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You have put gladness in my heart,
More than in the season that their grain and wine increased.
I will both lie down in peace, and sleep;
For You alone, O Lord, make me dwell in safety.
(Psalm 4:7,8)
THERE ARE MANY DIFFERENT KINDS OF JOY, AND EACH OF THEM SHOULD HAVE A SPECIAL PLACE IN OUR HEARTS. There is a sense, however, in which the best joy is the joy of knowing that WE HAVE DONE THE RIGHT THING. In every situation, we must ask what is the best thing that can be done, and having done what we knew was best, we must learn to be gratified by the knowledge that we’ve done the honorable thing. Integrity should be a source of joy to us.
Happiness and joy are very different things. Happiness is what we feel when what is “happening” is pleasant. But in regard to what happens, our thought should be: “Let not that happen which I wish, but that which is right” (Menander). There will be times when the right thing happens and it will involve great pain on our part. But if our joy comes from the happening of what is right, then we’ll be willing to sacrifice happiness for joy!
There may be times when little other joy will be available to us and we must content ourselves with knowing that we’ve done the right thing. At such desperate times, our tears may have momentarily blinded us to many other blessings that we have, but if it ever came down to it that the joy of having done what was right was all the joy we had, then that joy should be enough to live on.
When we do what’s right, we do so in the faith that somehow everything’s going to work out all right in the end. “Faith is . . . doing the right thing regardless of the consequences, knowing God will turn the ultimate effect to good” (Pamela Reeve). So we go ahead and do what’s right, even when it’s difficult or painful, and our joy comes from our confidence in the ultimate outcome.
If we fail to find joy in the doing of what is right, then not only do we miss the highest joy we can have, but we degrade and demean ourselves. God gave us our conscience, and when we obey it, we thrive as beings made in God’s image — but when we fail to act with honor and integrity, life is no longer worth living.
When faith is lost,
When honor dies,
The man is dead!
(John Greenleaf Whittier)
“. . . yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also” (Luke 2:35).
NEVER HAVING BEEN A WOMAN OR A MOTHER, I CANNOT IMAGINE THE BITTERSWEET JOY AND SORROW OF MARY, THE MOTHER OF JESUS. To be the mother of the Christ, the Savior, must have been a joy beyond what even other mothers could comprehend. And yet . . . when the most special Child ever born was still a baby, she was told, “A sword will pierce through your own soul also.” Having loved this Son as no other human being could, imagine her torment as she stood at the foot of the cross. There is no love without sorrow — and the greater the love, the greater the sorrow.
TO LOVE IS TO KNOW THE SORROW OF NOT BEING LOVED BY SOMEONE WHOSE LOVE YOU LONG FOR. Love, at least between human beings, is risky business. When you love someone, there is no guarantee that they will feel the same way about you. As we all learned in elementary school, “When you like someone and they don’t like you back, it hurts.” No one has ever found any good way around that pain.
TO LOVE IS TO KNOW THE SORROW OF LOSING THE LOVE OF SOMEONE YOU LOVE. This is a more serious sorrow than the first. To have loved someone and been loved by them, and then to experience the ending of that love, either by death or some other circumstance, is a sorrow that mere words cannot describe. Yet we must sooner or later say goodbye to all of our loves in this world — even the best of them.
TO LOVE IS TO KNOW THE SORROW OF GIVING UP JOY SO THAT THE ONE YOU LOVE MAY HAVE JOY. With this third sorrow, we come to the most poignant sorrow in the world. This, of course, was the sorrow that Jesus was doomed to suffer in His love for us. He could not have had the joy of His love for us without the sorrow of giving up His life. And so it often is among those of us who love one another. Love will lead us to die, if it means that our beloved can live.
To love, then, is to open ourselves to the possibility of one or the other — and sometimes all three — of these sorrows. Yet what shall we say? Shall we not love? I know not what choice others may make, but I shall continue to keep my heart open to love. Even at the bitterest ending of love’s sweetness, there is no grief great enough to keep me from the clear, pure joy of having loved.
“Those who have the courage to love should have the courage to suffer” (Anthony Trollope).
“Many daughters have done well, but you excel them all” (Proverbs 31:29).
AS A CHILD, I REMEMBER HEARING OLD MEN PRAY, “LORD, SUIT UNTO US SUCH BLESSINGS AS YOU SEE FIT.” Even then, I think I was struck by the joyful blend of humility and gratitude that would prompt such a prayer. Left to our own devices, we may think we want this or that, but what we really want is whatever the Lord wants for us. And we don’t just “settle” for how the Lord wants to bless us — we receive it openly, receptively, and joyously.
This truth is in the story of Eowyn and Faramir in the legends of J. R. R. Tolkien. Eowyn, a princess of Rohan whose heroism on the Pelennor Fields had turned back the tide of evil, would have loved, and been loved by, Aragorn, heir to the throne of Gondor, but it was impossible for Aragorn to be Eowyn’s husband. The prince Faramir, however, who would later rule the land of Ithilien, came to love Eowyn as they both recuperated from battle in the Houses of Healing. “Eowyn, do you not love me,” he said after courting her, “or will you not?” There is not a greater moment in all of literature than when Eowyn decided that . . . yes, she would.
I am no Aragorn, the Lord knows. But once upon a time, my path ran alongside that of a true Eowyn, a shieldmaiden of the Lord, both valiant and virtuous. Many were the long nights when I prayed for her a Faramir — and when in the Lord’s grace he appeared, her virtue was such that she opened her heart to receive his love. “Behold the maidservant of the Lord,” her willing spirit said. “Let it be to me according to your word” (Luke 1:38). And now, we can only imagine how many lives will have been blessed by the love of Eowyn and Faramir by the time our Lord returns.
O Eowyn, Eowyn. “I thank my God upon every remembrance of you . . . being confident of this very thing, that He who has begun a good work in you will complete it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Philippians 1:3,6). I do not say fare WELL — for on this life’s voyage there will surely be storms — but I pray you’ll fare FORWARD.
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face.
(William Butler Yeats)
“But what things were gain to me, these I have counted loss for Christ” (Philippians 3:7).
WE STAND AMAZED AT WHAT PAUL WAS WILLING TO GIVE UP IN ORDER TO KNOW CHRIST. Valuable though these things were, he was willing to count them “loss” for the more excellent value of knowing Christ. And yet, what Paul did is no more than what ANY of us should be ready to do. If there is some gift that should be given for the Lord’s sake, then we should be willing to give it.
The word “gift” covers a lot of ground, however. There are convenient gifts, and then there are COSTLY gifts. The latter are those in which we part with something that is a part of our very selves and our very hearts. When we give these gifts, we give up a part of precious life. We can hardly see how we can survive the loss.
As I write these words, tears are splattering on the paper on which I am trying to write. An event is taking place tomorrow that will involve the final, irrevocable loss of the most precious temporal treasure that I was ever privileged to enjoy for a while. The loss of this treasure is the ultimate result of a vow that I took a number of years ago that requires me to forgo such joys as this one, for the Lord’s sake. Some would say that if it now requires me to give up this, the greatest joy of my life, I should never have taken the vow.
But are we to give the Lord only that which costs us nothing? To say “If I’d known how much I was going to miss it, I wouldn’t have given it to Him” is to say that truly costly gifts should never be given. Isn’t it better, when the poverty created by a gift begins to hurt us, just to remember the GOAL for which we gave the gift?
Although my life is one of constant sorrow, what I realize is that the sorrow is simply the other side of heaven. I am glad to have a hope that is WORTH the price that I am now having to pay. A life without such a goal would be a life devoid of meaning or joy, and I wouldn’t trade the life I have for such a life as that. On my darkest days of emptiness and longing, I try to bow my head and give thanks for the fullness that will one day be mine. To gain it will be worth the loss of all the loving treasure that my soul so desperately desires right now. It will be worth it. IT WILL BE WORTH IT.
“Everyone should have a goal for which he is willing to exchange a piece of his life” (Carlyle Boehme).
“I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls” (2 Corinthians 12:15).
THERE IS MORE THAN ONE KIND OF THING THAT MIGHT BE “SACRIFICED” OR “GIVEN UP” FOR THE LORD’S SAKE. Think, for example, of three situations in which we might let go of something:
(1) REPENTANCE FROM SIN. When we turn away from any sin, we are “giving up” a practice that we know is displeasing to God. Depending on the sin and how long we’ve been engaging in it, it may be a hard thing to surrender, but the task is made somewhat easier by the fact that the thing we are giving up is evil.
(2) GIVING UP SOMETHING THAT IS REQUIRED BY GOD’S COMMAND. When a parent makes a financial sacrifice for his or her child, it may well be a sacrifice that involves difficulty, but it is hardly one that is optional. What is necessary will be done joyfully, of course, but even so, God’s command left very little choice about whether to do it.
(3) VOLUNTARILY RELINQUISHING SOMETHING EXCEEDINGLY GOOD IN ORDER THAT SOMEONE ELSE MAY HAVE SOMETHING THEY NEED. Here we come to a very different kind of sacrifice. When Jesus left heaven to come and die for us, He gave up things the goodness of which we can only imagine. But let us keep our thinking clear: the things the Lord gave up were not sinful things that NEEDED to be given up, nor were they things He was under any OBLIGATION to give up. These were sacrifices made voluntarily — in the sheer purity of love.
Too often, when we have an opportunity to learn something of this kind of love in our own lives, we miss our chance by trying to hold on to what we want. But when our needs were coming down the road, Jesus’ attitude led Him to step out of the way so that our needs could pass by unhindered. And Paul says, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 2:5).
This type of sacrifice, in which we yield our wants to someone else’s needs, is part of the SUBMISSION that the Lord asks us to learn. “Let each of you look out not only for his own interests, but also for the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4). I can tell you, there is not a purer joy in the world than doing this, and I can also tell you, there is no more freeing, liberating experience. Yielding to someone else’s dreams will break many a chain the devil has made.
“In submission we are free to value other people. Their dreams and plans become important to us” (Richard Foster).
“We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers, remembering without ceasing your work of faith, labor of love, and patience of hope . . .” (1 Thessalonians 1:2,3).
MOST OF US HAVE MORE INFLUENCE THAN WE THINK WE HAVE. Human beings have an amazing power to affect one another, and there is not a one of us (no matter how “little” we think we are) who shouldn’t be concerned about how we are affecting others. ARE WE GIVING OTHERS HOPE OR ARE WE TAKING THEIR HOPE AWAY?
When I read the opening of Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonian church, I am staggered by the thought that he would express appreciation to THEM for the patience of THEIR hope. Can it really be that Paul, the great apostle, needed the encouragement that came from the steadfast hopefulness of his hard-pressed brethren in Thessalonica? I like to think that that was the case.
In regard to the “together” part of Christianity, one of our most important mutual responsibilities is that of helping to keep hope alive in the hearts of our brothers and sisters. That should be no small part of what we try to accomplish when we assemble. “Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider one another in order to stir up love and good works” (Hebrews 10:23,24).
Long ago, an older man gave me some advice. He said, “Gary, folks have enough fears of their own. So don’t share your fears — share your courage.” He made a good point. Yes, there is a time to discuss our doubts and questions and fears, but the MAIN EFFECT of ourselves upon others needs to be that they have a greater HOPE.
By the time these pages are published I will have lived almost three score years in this world. The longer I live, the more I am conscious of the need to have a HOPEFUL impact on those with whom I have influence. I believe in telling the truth, as you well know, and I would never want to give anyone FALSE hope. But when the final tally is made, I hope that I won’t have failed to encourage anyone who NEEDED to be encouraged. It’s a fine thing to HAVE hope, but I believe it is an even finer thing to GIVE hope. That, above all, is what I want to do. And I’m confident that you do too.
“If I can put one thought of rosy sunset into the life of any man or woman, I shall feel that I have worked with God” (George MacDonald).
“In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials” (1 Peter 1:6).
WHEN PETER SAID THAT WE MAY BE “GRIEVED BY VARIOUS TRIALS,” HE SPOKE A TRUTH THAT HAS BEEN BORNE OUT IN THE EXPERIENCE OF MOST OF US. This world is far from what it would have been had sin never entered the picture. It is a “vale of tears,” a place where sorrow and suffering are the common lot of all.
But the suffering is only one side of the truth, at least as far as Christians are concerned. If we suffer, we also “greatly rejoice.” Ironic though it may seem, we are able, because of our hope in Christ, to rejoice even while we suffer. When Paul spoke of the difficulties that might have to be encountered by the Christian, he said, “Yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us” (Romans 8:37). God does not eliminate the possibility of difficulty having to be endured; He gives us a hope that will see us through the difficulties. Indeed, it is IN all these things — not DESPITE them — that we are more than conquerors.
It is a pity if we ever ignore or underestimate the difference that hope makes in the life of the Christian. Yet we have a tendency to do that. If we’ve been Christians very long, we may not remember what it was like to try to deal with the sufferings of this life with no hope of anything better THAN this life. But one hour back in that situation would remind us how valuable our hope is.
We need not evade the truth: if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then we are still dead in our sins and there is no hope (1 Corinthians 15:14-19). Take away the eternal hope, and Christianity is not a “nice way to live”; it is a pathetic joke.
But the hope of the Christian IS real, and we need to rejoice in the difference that it makes in the quality of our lives. We, like our brother Paul, “are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed — always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). If it weren’t for Christ, there are days when the darkness would be too dark, and the pain too painful, to pretend that this life is worth living.
“If it were not for hope the heart would break” (English Proverb).
“Remember Lot’s wife” (Luke 17:32).
DO YOU EVER LOOK BACK LONGINGLY AT ANYTHING IN THE PAST? Do you ever wish you had back anything that you gave up for the Lord? If you could go back in time, would you go back?
REGRET. Leaving Sodom was the right thing to do. It was a sacrifice made for the Lord. We don’t know much about what Lot’s thoughts were, but the fact that his wife “looked back” (Genesis 19:26) seems to suggest some regret on her part, regret that the Lord’s requirement had cost her something she didn’t want to give up. Regret in itself is not wrong, but if regret means that we “begrudge” not having what we once had, then that is not good.
RESENTMENT. Worse than wrongful regret would be RESENTMENT that something we once had in the past has been “taken away” from us. When we think about the past, we may almost be filled with a bitterness or an anger that what was “ours” was unfairly removed from our possession. We are creatures who are prone to possessiveness and the protection of our “rights,” and our memories often tempt us to believe that we have been “deprived.”
RECONSIDERATION. Worst of all, of course, we sometimes even RECONSIDER whether we made the right choice when we left behind something that was hard to give up. The tempting thought may occur to us to try to go back to our previous situation and resume the life that we had back then. If it was Sodom that we left, we certainly ought not to go back, but even if it was something good that we gave up for the Lord, going back is rarely, if ever, the answer.
Memory is a two-edged sword, is it not? With it we may remember (helpfully) things that can energize us, but with it we may also remember (hurtfully) things that can hold us back. For fallen creatures such as we, there is no such thing as no regrets, but we need to be very careful. As someone has said, “The past is valuable as a guidepost, but dangerous if used as a hitching post.” When we remember the past, as we certainly will, our effort must be to remember it with such an attitude that we are HELPED in the here and now. God intends for our lives to go FORWARD — and when we’re tempted to go BACKWARD, we need to remember Lot’s wife.
There was — and O! how many sorrows crowd
Into these two brief words!
(Sir Walter Scott)
Let us know,
Let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord.
(Hosea 6:3)
AS WE REACH FORWARD IN LIFE, ONE OF THE PRIMARY THINGS WE REACH FOR IS THE KNOWLEDGE OF GOD. Even in practical matters, there is nothing we need more than a knowledge of Him as He truly is, and the knowledge of God ought to be something that we pursue with a passion that is both diligent and persistent.
Gaining a “knowledge of God” requires more than the mere accumulation of facts about Him. Jesus, for example, rebuked the Jewish scholars of His day for their failure to know God, despite the fact that they had “search[ed] the Scriptures” (John 5:39). God is a personal Being, and we must desire to know GOD HIMSELF.
Yet there is no knowing God in the personal sense without certain FACTUAL INFORMATION about Him. We do not come to know God intuitively or with our feelings or by non-verbal meditation. If God exists, then He is a real entity, an objective reality. We can no more “know” Him in the absence of factual information than we could “know” any other reality without the facts about it.
But here is the point: if the knowledge of God is important and if that knowledge requires the learning of certain information, then the learning of that information ought to be a matter of HIGH PRIORITY with us. Far above any other knowledge, the knowledge of God is one that we would want to PURSUE. But how diligently do any of us really do that? How high a priority is it with YOU to know more of the truth about God today than you knew yesterday? Honestly now, what would you SACRIFICE to gain an hour’s worth of time to study the Scriptures? Anything of significant value?
We often wonder why our spiritual lives are so dry and static. But spiritual growth comes from an increasing knowledge of GOD. So I suggest not only that we need to study the Scriptures but that we do so with a more conscious intent TO KNOW GOD. That is our quest, and what a great one it is! If there is such a thing as a “high-leverage” activity, this would be the highest. You can’t help yourself more greatly than by pursuing the knowledge of God.
“Nothing will so enlarge the intellect, nothing so magnify the whole soul of man, as a devout, earnest, continued investigation of the great subject of the Deity” (Charles Haddon Spurgeon).
“There are many plans in a man’s heart, nevertheless the Lord’s counsel — that will stand” (Proverbs 19:21).
IF WE THINK WE HAVE THE POWER TO ACCOMPLISH ALL OF OUR PLANS, WE ARE BEING NOT ONLY FOOLISH BUT ARROGANT. We may have our plans and purposes, and that is all well and good. But God also has purposes, and His are the only ones that are CERTAIN to be fulfilled. Our plans are always tentative; His, never.
There is nothing wrong with making plans, of course, and we surely ought to do so. Wisdom teaches us to look ahead, to whatever extent we can, and formulate both goals and strategies for reaching those goals. If we have no plans, then we’re not the forward-looking, goal-striving beings that we were intended to be. It’s hard to imagine how a person could “reach forward” without making a few plans for what he or she intended to do in life.
But there needs to be a healthy dose of HUMILITY mixed in with our plans. For one thing, the fulfillment of our plans depends on many factors that are, quite frankly, BEYOND OUR CONTROL. In many cases, our goals can’t be reached if other people don’t do certain things, and there is no way of knowing whether they will do them or not. But more important, the LORD may have plans that conflict with ours. He may have purposes the fulfillment of which require some adjustment in our intended path. It’s good to have an “itinerary” in mind as we journey through this world, but we’d better not have an itinerary that can’t be changed on short notice.
James said, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go to such and such a city, spend a year there, buy and sell, and make a profit’; whereas you do not know what will happen tomorrow. For what is your life? . . . Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we shall live and do this or that’” (James 4:13-15). IF THE LORD WILLS! That must be our guiding thought constantly.
But obviously, the wonderful truth is that whenever God says NO to some plan or purpose that we have made, it is always because He has something BETTER in mind. It should be a JOY to yield our plan to His purpose. So let’s hold on to our plans, if need be, but let’s hold them LOOSELY. When we say, “Let’s do THIS,” and God says, “No, let’s do THAT,” then our love for Him will say, “YES!”
“Man makes plans; God changes them” (Jewish Proverb).
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