable.  We stumble across grace.  And in that place of spirit, we find joys we never knew about, and then we begin to comprehend Jesus’s words (John 4:32):

“I have food to eat that you know nothing about.”

Those who have been to this deeper grace know about these spiritual joys.  It does not make them superior.  On the contrary, it simply makes them more alive.  Their joy is the “Joy of the Lord, which [has become their] strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).

Such a strength, such deeper access to grace, 
transcends all weakness in a way 
that the enemy of God cannot contend with.

Those in the Spirit of God cannot be overcome!

This is joy in the Spirit of God.

Joy, the Heart of God

JOY is the heart of God, especially in our liminal in-between spaces of the now-but-not-yet.  Those places where our hopes and dreams and purposes are sown deep in our hearts but are not yet fulfilled.  Those places that frustrate us and threaten to break our spirit.

There is a truth about this reality that prevails:

We ALL live in the in-between;

It is a time where Christ has come as our Saviour, to be our Lord and King, but the final scenes of God’s creation (the new heavens and the new earth) have not yet commenced.  And this reality is amplified in our own now-but-not-yet liminal in-between spaces.

The nature of this life is now-but-not-yet.
The nature of each of our lives is now-but-not-yet.

God’s joy is complete when we rest 
in the fact that we are already complete in Christ 
even though we may feel incomplete.

It takes faith to choose joy when 
our joy has not yet been made complete.

When God sees our faith suchlike,
HIS joy is made complete.

~

Joy is possible when we accept the now-but-not-yet. 

Rather than imagining that ‘something’ 
exceptionally wonderful is coming, 
it is more about living as if that 
exceptional thing was already here.

... even though we know it isn’t.

This is the eternal tension 
of invitation in this life.

~

Even as we linger in our now-but-not-yet liminal spaces—much of the time against our will—God responds to the broken spirit in us as we pray the immortal words of David:

“My sacrifice, O God, is a broken spirit; 
a broken and contrite heart you, God, 
will not despise” (Psalm 51:17)

“The Lord is close to the brokenhearted 
and saves those who are crushed of spirit” (Psalm 34:18).

~

Our God was, is, and ALWAYS will be
the LORD of those 
in the now-but-not-yet liminal in-between spaces.

~

A THORN IN THE FLESH

There were sections of Paul’s writings that validated our human experience of being in the now-but-not-yet liminal space.  Like when Paul says, “I do not understand what I do.  For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do” (Romans 7:15) and “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take [the thorn in the flesh] away from me” (2 Corinthians 12:8).

In many ways we can all relate to these very human experiences of Paul—his sin and his desire to have the thorn in his side removed.

But God’s grace is sufficient 
for us IN our weakness.
In our desire to have life 
a certain way different to how it is.

Not that this is a neat solution,
on the contrary, it isn’t.

Each of us does what we don’t want to do. 
Each of us does at times what we hate to do. 
Each of us has dreams, hopes, and 
purposes that remain unfulfilled. 
Each of us can relate to the thorn in the flesh.

None of us is uniquely ill-equipped 
to deal with these challenges of life, 
though it can sometimes feel like we are.

None of us is estranged 
to these feelings of lostness.

The truth is we are ALL in positions of the now-but-not-yet liminal in-between space in certain places in our lives, if not for prolonged seasons, sometimes lasting twenty years and more.  But life has us thinking that we, ourselves, are the ONLY ones missing out on our dreams.  There is comfort in knowing we are not alone.

Somehow the heart of God, which is His joy, needs to become ours.  “The joy of the Lord” is the ONLY way we maintain the strength of our hope in these times (Nehemiah 8:10).

Grief is expected along the journey of life,
but it is not our eternal destination— 
not in this life nor the next.

~

THE HEART OF A HUMAN’S ‘BEING’

I wrote these words below around 15-years ago and I still think they are right.  

“Have you ever thought much about the purpose of your life?  It is to reconcile the inner discord within every single one of us.  Most of us are somewhat blind to this.  We search for peace almost everywhere but often miss the actual source. 

“It is about God.  It is about relationship.  It is about growing passionately toward God, worshipping Him via the things we think, say, and do—a commitment for the rest of our lives.  At its essence, this involves a continual process of learning.”

God is intensely interested in WHO we are 
and WHO we are becoming, 
more than what we do.

God’s most intense interest, however, is targeted in our transformation.  It is only in our transformation that we see—through heartfelt ongoing conversional experience—the length, height, breadth, and depth of His love possible to experience in this life.

What God desires most of all, 
in our personal lives, 
is transformation:

from greedy to generous
from argumentative to amenable
from licentious to loving
from self-centred to selfless
from carousing to caring
from horrible to humble
from entitled to empathetic
from haughty to honest
from vainglorious to vulnerable

You get the idea...

THESE miracles are the GREATEST miracles:

WHERE THE HEART, 
MOST OF ALL, 
IS HEALED.

Life itself is all about the heart.  It is all about living out of a place of solemness of life.  Life is all about appreciation, determination, purpose, and perspective.  All the cherished things of life emerge out of the wellspring of life, the HEART—indeed, Proverbs 4:23 suggests that we must guard it, which is to nurture it, to give it room to flourish, all the while keeping it free from toxins.  The heart is in simply understanding WHAT we have received.  That is, salvation, which is God’s merciful forgiveness, love, unconditional acceptance, and freedom.

The heart itself leads us to joy, 
and in THAT is God.

The key to the heart is where it is at in the 
now-but-not-yet liminal in-between space.

Through suffering we learn to hold on.
Through suffering we learn a deeper joy.

~

WHERE IS GOD IN THE IN-BETWEEN?

Notwithstanding the foregoing, life threatens to, and does, disrupt our hearts.  In everyone’s journey there is a time where we find ourselves pressed into the now-but-not-yet liminal space of the in-between time.

Where we are stuck. 
Where we despair of life itself. 
This is no idealising of petty concerns.

There was that time for Paul, where he and his company were “under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired of life itself” (2 Corinthians 1:8).

If it could happen to Paul, it will happen to us.  And let us not become drawn into the temptation of comparing his despairing with ours.  As Paul and his companions were human and limited in their own capacities, so are we in ours.

We can take comfort in this: 

God’s best PRESENCE is in the time of trial, 
when we are despairing of life itself.

There are many manifestations of such despairing: poverty, physical threat, jadedness, compassion fatigue, burnout, all manner of insecurity, tragedy, spiritual attack and desolation, and yes, real and mortal threat to life itself.

Allow me to finish with this ode:

It is when we are down 
that we reach out to God.

It is when we are down that 
we are receptive to His Spirit.

It is when we are down 
that God scoops us up.

It is when we are down 
that God becomes real.

When life leads us to lonely places, THERE we find God, even in His apparent absence, for He never leaves us nor forsakes us.  We know this by His presence even in His absence during a dark night of the soul.  For we know that we who are IN Christ are already complete even though we bear the now-but-not-yet experience of feeling utterly incomplete.  We understand and accept that irresolvable tension.

Joy is the Lord’s heart, especially 
in the now-but-not-yet liminal spaces.

We know it is God’s heart because we know joy is what our hearts continually crave, especially in bleak places, and we are made in God’s image.  For joy is goodness, and goodness is OF God.

Go in peace as you rejoice in the Lord!

Joy, the Strength of God

“For the joy set before Him, He endured the cross.”  These are some of the immortal words of Hebrews 12:2.  Joy is a tantalising topic in the Bible.  It is almost always coupled with kind of the opposite—trial, hardship, or suffering in a word—for Bible people have almost always suffered.  Or perhaps it is because Bible people are committed to truth—they typically (and are not meant to) sugar-coat reality.  And yet, joy—the second-named fruit of the Spirit.  Bible people are people of suffering, and of joy.

This one three-lettered word concept 
— J O Y — 
ought to captivate our imaginations.

How is it even possible that Christ would have 
joy set before Him in enduring the Cross?

And how are we to follow Jesus 
by being people of His way?

The answer to these questions is in knowing the mission of Christ Jesus.  He came precisely to meet the Cross and then to transcend it.  He met the Cross and His Passion was for us ALL.  He transcended the Cross to be raised on the third day.  Defeating death, having defeated the eternal power that sin had over us, then He was raised and returned to the Father in the Ascension, to reign with the Father forever.  At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit entered the fray and reigns in believers’ hearts to this day here on earth.  It is ALL joy!

“For the joy set before Him, 
He endured the cross,” 
for what was imminently at hand: 
G L O R Y
... in so many manifestations of the word.

Jesus’ joy is made complete in our following Him in His joy (John 15:11).  Which is sharing in His love.  But we don’t always feel so strong in Jesus’ love, and indeed our hearts grow weak frequently.  For all manner of reason, our strength fails, and our frequent need is of comfort, and a reminder.

OUR NEED OF STRENGTH

Often when I’m weak, I search and wait expectantly though at times in desperation for the breakthrough that strengthens me.  It is never normally a huge redirection in what I’m doing.  It is usually small though significant having the mark of God on it.  At other times, I realign to the truths above.

We need strength when we are weak.  Oftentimes it is only a morsel of strength we need, because when we are weak, we normally respond positively having received even a modicum of encouragement.  Strength returns in a moment for the moment.  When we are weak, even a little strengthening helps a great deal.  

Oswald Chambers says, 
“God never gives strength for tomorrow, 
or for the next hour, but only for 
the strain of the minute.”

As we strain in surrender, 
a very paradoxical concept,
strength is added for the moment.

Only God can give the strength that is needed in cases of spiritual weakness.  Yet, as an utter paradox, Paul says, “For when I am weak, then I am strong” (2 Corinthians 12:10).

WHEN I am weak,
THEN I am strong.

Weakness is inevitable.
Strength through weakness.

The biblical way of Paul exists as LIFE for us all, through the rejection of all distraction in preference to worship God in truth.

Weakness ushers us to the foyer of God’s court to experience the presence that replaces weakness with His strength—a strength through which we can do all things (Philippians 4:13).

A quiet, humble strength, that IN God we can do all things.  A strength IN weakness.  A strength only possible when we are weak.  As we accept our weakness.  As we learn to smile in that weakness because of the goodness of God that interminably FOR us.  As we remember that we ALREADY possess the treasure we seek (see 2 Corinthians chapter 4).

The theme of Paul’s letter to the Philippians is joy—despite the painful circumstances he was in.  So we see that Jesus and Paul transacted via the theme of joy in suffering.

PERSONAL EXPRESSIONS & EXPERIENCES OF JOY

What is joy for you and me? 

Many things bring or give me joy, just like there are many things that bring or give me pain.  And yet, there is a cleaving of these two—joy and pain—in the redeeming of the truer joy.

We must investigate joy WITHIN pain.
It is the secret power of the gospel.
It is a mystery to be unravelled.

When James says, “Consider it pure joy, brothers and sisters, when you face trials of many kinds,”  (1:2-4) what on earth does he mean?  What this says is there must be the capacity to experience and express the purest joy despite our circumstances, and perhaps even BECAUSE of them in some instances.

The thing that gives me MOST joy is when I experience raw truth amid the company of people—sorrow, grief, anxiety, etc., truthfully told.  That is, when a person or people share their weakness bravely.

It’s where we are inadequate 
together that God’s power comes.

Inadequacy shared initiates the power of God. 

In it is power to open hearts so people can 
receive the CARE of God in their suffering.

There is a big difference between being inadequate alone compared with being inadequate together. In truth, we are ALL inadequate.  And it’s only when we ‘fess up’ and admit this, being affirmed for our courage, that we stand on the cusp of power.  But when we are alone it is all too easy to sink into depression and self-loathing when we are tempted into thinking we are alone—we watch on and THINK that everyone else has all of life together.

There is encouragement in shared suffering.

Personal experiences of joy manifest in bearing 
the truth of our suffering with others who relate.

So long as IN our suffering we feel affirmed 
for the courage we bear in sharing vulnerably.

The truth is, there is no joy (the biblical kind) without speaking truth to our powerlessness.  We must be allowed to BE weak, then we can become strong.  Then, in the midst of the assembly, there is great joy because the right heart is borne as a witness to true worship.  “... in the Spirit and in truth,” (John 4:23-24) is true worship, and the product of such worship is joy—the joy of the Lord, which is our strength.

THE JOY OF THE LORD IS OUR STRENGTH

In the times of Ezra and Nehemiah—in the 400s before the common era [i.e., before the moment signified by Christ’s birth]—when the people were assembled to hear the reading of the Law, a bizarre yet beautiful thing happened.

They wept!

The people were cut to the heart, convicted because of the truth, of how far from God they were in their performance, how far they were from honouring the Law of the Lord.

This was a GOOD thing!

The people of Nehemiah’s day represented the RIGHT heart—they were a people about to celebrate their freedom, but because of their truth-filled and God-honouring hearts they were overwhelmed with lament for their sin—historical and present.  They needed the kindness of God’s Spirit—issued through the encouraging rebuke of Nehemiah—that now was not a time for sorrow but for joy.  Such is the grace of God.

“... a broken and contrite spirit
you, God, will not despise.”
—Psalm 51:17

When truth is present on our hearts 
—a repentant heart—
God sees that heart and 
overwhelms it with His kindness.

THIS is the grace of God!

For many of us, we know the theory of this joy, “the joy of the Lord that is our strength” (Nehemiah 8:10).  Such a concept is tantalising, if not alluring.  Fascinated by it, we are convicted to discover more about a biblical concept that must surely be comprehensible.  Surely it must be!

And it is.

The joy of the Lord IS our strength, simply because it is devoid of all and any of ours.  Our ‘strength’ or self-dependence is a blocker to the strength of God.

It is God alone in us, displacing our desire that our wants would be satisfied according to our will with a desire that seeks “first His Kingdom and His righteousness” (Matthew 6:33).  Taking “delight in the Lord” is THE way to getting “the desires of our hearts” (Psalm 37:4) because we receive what our hearts delight in.  In committing our way to the Lord we will POSSESS the desires of our hearts—they will at that one time align perfectly.

THE WISDOM OF JOY ESPECIALLY IN SUFFERING

As I have argued compellingly these last three-to-four months—that there is wisdom in forgiveness, and that there is folly in refusing to go there—there is also wisdom in moving beyond guilt to receive God’s kindness to experience joy amid suffering.

Let me say that again:

There is wisdom in moving beyond guilt 
to receive God’s kindness 
to experience joy amid suffering.

The ancients echo this wisdom 
and the heroes of today usher it forth. 

“Go THIS way,” they ALL say.

Whenever we think of resilience, we truly are investing all our awareness on the way of resilience, which is to bear with suffering joyfully—yet not joyously.  Being joyous might suggest some sadistic pleasure amid the painful circumstance.  This is not at all what being joyful in suffering is about.

Being joyful in suffering is about identification.  It is us identifying with our brothers and sisters in their suffering as they identify with our suffering in theirs.  It is us all identifying with a crucified Saviour.  It is us all identifying with a suffering that humbles us in truth, making us kinder, more compassionate, more attuned to love the one in pain.  Suffering teaches us empathy.

What this is truly about is CONNECTION, 
for there is no better identification than connection.

Human connection is affiliation our souls crave, even as 
human connection mirrors connection with the Divine.

Connection is the purpose of life in that it makes the best possible amid the worst—joy in suffering. The gospel makes the best out of the worst—our salvation from Jesus’ death, Jesus’ resurrection from His death, and so on.  Connection this way is how all manner of aloneness is mediated through something all our souls were designed to need.

Truly, we can survive anything, and duly thrive, 
when we have connection (joy) in suffering.

Think of the immense relief you feel 
no matter your circumstances 
when another person says, 
“Yes, I truly understand you.”

Of all, God understands.

God suffered suspicion, betrayal, rejection, 
taunts, scourging, and was crucified.

And yet, “for the joy set before Him, He
endured the cross,” for He (Jesus) knew
He stood on the cusp of victory... for us ALL.

I like how Matthew Levering puts it: “The combination of mourning for sins and rejoicing over God’s mercy exhibits our complete dependence upon God.”  And, I would add, that this dependence is salvation and associated discipleship.

Contrition in response to God’s gracious 
salvation is the antecedent of the purest joy.

And what comes next is THE best.