A Sip
Hey there blogworms! Today’s blog post is a continuation of my previous post on the pursuit of happiness. So far, I’ve argued that God’s glory (His supreme value proclaimed and displayed) makes us happiest. In order for it to make us happy, we must first see it and we see it most clearly in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the fight to be happy is a fight to see the glory of God revealed in the Gospel of Jesus.
Though there are other ways that God reveals to us His glory, the Gospel is the blazing centre of the glory of God and we must therefore make every effort to see it in our lives daily. In this blog post, I will give some practical examples of ways to see this glory by faith arising from the book, “When I Don’t Desire God” by John Piper. So, on with the blog!
Spring Time!
HOW TO BE HAPPY
Now that we have dealt with the more theoretical framework answering the question, “what makes us happiest?” we can then deal with our more practical original question of how we can see Christ’s glory day-to-day and attain deep happiness. If seeing (by faith) the glory of Christ in the Gospel is what makes us happiest, then however we are able to see this by faith is how we can be happiest. Thankfully, there are a number of ways that God has ordained for us to see His Gospel by faith. You could call these ordained ways as “steps to happiness”.
However, before we proceed to look at the various ways that we can see God’s glory in the Gospel, it’s important to first note that joy in God is ultimately a gift and bestowed by Him at His discretion (Proverbs 21:31; Psalm 127:1; 1 Peter 4:11). This means that we shouldn’t rely on any of these like techniques to coerce joy or think we can earn joy by mere human achievement or willpower. Rather, we should practice these steps faithfully and humbly, patiently waiting for God to make us happy.
I say this because from experience, I know that even when you practice all these steps, God can still allow you to stay unhappy for a time according to His will. This can be simply to arouse a greater desire for Him and to rely on Him as opposed to ourselves (2 Corinthians 1:9). Nevertheless, despite these times of doubt and depression, God will never leave us there.
These “steps” to happiness are simply means of grace that God often uses to make us happy. To use a metaphor, it’s like if seeing cassowaries (rare far North Queensland birds) made you happy. Therefore, in order to be happy, you would need to see them. But they are very rare and so to have any chance of seeing them, you would need to walk along tracks that they are known to frequent. However, whether you see them or not is up to the cassowaries themselves. Similarly, these steps are like roads or paths of blessing that God is known to frequent and whether you experience His joy in Himself while doing them is entirely up to Him. All you can do is faithfully walk these paths often.
The following are the ways that God shows us the glory of His Gospel for our enjoyment:
1. Preaching
When Moses wanted to see the glory of God in Exodus 33:18, God answered by saying He would reveal His glory with His word, saying, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord’” (Exodus 33:19). And that is exactly what God did in Exodus 34:6-7, giving one of the most theologically succinct descriptions of who He is. And how did Moses respond to this revelation of the glory of God? He worshipped God in verse 8 and that should be the result of seeing God’s glory proclaimed to us - feeling the worth of God and enjoying Him.
Likewise, in Samuel 3:21, God is said to have revealed Himself to Samuel by His word. In this age of sight by faith and not by eyes, God reveals His glory to us in the Gospel by His word, and primarily by His spoken word. This means that to see God’s glory in the Gospel, we need to regularly hear the Gospel orally proclaimed to us, be it in the pulpit each Sunday and even online. Hearing is how faith is created and sustained (Romans 10:17), and hence how the glory of God in the Gospel is presented to us to see and savour.
Why can’t we simply read our Bibles or theology though? Isn’t this the same as hearing a sermon? Well, we’ll come to the importance of the written word shortly in the fight for joy in God but for now, let me explain the main difference between reading the written word and hearing the word preached orally in Church. While the Holy Spirit reveals the glory of God to us through both means and hence imparts joy in God to us through both, the spoken word of God is more important because it shows us the Gospel more accurately.
Why does hearing as opposed to reading encapsulate the Gospel more accurately? Because when we read, we are actively seeking and achieving, whereas when we hear, we are passively receiving and trusting. The eyes are a symbol of activity and fullness whereas the ear is a symbol of grace and faith. We are saved not by our seeking and seeing, since we are all born not seeking the God of the Bible (Romans 3:11), but rather by God revealing Himself to us and our receiving His gift of salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 10:20).
As Michael Horton says in ‘The Gospel-Driven Life’, “Everything that we possess right now of our salvation has come to us through the ear, not the eye. Even the sacraments are visible confirmations attached to God’s verbal promise…Sight corresponds to full possession, a complete realization of heavenly reality. By contrast, hearing corresponds to faith in a promise. If we demand our best life here and now we will be particularly susceptible to idolatry, but God calls us to embrace a promise that we hear and believe.”
So while our eyes are involved in worship such as reading, it is primarily through our ears that we “see” God’s glory in the Gospel, proclaimed to us from an outside source and penetrating our corrupt self-centred thoughts. It is on the basis of our ears that every other sense is engaged. Therefore, if we want to be happy and see the glory of Christ, we will submit and listen to the preaching of the Gospel by pastors every Sunday and beyond (2 Timothy 4:2).
And this preaching should be what John Piper calls “expository exultation”. In other words, the preacher should draw God-glorifying truths out of the Bible and exult over this truth. He should preach with passion, enthusiasm and joy for the joy of God and the joy of us. It should also be focused on and centred upon Jesus Christ and not on the preacher or his experiences (2 Corinthians 4:5). And when the preacher preaches the word of God faithfully, the Holy Spirit makes the preacher’s words effective and it is as if God Himself is speaking, “Let light shine out of darkness,” to each of our hearts to open our eyes to the glory of God in the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4:6). This is why the preacher is called an ambassador of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20) who is given a message to proclaim and not a license to make up his own message.
On a side note, what if someone has a hearing problem such as deafness? Well, I believe that God is a good and merciful God and can communicate the grace that is given to us through oral preaching through other means for these people such as sign language. Nevertheless, these are exceptions to the general rule that we should regularly listen to Gospel-centred preaching.
2. Self-preaching
Despite what I have just argued about the importance of hearing the Gospel preached from an outside source (a minister of the word), we should also learn to regularly preach the Gospel to ourselves (Psalm 42:5). After hearing the Gospel preached from someone else, we should then recall and recount it to ourselves when other voices (be it Satan, the world or our old self) tempt us and discourage us (Micah 7:8-9).
This is because as 2 Corinthians 4:4 explains, our greatest enemies in this world seek to blind us to the glory of God in the Gospel and do this by showing us other promises of lesser and easier pleasures. Therefore, in order to attack and disable these deceitful promises, we need to fight them with the promises of the Gospel and the Bible, which promise far greater pleasures in God (Romans 8:32; Psalm 16:11). As Jonathan Edwards said, “We come with double forces against the wicked, to persuade them to a godly life…The common argument is the profitableness of religion, but alas, the wicked man is not in pursuit of profit; 'tis pleasure he seeks. Now, then, we will fight with them with their own weapons.”
Another way that these voices try and blind us to the Gospel is by using our guilt and indwelling sin. During those times when we do sin and we hear in our heads those voices condemning us and creating doubt over God’s faithfulness and our salvation, we need to remind ourselves of those great Gospel truths such as Romans 8:33-34: “Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”
We need to talk to ourselves and explain that we have been justified by faith in Christ and that even though we sin, He is still our perfect and unchanging righteousness in Heaven who is the sole basis of our acceptance by God (2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 13:8). Rather than let our sin go to waste, so to speak, we should take the opportunity to use it for our joy and God’s glory.
Similarly, it is also important to not confuse our justification with our sanctification (Romans 6:22). This means that we should not think that we are accepted by God based on how good we are or how much we’ve grown, but based solely on the imputed righteousness of Christ (Romans 3:28). So when you fight for joy, don’t do things to establish your identity with God, but become what your identity already is with God in Christ. For example, since we are already holy in Christ (Colossians 3:12), we should be holy in all our conduct (1 Peter 1:15). Since we are already the light of the world in Christ (Matthew 5:14), we should let our light shine (Matthew 5:16).
3. The Lord’s Supper
Flowing out of the word of God preached to us, this sacrament is another way that the Gospel of the glory of Jesus is proclaimed to us in a visible and sensory manner (1 Corinthians 11:26). Therefore, it is another way that the Holy Spirit awakens joy in us. The Holy Spirit does this by reminding us of and applying to us the benefits that Christ died to purchase for us such as forgiveness, righteousness and fellowship by our participation in Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). And how often is “often” (1 Corinthians 11:25)? I think depending on the congregation, this will vary but I would have big problems with a congregation partaking of the Supper less than once a month.
4. Read the Bible
Though I have earlier argued for the importance of the spoken and preached word of God whereby God reveals His glory to us, it is from the written word that this is enabled. Thankfully, we do not have to rely simply on our memories to recall important doctrine and revelation, but rather God has given us a written text to be our highest authority, which we call the Bible. This Bible, which contains 66 books of the Old and New Testament, is what all preachers and oral preaching must conform to.
The Bible is our highest authority because God Himself has inspired and breathed out these words (2 Timothy 3:16) by the Holy Spirit carrying along anointed men as they wrote (2 Peter 1:21). Therefore, the Bible is the most reliable way that God reveals His glory and the glory in His Gospel to us for us to see. It is through the Bible that the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see the beauty of Jesus Christ (John 5:46; Acts 24:27). And since public preaching from the Bible occurs usually once a week, it is important that we read the Bible daily if we wish to be happy.
It is also important to our happiness because as explained earlier, Satan wishes to blind us to what makes us happiest – the Gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ. And what is our greatest weapon against Satan? The shield of faith (in the promises in the Bible) and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:11, 16-17). Therefore, to overcome the devil and his schemes to lure us away from joy in God, we must read and recite the Bible so regularly that the word of God is said to abide in us (1 John 2:14).
So why don’t we? It’s not because it’s boring. In fact, for those who delight in the Lord, studying the Bible is very interesting (Psalm 111:2). Rather, we do not read our Bibles regularly because we are lazy, a result of indwelling sin. This is even more appalling because unlike many of those Christians before us, we have easy access to the word of God. So how can we combat this apathy and unfamiliarity with the Bible? Here are a number of ways that John Piper advises can help:
· Planning – make a time each day to read your Bible in a secluded place (ie. somewhere without distractions). John Piper recommends early morning because he believes to begin the day without filling your mind and heart with the word of God is like taking a car trip without filling up the tyres with air. Also, plan how you will read the Bible such as using a reading plan allocating certain passages to each day.
· Writing – don’t only read Bible passages, but write them down as well. As John Piper advises, “Go home and this time, write the text, instead of just reading it. If anything stands out as helpful, make a mark and write down your ideas about it. Keep writing till you are done with that insight. Then keep reading and writing the text till you see something else to write about, or until you are out of time…The main value in this is that writing forces us to slow down and see what we are reading. Some of us have very bad habits of passive reading that certain types of formal education have bred into us, by forcing us to read quickly when we ought to be reading slowly—thinking as we go. Writing is a way of slowing us down and opening our eyes to see what we do not otherwise see.”
· Meditating – God often commands us to regularly meditate on His words (Joshua 1:8; Psalms 1:2, 119:97, 143:5, 145:5). This does not mean crossing our knees and humming, but rather to talk to ourselves about what’s written in Scripture. It means to think about, to ask questions about, and to ponder the implications and applications of Scripture passages.
As George Mueller explains regarding the importance of meditation, “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it…What is the food of the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God; and…not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.”
· Memorising – In Joshua 1:8, God says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” And memorizing verses and passages out of the Bible is how it gets in your mouth.
Memorisation makes us happy because it both directly gives us the beauty of Christ to see all day whether we have a Bible with us or not (Psalm 19:10) and it also provides us with the weapon for fighting sin (Psalm 119:11). This is why the New Testament writers often ask the church to remember their words (2 Thessalonians 2:5; Jude 17). For ease, you can integrate Bible memorization into your daily Bible reading, picking a key verse or two per week.
As John Piper says, “I spend this much time on Bible memory because I believe in the power of the indwelling Word of God to solve a thousand problems before they happen, and to heal a thousand wounds after they happen, and to kill a thousand sins in the moment of temptation, and to sweeten a thousand days with the ‘drippings of the honeycomb.’ I am jealous for you, my readers, that you would ‘let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’ (Colossians 3:16). This is the path to solid joy and all the service of love that it sustains.”
Hopefully, you will see the Bible as the great source of seeing Jesus and hence being happy. Because of this, I pray that you will be able to say with the Psalmist: “The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces… How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth… Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold… I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil” (Psalm 119:72, 103, 127, 162).
5. Read Theology
Now, not everyone has the time or intellect or access to read large books of weighty and orthodox doctrine such as John Calvin or Jonathan Edwards. But nonetheless, for those who can, far from being joy-squelchers, these doctrinal books can be the source of great joy. In fact, the greater the complexity in thought, the greater the reward of knowledge of God and hence joy (Proverbs 2:1-6; Psalm 111:2; 2 Timothy 2:7). Theology is also important for guarding us against false interpretations of Scripture. These books do not need to be read quickly, you can instead read them at your own pace, be it a page or two a day.
As C.S. Lewis observed, “For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”
6. Be with Bible-saturated People (Fellowship with Living Saints)
This certainly includes, though not exclusively, your local church. However, it can also refer to a Bible study or informal small gatherings. This is important for our joy as being with other Christians is a way that God ministers to us, encouraging and building us up in the faith for our joy (2 Corinthians 1:24, 3:12-13).
7. Read Christian Biographies (Fellowship with Dead Saints)
But it’s not just the living that we can have fellowship with. God also uses the lives of dead saints to inspire and educate us (Hebrews 11). God commands us to imitate the faith of our leaders, living and dead (Hebrews 13:7). As John Piper explains, “When you read Christian biography you get to see a person fight for joy over a lifetime. This is tremendously helpful. It gives guidance in the warfare. It gives inspiration because of triumphs of grace. It gives humility and hope because of failures and recoveries. And sometimes there are glimpses of what is possible in relation to God that set a reader to praying and longing as never before.”
8. Pray Continuously
But what happens when after hearing, reading, meditating and preaching the Word of God you fail to see and savour the glory of God? What happens when after practicing all these steps, you remain unhappy in God? This is where prayer plays such an important role in our fight for joy.
But before we see what role prayer plays in the fight for joy, we must first define what prayer is. The Westminster Larger Catechism is very helpful in answering this, offering a great definition in Question 178: “Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of his Spirit; with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies.” So prayer is simply us telling God what we want. It is for this reason that prayer reveals our deepest desires and hence our spiritual state.
In John 16:24, Jesus says the purpose of prayer is that we will be given our desires in His name for our joy. But in John 14:13, He says that the purpose of answering prayer is that He will be glorified. Is this a contradiction? Do we get joy or does He get the glory? Well, John Piper would say that this is not a contradiction but that Jesus gets the glory by our having our prayers answered for our joy. How is this so? Because, as I have explained, what we pray for reveals what we want. And what we want reveals what we treasure. So Jesus gets the most glory when we want Him the most, thus showing Him to be the ultimate treasure of our hearts.
So what this means is that as Christians, the focus of our prayers should be radically different to those prayed by non-believers. Whilst non-believers pray for God’s gifts according to their wills, believers should pray for God Himself according to His will (1 John 5:14). And even when we pray for His gifts, these should always be so that we can see more of Him. Whilst the world arrogantly makes God a butler by asking Him for idols (James 4:3), Christians should humbly desire God above all else (Psalm 73:25).
So how then should we pray? Here are a few tips that John Piper gives:
· Use the Bible – prayer and meditation on the Word of God are as inseparable as the Spirit and the Word. The work of the Holy Spirit happens through the Word and the work of the Word happens through the Spirit, and that definitely includes the work of awakening joy in Christians. Prayer is our response to God in reliance on His Spirit, and meditation is our response to God in reliance on His Word.
As John Piper explains, “Thus, even as the Spirit and the Word are inseparable in our lives, so prayer and meditation are inseparable. The fight for joy always involves both. Prayer without meditation on the Word of God will disintegrate into humanistic spirituality. It will simply reflect our own fallen ideas and feelings—not God’s. And meditation, without the humility of desperate prayer, will create proud legalism or hopeless despair. Without prayer we will try to fulfill the Word in our own strength and think we are succeeding and so become proud Pharisees; or we will realize we are not succeeding and will give up in despair.”
George Mueller makes an interesting observation on the connection between the Bible and prayer: “Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible…But what was the result? I often…after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray. I scarcely ever suffer now in this way…Now…the first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious word, was, to begin to meditate on the word of God, searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it…The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it.”
So we see that the result of proper mediation on the Word of God is prayer. Prayer flows from reading the Bible. Mueller also advises that we should pray using Scripture not only as a catalyst, but also using the very words written. This is the key to praying for extended amounts of time as it helps us focus. By turning a passage of Scripture into prayer, you can pray as long as you read. It also helps conform our desires to be more biblical. This is what it means to “pray in the Holy Spirit” (Jude 20-21).
But why does the Spirit bind Himself to the Word of God? It is because Jesus says that the Spirit is sent to glorify the Son (John 16:14). If the Holy Spirit simply awakened joy in people without any reference to Christ-exalting Scripture, Jesus would not be glorified. For Jesus to be glorified, the Spirit needs to awaken our joy in response to seeing the glory of Jesus revealed in the Bible. So when we pray whilst reading or recalling the Bible, we should pray before, during and after that the Spirit would use what we are reading to awaken joy in us. This glorifies God not only by humbling us and showing our reliance on God for joy, but also by showing that Jesus is our supreme treasure.
John Piper offers the acronym “IOUS” to guide such prayers regarding the Bible; INCLINE our hearts to the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 119:36); OPEN our eyes to see the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 119:18); UNITE our hearts and minds to see the glory of God in His Word so that all of our being sees the glory, not just parts of us (Psalm 86:11); and finally SATISFY our hearts with the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 90:14).
· Pray without ceasing – the Apostle Paul commands this in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, but its link to joy can be seen in the preceding verse where he also commands us to “rejoice always!” The key to obeying this command to rejoice in God always is to pray always. But what exactly does “without ceasing entail.” John Piper defines the term means at least three things. Firstly, that we should have a spirit of dependence and humility in all that we do. Secondly, that we should never give up on prayer.
And lastly, we should pray repeatedly and often. Piper explains it like this: “I base this on the use of the word ‘without ceasing’ (adialeiptøs) in Romans 1:9, where Paul says, ‘For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing [adialeiptos] I mention you.’ Now we can be sure that Paul did not mention the Romans every minute of his waking life, or even every minute of his prayers. He prayed about many other things. But he mentioned them over and over, and often. So ‘without ceasing’ doesn’t mean that, verbally or mentally, we have to be speaking prayers every minute of the day in the fight for joy. It means we should pray over and over, and often. Our default mental state should be: ‘O God, help…’”
· Planning – similar to the advice given in our discussion on reading the Bible, you should plan specific times when you pray to God. To pray without ceasing requires discipline in order to enable regular spontaneous prayer. As John Piper argues, “The plants of spontaneous communion grow in the well-tended garden of disciplined Bible-reading and memorization. So it is with prayer.” We should follow the example of Daniel who prayed to God three times a day (Daniel 6:10).
As with reading the Bible, the best time for this is early in the morning (Mark 1:35). This is because it sets our priorities for the day, it strikes the first blow in our battle of the day to see God’s glory, and because what we do early shapes the spirit of our mind. This should be done in conjunction with the early morning Bible reading. And what of the rest of the day? Piper commends a long period of prayer in the morning (an hour if possible) then two or three shorter times during the day corresponding to breakfast, lunch and dinner.
As with Bible reading, allocate a quiet and secluded space devoted to prayer. If we can make rooms for cooking (kitchens), sleeping (bedrooms) and cleaning (bathroom), surely we can find a space for prayer. Of course, praying outside as opposed to indoors might work better for you depending on your situation.
· Use the Lord’s Prayer – using the structure of the Lord’s Prayer help us to keep our prayers focused on God and not on our own natural desires (Matthew 6:9-10). The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer reorient our priorities to desire that God’s name be hallowed (glorified), to desire the spreading of His Kingdom by people being converted everywhere, and that people would follow and obey Jesus. After making these fixed petitions, we are free to ask for all our other desires, which will somehow relate to these three petitions.
· Use Formal Descriptive Titles – this keeps our spirit serious and respectful. Despite our standing before God as His adopted children, we must still remember that God is the great Lord, King and Creator. This should lead us to have greater fear for the Lord whilst expressing our adoration. Some examples are, “O Holy Jesus, Son of the most high God,” “Righteous Judge and Light of Light,” and “Glorious and eternal Alpha and Omega.”
· Fasting – fasting is abstaining from food (or another dependence) practiced privately (Matthew 6:17), which helps us express our hunger for God. God can reward us with Himself if we do this. Since Jesus (our bridegroom) is no longer physically with us, fasting is a way to express our hope and desire for Jesus to return as well (Matthew 9:15). Fasting is the expression of our desire physically, whereas prayer is the expression of our desires orally. Therefore, fasting is a fitting and hungry handmaiden to prayer. But eating food can equally glorify Jesus if we receive it with thanksgiving and as a symbol of the satisfaction that He gives us (1 Timothy 4:3; 1 Corinthians 10:31).
· Corporate Prayer – asking others to pray for our desires gives more glory to God (James 5:16). How so? Because when I privately pray for something and God answers it, only I thank Him. But if many people pray for something and God answers it, many thank Him. By spreading the opportunity for thanksgiving and the expression for brotherly love, God is more glorified (2 Corinthians 1:11).
9. Use the World
God has graciously given us five senses to experience the physical world He has created. Any combination of these senses can give us an emotion. Just think of how smelling your favourite perfume, or giving a friend a hug, or seeing a sunset can bring a smile to your face. But what do these sorts of happiness have to do with the joy that the Holy Spirit creates in us (Galatians 5:22)? To answer this question, we must first distinguish between two kinds of emotions; physical and spiritual emotions.
Physical emotions are caused and experienced via the chemicals and impulses in our physical bodies. Spiritual emotions, on the other hand, are caused and experienced via our spirits and the Holy Spirit. As opposed to modern “wisdom,” we know that you do not need a physical body to experience emotions because God is said to experience emotions (Zephaniah 3:17) yet does not have a physical body (John 4:24; Luke 24:39; 1 Timothy 1:17). And these spiritual emotions are higher and richer than their physical counterparts.
After we die and before we are resurrected, we will exist only as spirits who are capable of only spiritual emotions (Philippians 1:23; Revelation 6:10). However, until we die and when we are resurrected, our spiritual emotions are connected to our physical senses. This means that our spiritual joy in God and its physical expression in the body are inseparable. This also means that some of these spiritual emotions will feel virtually the same as their physical counterparts. Therefore, spiritual emotions can have physical effects and physical conditions can have spiritual effects.
C.S. Lewis explains the way the two kinds of emotions interact using a musical metaphor. He likens spiritual emotions to that of an orchestra and physical emotions to that of a single piano. When the music of spiritual emotions plays in our souls, it gets “transposed” into physical sensations. But since the spiritual “orchestra” is richer and more complex than the physical “piano,” the same piano keys have to be used for sounds that in the orchestra are played with different instruments. Thus, love and lust can often feel the same just as endorphins and joy in God do.
However, as Lewis continues, in the transposition from the higher to the lower, the spiritual emotion enters into the physical sensation so the sensation becomes part of the higher emotion. Spiritual emotions can actually transform physical sensations. Although they are not identical, we cannot experience spiritual emotions without experiencing physical sensations. We are complex spiritual-physical beings who experience joy in Christ as something more, but almost never less, than physical sensation.
Now, this is all very interesting, but you may be asking how this helps our fight for joy? Well, as we’ve seen, physical sensations can affect our spiritual emotions. At the risk of either manipulation and idolatry, we must use our physical reality wisely for spiritual ends. Because even if we practice all the earlier ways of seeing God’s glory, if we don’t use our physical sensations properly, they can hinder our experiencing of joy in Christ. If the glory of God in the Gospel gives us joy, the following are examples of physical means of developing and sustaining such joy:
· Nature – whilst the Gospel is the clearest catalyst for awakening joy in God, the Bible says that nature can also make us happy in God (Psalm 19:1-4) This is because, as I have already stated, the natural world also reveals God’s glory. Therefore, it is another way for us to see the glory of God that makes us happiest.
But what is the difference between a Christian experiencing happiness from gazing at a sunrise and a non-believer who seems to experience the same emotion whilst looking at the same sunrise? C.S. Lewis provides an interesting answer: “I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”
If we want to see the glory of God in nature and not just the glory of nature, we need to move beyond the simple experience of seeing nature. We need to let the “beam” of nature fall on the eyes of our heart so that we see the source of the beautiful scene before us. We need to learn to relate how we experience nature to God. For example, instead of just thinking ‘Oh what a beautiful sunrise that is!’, we need to think, ‘Wow! Only a beautiful God could make such a sunrise and if this is the beauty He makes, imagine how beautiful He Himself is!’
· Food, sex and other physical sensations – the Apostle Paul provides us with two ways to make sure that these good things do not become God things in 1 Timothy 4:2-5: “Liars whose consciences are seared…forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
Here, Paul says that we can use any physical sensation to glorify God and make us happy if we do two things. The first is to thank God for it. By doing so, we focus our attention on seeing God’s glory as the Good Giver. When you thank someone, you are enjoying the Giver through enjoying the gift. However, thanksgiving alone is not enough. We must also make sure that we use the sensation correctly according to its intended purpose revealed by God in the Bible. We may otherwise thank God for food and be a glutton, or thank God for sex and be an adulterer.
· Literature, art and music – we can experience joy in God more fully with the use of poetry and other literary forms. Even unbelievers can be of assistance here. The goal with reading such literature is that our eyes would be opened to greater vocabulary for expressing happiness and other emotions. And what you will find is as you’re vocabulary is expanded, so too will your capacity to perceive joy in God in all its richness. Similarly, we can look at a painting and look along its beam to the ultimate Artist or we can listen to a booming musical piece and be drawn into the drama of Scripture. Whilst not catalysts for joy in God, they can be means of expressing and sustaining such joy. This will vary, of course, depending on culture as every culture has its own idea of language, symbolism and pleasing sounds.
· Monotony – a key to being satisfied with the glory of God revealed in the natural world is to exult in the repetitive. This is something that all of us lose as we get older, much to the detriment of our pursuit of pleasure. G.K. Chesterton artfully observes it as such: “Children…always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” I think that people would be far happier as a whole if they rejoiced in the old they have then pursue it in the new they will never have enough of.
· Diet, exercise and rest – certain foods can make us feel better than others. This is common sense. But we should have a greater motivation to eat healthily since by doing so not only will we make our bodies more susceptible to joy in God, but we will also increase our chances of living longer to experience His grace on earth.
The same goes for exercise and rest. Exercising regularly and resting often will place us in a better mood for having the Holy Spirit awaken joy in us and sustaining it. And if the Holy Spirit awakens joy in us and we neglect these things, we may lose the joy that was given to us because of our carelessness. Yet despite the benefits of these healthy practices, we must remember not to be enslaved to anything, especially those things which are good things (1 Corinthians 6:12).
Of course, there are rare occasions when Christians are persecuted. They can be locked up in a prison with no nature, barely any food, barely any exercise and God can give them extraordinary joy in Himself to sustain them through this persecution. But nevertheless, for the large majority of Christians who are not in situations such as these, they would do well in their fight for joy in God to treat their bodies well.
10. Evangelism and Acts of Love
Last, but not least, we can see the glory of God in the Gospel by the acts of love it inspires and the conversions created by its spreading. Seeing and savoring the glory of God in the Gospel is not completed until it is lived out in our lives. Not that we “live the Gospel”, but rather by sharing (the Gospel) and caring (for people), the power of the Gospel is displayed in its fullness and enjoyed by those witnessing it (2 Corinthians 8:1-7).
I have of course left out some other ways that we can see God’s glory but these are the most essential and important.
Waves
To summarise, we can do see God’s glory in the Gospel primarily though the God ordained means of hearing the Gospel preached, preaching it to ourselves, eating the Lord’s Supper, not confusing justification and sanctification, reading the Bible, reading theology, reading Christian biographies, praying, using physical sensations, evangelizing and doing other acts of love.
I pray that as you have tasted Christian Hedonism, this would spur you on to seek greater happiness in God. Not happiness per se, but happiness in God. As George Mueller said, “The more we know of God, the happier we are…When we became a little acquainted with God…our true happiness…commenced; and the more we become acquainted with him, the more truly happy we become. What will make us so exceedingly happy in heaven? It will be the fuller knowledge of God.”
I pray with Christ that above all you would see His glory (John 17:24) and know Him more (Ephesians 1:15-19), prioritizing joy in God above all other cares of the day. As Mueller again says, “According to my judgement the most important point to be attended to is this: above all things see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you, the Lord’s work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself! Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life.”
So until next time, put that in your cloud and rain it (Jude 12).
Christus Regnat,
MAXi
Hey there blogworms! Today’s blog post is a continuation of my previous post on the pursuit of happiness. So far, I’ve argued that God’s glory (His supreme value proclaimed and displayed) makes us happiest. In order for it to make us happy, we must first see it and we see it most clearly in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Therefore, the fight to be happy is a fight to see the glory of God revealed in the Gospel of Jesus.
Though there are other ways that God reveals to us His glory, the Gospel is the blazing centre of the glory of God and we must therefore make every effort to see it in our lives daily. In this blog post, I will give some practical examples of ways to see this glory by faith arising from the book, “When I Don’t Desire God” by John Piper. So, on with the blog!
Spring Time!
HOW TO BE HAPPY
Now that we have dealt with the more theoretical framework answering the question, “what makes us happiest?” we can then deal with our more practical original question of how we can see Christ’s glory day-to-day and attain deep happiness. If seeing (by faith) the glory of Christ in the Gospel is what makes us happiest, then however we are able to see this by faith is how we can be happiest. Thankfully, there are a number of ways that God has ordained for us to see His Gospel by faith. You could call these ordained ways as “steps to happiness”.
However, before we proceed to look at the various ways that we can see God’s glory in the Gospel, it’s important to first note that joy in God is ultimately a gift and bestowed by Him at His discretion (Proverbs 21:31; Psalm 127:1; 1 Peter 4:11). This means that we shouldn’t rely on any of these like techniques to coerce joy or think we can earn joy by mere human achievement or willpower. Rather, we should practice these steps faithfully and humbly, patiently waiting for God to make us happy.
I say this because from experience, I know that even when you practice all these steps, God can still allow you to stay unhappy for a time according to His will. This can be simply to arouse a greater desire for Him and to rely on Him as opposed to ourselves (2 Corinthians 1:9). Nevertheless, despite these times of doubt and depression, God will never leave us there.
These “steps” to happiness are simply means of grace that God often uses to make us happy. To use a metaphor, it’s like if seeing cassowaries (rare far North Queensland birds) made you happy. Therefore, in order to be happy, you would need to see them. But they are very rare and so to have any chance of seeing them, you would need to walk along tracks that they are known to frequent. However, whether you see them or not is up to the cassowaries themselves. Similarly, these steps are like roads or paths of blessing that God is known to frequent and whether you experience His joy in Himself while doing them is entirely up to Him. All you can do is faithfully walk these paths often.
The following are the ways that God shows us the glory of His Gospel for our enjoyment:
1. Preaching
When Moses wanted to see the glory of God in Exodus 33:18, God answered by saying He would reveal His glory with His word, saying, “I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name ‘The Lord’” (Exodus 33:19). And that is exactly what God did in Exodus 34:6-7, giving one of the most theologically succinct descriptions of who He is. And how did Moses respond to this revelation of the glory of God? He worshipped God in verse 8 and that should be the result of seeing God’s glory proclaimed to us - feeling the worth of God and enjoying Him.
Likewise, in Samuel 3:21, God is said to have revealed Himself to Samuel by His word. In this age of sight by faith and not by eyes, God reveals His glory to us in the Gospel by His word, and primarily by His spoken word. This means that to see God’s glory in the Gospel, we need to regularly hear the Gospel orally proclaimed to us, be it in the pulpit each Sunday and even online. Hearing is how faith is created and sustained (Romans 10:17), and hence how the glory of God in the Gospel is presented to us to see and savour.
Why can’t we simply read our Bibles or theology though? Isn’t this the same as hearing a sermon? Well, we’ll come to the importance of the written word shortly in the fight for joy in God but for now, let me explain the main difference between reading the written word and hearing the word preached orally in Church. While the Holy Spirit reveals the glory of God to us through both means and hence imparts joy in God to us through both, the spoken word of God is more important because it shows us the Gospel more accurately.
Why does hearing as opposed to reading encapsulate the Gospel more accurately? Because when we read, we are actively seeking and achieving, whereas when we hear, we are passively receiving and trusting. The eyes are a symbol of activity and fullness whereas the ear is a symbol of grace and faith. We are saved not by our seeking and seeing, since we are all born not seeking the God of the Bible (Romans 3:11), but rather by God revealing Himself to us and our receiving His gift of salvation (Ephesians 2:8-9; Romans 10:20).
As Michael Horton says in ‘The Gospel-Driven Life’, “Everything that we possess right now of our salvation has come to us through the ear, not the eye. Even the sacraments are visible confirmations attached to God’s verbal promise…Sight corresponds to full possession, a complete realization of heavenly reality. By contrast, hearing corresponds to faith in a promise. If we demand our best life here and now we will be particularly susceptible to idolatry, but God calls us to embrace a promise that we hear and believe.”
So while our eyes are involved in worship such as reading, it is primarily through our ears that we “see” God’s glory in the Gospel, proclaimed to us from an outside source and penetrating our corrupt self-centred thoughts. It is on the basis of our ears that every other sense is engaged. Therefore, if we want to be happy and see the glory of Christ, we will submit and listen to the preaching of the Gospel by pastors every Sunday and beyond (2 Timothy 4:2).
And this preaching should be what John Piper calls “expository exultation”. In other words, the preacher should draw God-glorifying truths out of the Bible and exult over this truth. He should preach with passion, enthusiasm and joy for the joy of God and the joy of us. It should also be focused on and centred upon Jesus Christ and not on the preacher or his experiences (2 Corinthians 4:5). And when the preacher preaches the word of God faithfully, the Holy Spirit makes the preacher’s words effective and it is as if God Himself is speaking, “Let light shine out of darkness,” to each of our hearts to open our eyes to the glory of God in the Gospel (2 Corinthians 4:6). This is why the preacher is called an ambassador of Christ (2 Corinthians 5:20) who is given a message to proclaim and not a license to make up his own message.
On a side note, what if someone has a hearing problem such as deafness? Well, I believe that God is a good and merciful God and can communicate the grace that is given to us through oral preaching through other means for these people such as sign language. Nevertheless, these are exceptions to the general rule that we should regularly listen to Gospel-centred preaching.
2. Self-preaching
Despite what I have just argued about the importance of hearing the Gospel preached from an outside source (a minister of the word), we should also learn to regularly preach the Gospel to ourselves (Psalm 42:5). After hearing the Gospel preached from someone else, we should then recall and recount it to ourselves when other voices (be it Satan, the world or our old self) tempt us and discourage us (Micah 7:8-9).
This is because as 2 Corinthians 4:4 explains, our greatest enemies in this world seek to blind us to the glory of God in the Gospel and do this by showing us other promises of lesser and easier pleasures. Therefore, in order to attack and disable these deceitful promises, we need to fight them with the promises of the Gospel and the Bible, which promise far greater pleasures in God (Romans 8:32; Psalm 16:11). As Jonathan Edwards said, “We come with double forces against the wicked, to persuade them to a godly life…The common argument is the profitableness of religion, but alas, the wicked man is not in pursuit of profit; 'tis pleasure he seeks. Now, then, we will fight with them with their own weapons.”
Another way that these voices try and blind us to the Gospel is by using our guilt and indwelling sin. During those times when we do sin and we hear in our heads those voices condemning us and creating doubt over God’s faithfulness and our salvation, we need to remind ourselves of those great Gospel truths such as Romans 8:33-34: “Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us.”
We need to talk to ourselves and explain that we have been justified by faith in Christ and that even though we sin, He is still our perfect and unchanging righteousness in Heaven who is the sole basis of our acceptance by God (2 Corinthians 5:21; Hebrews 13:8). Rather than let our sin go to waste, so to speak, we should take the opportunity to use it for our joy and God’s glory.
Similarly, it is also important to not confuse our justification with our sanctification (Romans 6:22). This means that we should not think that we are accepted by God based on how good we are or how much we’ve grown, but based solely on the imputed righteousness of Christ (Romans 3:28). So when you fight for joy, don’t do things to establish your identity with God, but become what your identity already is with God in Christ. For example, since we are already holy in Christ (Colossians 3:12), we should be holy in all our conduct (1 Peter 1:15). Since we are already the light of the world in Christ (Matthew 5:14), we should let our light shine (Matthew 5:16).
3. The Lord’s Supper
Flowing out of the word of God preached to us, this sacrament is another way that the Gospel of the glory of Jesus is proclaimed to us in a visible and sensory manner (1 Corinthians 11:26). Therefore, it is another way that the Holy Spirit awakens joy in us. The Holy Spirit does this by reminding us of and applying to us the benefits that Christ died to purchase for us such as forgiveness, righteousness and fellowship by our participation in Christ (1 Corinthians 10:16). And how often is “often” (1 Corinthians 11:25)? I think depending on the congregation, this will vary but I would have big problems with a congregation partaking of the Supper less than once a month.
4. Read the Bible
Though I have earlier argued for the importance of the spoken and preached word of God whereby God reveals His glory to us, it is from the written word that this is enabled. Thankfully, we do not have to rely simply on our memories to recall important doctrine and revelation, but rather God has given us a written text to be our highest authority, which we call the Bible. This Bible, which contains 66 books of the Old and New Testament, is what all preachers and oral preaching must conform to.
The Bible is our highest authority because God Himself has inspired and breathed out these words (2 Timothy 3:16) by the Holy Spirit carrying along anointed men as they wrote (2 Peter 1:21). Therefore, the Bible is the most reliable way that God reveals His glory and the glory in His Gospel to us for us to see. It is through the Bible that the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see the beauty of Jesus Christ (John 5:46; Acts 24:27). And since public preaching from the Bible occurs usually once a week, it is important that we read the Bible daily if we wish to be happy.
It is also important to our happiness because as explained earlier, Satan wishes to blind us to what makes us happiest – the Gospel of the glory of Jesus Christ. And what is our greatest weapon against Satan? The shield of faith (in the promises in the Bible) and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God (Ephesians 6:11, 16-17). Therefore, to overcome the devil and his schemes to lure us away from joy in God, we must read and recite the Bible so regularly that the word of God is said to abide in us (1 John 2:14).
So why don’t we? It’s not because it’s boring. In fact, for those who delight in the Lord, studying the Bible is very interesting (Psalm 111:2). Rather, we do not read our Bibles regularly because we are lazy, a result of indwelling sin. This is even more appalling because unlike many of those Christians before us, we have easy access to the word of God. So how can we combat this apathy and unfamiliarity with the Bible? Here are a number of ways that John Piper advises can help:
· Planning – make a time each day to read your Bible in a secluded place (ie. somewhere without distractions). John Piper recommends early morning because he believes to begin the day without filling your mind and heart with the word of God is like taking a car trip without filling up the tyres with air. Also, plan how you will read the Bible such as using a reading plan allocating certain passages to each day.
· Writing – don’t only read Bible passages, but write them down as well. As John Piper advises, “Go home and this time, write the text, instead of just reading it. If anything stands out as helpful, make a mark and write down your ideas about it. Keep writing till you are done with that insight. Then keep reading and writing the text till you see something else to write about, or until you are out of time…The main value in this is that writing forces us to slow down and see what we are reading. Some of us have very bad habits of passive reading that certain types of formal education have bred into us, by forcing us to read quickly when we ought to be reading slowly—thinking as we go. Writing is a way of slowing us down and opening our eyes to see what we do not otherwise see.”
· Meditating – God often commands us to regularly meditate on His words (Joshua 1:8; Psalms 1:2, 119:97, 143:5, 145:5). This does not mean crossing our knees and humming, but rather to talk to ourselves about what’s written in Scripture. It means to think about, to ask questions about, and to ponder the implications and applications of Scripture passages.
As George Mueller explains regarding the importance of meditation, “I saw that the most important thing I had to do was to give myself to the reading of the word of God, and to meditation on it…What is the food of the inner man? Not prayer, but the word of God; and…not the simple reading of the word of God, so that it only passes through our minds, just as water runs through a pipe, but considering what we read, pondering over it, and applying it to our hearts.”
· Memorising – In Joshua 1:8, God says, “This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success.” And memorizing verses and passages out of the Bible is how it gets in your mouth.
Memorisation makes us happy because it both directly gives us the beauty of Christ to see all day whether we have a Bible with us or not (Psalm 19:10) and it also provides us with the weapon for fighting sin (Psalm 119:11). This is why the New Testament writers often ask the church to remember their words (2 Thessalonians 2:5; Jude 17). For ease, you can integrate Bible memorization into your daily Bible reading, picking a key verse or two per week.
As John Piper says, “I spend this much time on Bible memory because I believe in the power of the indwelling Word of God to solve a thousand problems before they happen, and to heal a thousand wounds after they happen, and to kill a thousand sins in the moment of temptation, and to sweeten a thousand days with the ‘drippings of the honeycomb.’ I am jealous for you, my readers, that you would ‘let the word of Christ dwell in you richly’ (Colossians 3:16). This is the path to solid joy and all the service of love that it sustains.”
Hopefully, you will see the Bible as the great source of seeing Jesus and hence being happy. Because of this, I pray that you will be able to say with the Psalmist: “The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces… How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth… Therefore I love your commandments above gold, above fine gold… I rejoice at your word like one who finds great spoil” (Psalm 119:72, 103, 127, 162).
5. Read Theology
Now, not everyone has the time or intellect or access to read large books of weighty and orthodox doctrine such as John Calvin or Jonathan Edwards. But nonetheless, for those who can, far from being joy-squelchers, these doctrinal books can be the source of great joy. In fact, the greater the complexity in thought, the greater the reward of knowledge of God and hence joy (Proverbs 2:1-6; Psalm 111:2; 2 Timothy 2:7). Theology is also important for guarding us against false interpretations of Scripture. These books do not need to be read quickly, you can instead read them at your own pace, be it a page or two a day.
As C.S. Lewis observed, “For my own part, I tend to find the doctrinal books often more helpful in devotion than the devotional books, and I rather suspect that the same experience may await many others. I believe that many who find that ‘nothing happens’ when they sit down, or kneel down, to a book of devotion, would find that the heart sings unbidden while they are working their way through a tough bit of theology with a pipe in their teeth and a pencil in their hand.”
6. Be with Bible-saturated People (Fellowship with Living Saints)
This certainly includes, though not exclusively, your local church. However, it can also refer to a Bible study or informal small gatherings. This is important for our joy as being with other Christians is a way that God ministers to us, encouraging and building us up in the faith for our joy (2 Corinthians 1:24, 3:12-13).
7. Read Christian Biographies (Fellowship with Dead Saints)
But it’s not just the living that we can have fellowship with. God also uses the lives of dead saints to inspire and educate us (Hebrews 11). God commands us to imitate the faith of our leaders, living and dead (Hebrews 13:7). As John Piper explains, “When you read Christian biography you get to see a person fight for joy over a lifetime. This is tremendously helpful. It gives guidance in the warfare. It gives inspiration because of triumphs of grace. It gives humility and hope because of failures and recoveries. And sometimes there are glimpses of what is possible in relation to God that set a reader to praying and longing as never before.”
8. Pray Continuously
But what happens when after hearing, reading, meditating and preaching the Word of God you fail to see and savour the glory of God? What happens when after practicing all these steps, you remain unhappy in God? This is where prayer plays such an important role in our fight for joy.
But before we see what role prayer plays in the fight for joy, we must first define what prayer is. The Westminster Larger Catechism is very helpful in answering this, offering a great definition in Question 178: “Prayer is an offering up of our desires unto God, in the name of Christ, by the help of his Spirit; with confession of our sins, and thankful acknowledgement of his mercies.” So prayer is simply us telling God what we want. It is for this reason that prayer reveals our deepest desires and hence our spiritual state.
In John 16:24, Jesus says the purpose of prayer is that we will be given our desires in His name for our joy. But in John 14:13, He says that the purpose of answering prayer is that He will be glorified. Is this a contradiction? Do we get joy or does He get the glory? Well, John Piper would say that this is not a contradiction but that Jesus gets the glory by our having our prayers answered for our joy. How is this so? Because, as I have explained, what we pray for reveals what we want. And what we want reveals what we treasure. So Jesus gets the most glory when we want Him the most, thus showing Him to be the ultimate treasure of our hearts.
So what this means is that as Christians, the focus of our prayers should be radically different to those prayed by non-believers. Whilst non-believers pray for God’s gifts according to their wills, believers should pray for God Himself according to His will (1 John 5:14). And even when we pray for His gifts, these should always be so that we can see more of Him. Whilst the world arrogantly makes God a butler by asking Him for idols (James 4:3), Christians should humbly desire God above all else (Psalm 73:25).
So how then should we pray? Here are a few tips that John Piper gives:
· Use the Bible – prayer and meditation on the Word of God are as inseparable as the Spirit and the Word. The work of the Holy Spirit happens through the Word and the work of the Word happens through the Spirit, and that definitely includes the work of awakening joy in Christians. Prayer is our response to God in reliance on His Spirit, and meditation is our response to God in reliance on His Word.
As John Piper explains, “Thus, even as the Spirit and the Word are inseparable in our lives, so prayer and meditation are inseparable. The fight for joy always involves both. Prayer without meditation on the Word of God will disintegrate into humanistic spirituality. It will simply reflect our own fallen ideas and feelings—not God’s. And meditation, without the humility of desperate prayer, will create proud legalism or hopeless despair. Without prayer we will try to fulfill the Word in our own strength and think we are succeeding and so become proud Pharisees; or we will realize we are not succeeding and will give up in despair.”
George Mueller makes an interesting observation on the connection between the Bible and prayer: “Formerly, when I rose, I began to pray as soon as possible…But what was the result? I often…after having suffered much from wandering of mind for the first ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or even half an hour, I only then began really to pray. I scarcely ever suffer now in this way…Now…the first thing I did, after having asked in a few words the Lord’s blessing upon His precious word, was, to begin to meditate on the word of God, searching, as it were, into every verse, to get blessing out of it…The result I have found to be almost invariably this, that after a very few minutes my soul has been led to confession, or to thanksgiving, or to intercession, or to supplication; so that, though I did not, as it were, give myself to prayer, but to meditation, yet it turned almost immediately more or less into prayer. When thus I have been for awhile making confession, or intercession, or supplication, or have given thanks, I go on to the next words or verse, turning all, as I go on, into prayer for myself or others, as the Word may lead to it.”
So we see that the result of proper mediation on the Word of God is prayer. Prayer flows from reading the Bible. Mueller also advises that we should pray using Scripture not only as a catalyst, but also using the very words written. This is the key to praying for extended amounts of time as it helps us focus. By turning a passage of Scripture into prayer, you can pray as long as you read. It also helps conform our desires to be more biblical. This is what it means to “pray in the Holy Spirit” (Jude 20-21).
But why does the Spirit bind Himself to the Word of God? It is because Jesus says that the Spirit is sent to glorify the Son (John 16:14). If the Holy Spirit simply awakened joy in people without any reference to Christ-exalting Scripture, Jesus would not be glorified. For Jesus to be glorified, the Spirit needs to awaken our joy in response to seeing the glory of Jesus revealed in the Bible. So when we pray whilst reading or recalling the Bible, we should pray before, during and after that the Spirit would use what we are reading to awaken joy in us. This glorifies God not only by humbling us and showing our reliance on God for joy, but also by showing that Jesus is our supreme treasure.
John Piper offers the acronym “IOUS” to guide such prayers regarding the Bible; INCLINE our hearts to the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 119:36); OPEN our eyes to see the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 119:18); UNITE our hearts and minds to see the glory of God in His Word so that all of our being sees the glory, not just parts of us (Psalm 86:11); and finally SATISFY our hearts with the glory of God in His Word (Psalm 90:14).
· Pray without ceasing – the Apostle Paul commands this in 1 Thessalonians 5:17, but its link to joy can be seen in the preceding verse where he also commands us to “rejoice always!” The key to obeying this command to rejoice in God always is to pray always. But what exactly does “without ceasing entail.” John Piper defines the term means at least three things. Firstly, that we should have a spirit of dependence and humility in all that we do. Secondly, that we should never give up on prayer.
And lastly, we should pray repeatedly and often. Piper explains it like this: “I base this on the use of the word ‘without ceasing’ (adialeiptøs) in Romans 1:9, where Paul says, ‘For God is my witness, whom I serve with my spirit in the gospel of his Son, that without ceasing [adialeiptos] I mention you.’ Now we can be sure that Paul did not mention the Romans every minute of his waking life, or even every minute of his prayers. He prayed about many other things. But he mentioned them over and over, and often. So ‘without ceasing’ doesn’t mean that, verbally or mentally, we have to be speaking prayers every minute of the day in the fight for joy. It means we should pray over and over, and often. Our default mental state should be: ‘O God, help…’”
· Planning – similar to the advice given in our discussion on reading the Bible, you should plan specific times when you pray to God. To pray without ceasing requires discipline in order to enable regular spontaneous prayer. As John Piper argues, “The plants of spontaneous communion grow in the well-tended garden of disciplined Bible-reading and memorization. So it is with prayer.” We should follow the example of Daniel who prayed to God three times a day (Daniel 6:10).
As with reading the Bible, the best time for this is early in the morning (Mark 1:35). This is because it sets our priorities for the day, it strikes the first blow in our battle of the day to see God’s glory, and because what we do early shapes the spirit of our mind. This should be done in conjunction with the early morning Bible reading. And what of the rest of the day? Piper commends a long period of prayer in the morning (an hour if possible) then two or three shorter times during the day corresponding to breakfast, lunch and dinner.
As with Bible reading, allocate a quiet and secluded space devoted to prayer. If we can make rooms for cooking (kitchens), sleeping (bedrooms) and cleaning (bathroom), surely we can find a space for prayer. Of course, praying outside as opposed to indoors might work better for you depending on your situation.
· Use the Lord’s Prayer – using the structure of the Lord’s Prayer help us to keep our prayers focused on God and not on our own natural desires (Matthew 6:9-10). The first three petitions of the Lord’s Prayer reorient our priorities to desire that God’s name be hallowed (glorified), to desire the spreading of His Kingdom by people being converted everywhere, and that people would follow and obey Jesus. After making these fixed petitions, we are free to ask for all our other desires, which will somehow relate to these three petitions.
· Use Formal Descriptive Titles – this keeps our spirit serious and respectful. Despite our standing before God as His adopted children, we must still remember that God is the great Lord, King and Creator. This should lead us to have greater fear for the Lord whilst expressing our adoration. Some examples are, “O Holy Jesus, Son of the most high God,” “Righteous Judge and Light of Light,” and “Glorious and eternal Alpha and Omega.”
· Fasting – fasting is abstaining from food (or another dependence) practiced privately (Matthew 6:17), which helps us express our hunger for God. God can reward us with Himself if we do this. Since Jesus (our bridegroom) is no longer physically with us, fasting is a way to express our hope and desire for Jesus to return as well (Matthew 9:15). Fasting is the expression of our desire physically, whereas prayer is the expression of our desires orally. Therefore, fasting is a fitting and hungry handmaiden to prayer. But eating food can equally glorify Jesus if we receive it with thanksgiving and as a symbol of the satisfaction that He gives us (1 Timothy 4:3; 1 Corinthians 10:31).
· Corporate Prayer – asking others to pray for our desires gives more glory to God (James 5:16). How so? Because when I privately pray for something and God answers it, only I thank Him. But if many people pray for something and God answers it, many thank Him. By spreading the opportunity for thanksgiving and the expression for brotherly love, God is more glorified (2 Corinthians 1:11).
9. Use the World
God has graciously given us five senses to experience the physical world He has created. Any combination of these senses can give us an emotion. Just think of how smelling your favourite perfume, or giving a friend a hug, or seeing a sunset can bring a smile to your face. But what do these sorts of happiness have to do with the joy that the Holy Spirit creates in us (Galatians 5:22)? To answer this question, we must first distinguish between two kinds of emotions; physical and spiritual emotions.
Physical emotions are caused and experienced via the chemicals and impulses in our physical bodies. Spiritual emotions, on the other hand, are caused and experienced via our spirits and the Holy Spirit. As opposed to modern “wisdom,” we know that you do not need a physical body to experience emotions because God is said to experience emotions (Zephaniah 3:17) yet does not have a physical body (John 4:24; Luke 24:39; 1 Timothy 1:17). And these spiritual emotions are higher and richer than their physical counterparts.
After we die and before we are resurrected, we will exist only as spirits who are capable of only spiritual emotions (Philippians 1:23; Revelation 6:10). However, until we die and when we are resurrected, our spiritual emotions are connected to our physical senses. This means that our spiritual joy in God and its physical expression in the body are inseparable. This also means that some of these spiritual emotions will feel virtually the same as their physical counterparts. Therefore, spiritual emotions can have physical effects and physical conditions can have spiritual effects.
C.S. Lewis explains the way the two kinds of emotions interact using a musical metaphor. He likens spiritual emotions to that of an orchestra and physical emotions to that of a single piano. When the music of spiritual emotions plays in our souls, it gets “transposed” into physical sensations. But since the spiritual “orchestra” is richer and more complex than the physical “piano,” the same piano keys have to be used for sounds that in the orchestra are played with different instruments. Thus, love and lust can often feel the same just as endorphins and joy in God do.
However, as Lewis continues, in the transposition from the higher to the lower, the spiritual emotion enters into the physical sensation so the sensation becomes part of the higher emotion. Spiritual emotions can actually transform physical sensations. Although they are not identical, we cannot experience spiritual emotions without experiencing physical sensations. We are complex spiritual-physical beings who experience joy in Christ as something more, but almost never less, than physical sensation.
Now, this is all very interesting, but you may be asking how this helps our fight for joy? Well, as we’ve seen, physical sensations can affect our spiritual emotions. At the risk of either manipulation and idolatry, we must use our physical reality wisely for spiritual ends. Because even if we practice all the earlier ways of seeing God’s glory, if we don’t use our physical sensations properly, they can hinder our experiencing of joy in Christ. If the glory of God in the Gospel gives us joy, the following are examples of physical means of developing and sustaining such joy:
· Nature – whilst the Gospel is the clearest catalyst for awakening joy in God, the Bible says that nature can also make us happy in God (Psalm 19:1-4) This is because, as I have already stated, the natural world also reveals God’s glory. Therefore, it is another way for us to see the glory of God that makes us happiest.
But what is the difference between a Christian experiencing happiness from gazing at a sunrise and a non-believer who seems to experience the same emotion whilst looking at the same sunrise? C.S. Lewis provides an interesting answer: “I was standing today in the dark toolshed. The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam. From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place. Everything else was almost pitch-black. I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it. Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes. Instantly the whole previous picture vanished. I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam. Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun. Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.”
If we want to see the glory of God in nature and not just the glory of nature, we need to move beyond the simple experience of seeing nature. We need to let the “beam” of nature fall on the eyes of our heart so that we see the source of the beautiful scene before us. We need to learn to relate how we experience nature to God. For example, instead of just thinking ‘Oh what a beautiful sunrise that is!’, we need to think, ‘Wow! Only a beautiful God could make such a sunrise and if this is the beauty He makes, imagine how beautiful He Himself is!’
· Food, sex and other physical sensations – the Apostle Paul provides us with two ways to make sure that these good things do not become God things in 1 Timothy 4:2-5: “Liars whose consciences are seared…forbid marriage and require abstinence from foods that God created to be received with thanksgiving by those who believe and know the truth. For everything created by God is good, and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving, for it is made holy by the word of God and prayer.”
Here, Paul says that we can use any physical sensation to glorify God and make us happy if we do two things. The first is to thank God for it. By doing so, we focus our attention on seeing God’s glory as the Good Giver. When you thank someone, you are enjoying the Giver through enjoying the gift. However, thanksgiving alone is not enough. We must also make sure that we use the sensation correctly according to its intended purpose revealed by God in the Bible. We may otherwise thank God for food and be a glutton, or thank God for sex and be an adulterer.
· Literature, art and music – we can experience joy in God more fully with the use of poetry and other literary forms. Even unbelievers can be of assistance here. The goal with reading such literature is that our eyes would be opened to greater vocabulary for expressing happiness and other emotions. And what you will find is as you’re vocabulary is expanded, so too will your capacity to perceive joy in God in all its richness. Similarly, we can look at a painting and look along its beam to the ultimate Artist or we can listen to a booming musical piece and be drawn into the drama of Scripture. Whilst not catalysts for joy in God, they can be means of expressing and sustaining such joy. This will vary, of course, depending on culture as every culture has its own idea of language, symbolism and pleasing sounds.
· Monotony – a key to being satisfied with the glory of God revealed in the natural world is to exult in the repetitive. This is something that all of us lose as we get older, much to the detriment of our pursuit of pleasure. G.K. Chesterton artfully observes it as such: “Children…always say, ‘Do it again’; and the grown-up person does it again until he is nearly dead. For grown-up people are not strong enough to exult in monotony. But perhaps God is strong enough to exult in monotony. It is possible that God says every morning, ‘Do it again’ to the sun; and every evening, ‘Do it again’ to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. It may be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy; for we have sinned and grown old, and our Father is younger than we.” I think that people would be far happier as a whole if they rejoiced in the old they have then pursue it in the new they will never have enough of.
· Diet, exercise and rest – certain foods can make us feel better than others. This is common sense. But we should have a greater motivation to eat healthily since by doing so not only will we make our bodies more susceptible to joy in God, but we will also increase our chances of living longer to experience His grace on earth.
The same goes for exercise and rest. Exercising regularly and resting often will place us in a better mood for having the Holy Spirit awaken joy in us and sustaining it. And if the Holy Spirit awakens joy in us and we neglect these things, we may lose the joy that was given to us because of our carelessness. Yet despite the benefits of these healthy practices, we must remember not to be enslaved to anything, especially those things which are good things (1 Corinthians 6:12).
Of course, there are rare occasions when Christians are persecuted. They can be locked up in a prison with no nature, barely any food, barely any exercise and God can give them extraordinary joy in Himself to sustain them through this persecution. But nevertheless, for the large majority of Christians who are not in situations such as these, they would do well in their fight for joy in God to treat their bodies well.
10. Evangelism and Acts of Love
Last, but not least, we can see the glory of God in the Gospel by the acts of love it inspires and the conversions created by its spreading. Seeing and savoring the glory of God in the Gospel is not completed until it is lived out in our lives. Not that we “live the Gospel”, but rather by sharing (the Gospel) and caring (for people), the power of the Gospel is displayed in its fullness and enjoyed by those witnessing it (2 Corinthians 8:1-7).
I have of course left out some other ways that we can see God’s glory but these are the most essential and important.
Waves
To summarise, we can do see God’s glory in the Gospel primarily though the God ordained means of hearing the Gospel preached, preaching it to ourselves, eating the Lord’s Supper, not confusing justification and sanctification, reading the Bible, reading theology, reading Christian biographies, praying, using physical sensations, evangelizing and doing other acts of love.
I pray that as you have tasted Christian Hedonism, this would spur you on to seek greater happiness in God. Not happiness per se, but happiness in God. As George Mueller said, “The more we know of God, the happier we are…When we became a little acquainted with God…our true happiness…commenced; and the more we become acquainted with him, the more truly happy we become. What will make us so exceedingly happy in heaven? It will be the fuller knowledge of God.”
I pray with Christ that above all you would see His glory (John 17:24) and know Him more (Ephesians 1:15-19), prioritizing joy in God above all other cares of the day. As Mueller again says, “According to my judgement the most important point to be attended to is this: above all things see to it that your souls are happy in the Lord. Other things may press upon you, the Lord’s work may even have urgent claims upon your attention, but I deliberately repeat, it is of supreme and paramount importance that you should seek above all things to have your souls truly happy in God Himself! Day by day seek to make this the most important business of your life.”
So until next time, put that in your cloud and rain it (Jude 12).
Christus Regnat,
MAXi
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