Pastor’s Corner: True joy found in Christ

We are told that one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit that is in every born again believer is Joy (see Galatians 5:22). The word joy spoken of in Galatians 5 has all but disappeared from our current Christian vocabularies largely because people confuse joy with happiness and have come to believe it’s found in pleasure, security and prosperity rather than being a gift of God that is totally separate from those things. The sad thing is many Christians have come to believe this lie that Satan tells the world.

James 1:2 doesn’t say “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into an easy chair” it says “My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations.” (Some translations render temptations as trials.) This is an important distinction to make because, although they may overlap, there is a di◊erence between happiness and joy.

Happiness depends on circumstances but joy depends on God. Happiness vanishes when life turns painful - joy continues and may even grow stronger.

If circumstances are not what we consider to be optimal, if our lives aren’t “lining up” with what we think should bring us happiness (or society has convinced us should bring us happiness) we aren’t “happy.”

Joy comes from a vital, living relationship with God. It comes from knowing this world is only temporary and someday we will be with God in His glorious presence forever and that there is nothing in this world (or any other thing for that matter) that can keep this from happening.

It comes from, as Peter tells us having a love and a belief in God that “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” (see 1st Peter 1:8) It doesn’t matter what circumstances bring, because of our submission to the Holy Spirit in our relationship with God, we can have Joy regardless of what comes.

The Scriptures give us a great and wonderful promise that should enable us to have such a joy that when things around us begin to look so bad and seem so hard to bear it causes us to remember that no matter what we have to endure, it’s only a fl eeting fl icker and then we will be in the presence of Jesus in the placeHe has prepared for us.

In John 14:1-4 Jesus tells us “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.

And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also. And whither I go ye know, & the way ye know.”

What a wonderful promise!

C.S. Lewis in his book “Christian Behavior” said “Hope is one of the theological virtues.” He meant that there is a continual looking forward to the eternal that is not, as some people believe, a form of escapism or wishful thinking but something a Christian is meant to possess.

This does not mean we are to leave the present world as it is; in fact, Scriptures tell us in Acts 17:6 Christians were spoken of as “These that have turned the world upside down are come hither also.” If you read history, you will fi nd that the Christians who did the most for the present world have always been those who thought the most of the next.

However, it has only been since Christians have allowed their focus to be turned from the world to come and reaching the lost because of the coming judgment to this world and it’s pleasures that they have become so ine◊ective in this one. Lewis also said “Aim at Heaven and you will get Earth ‘thrown in’;

aim at Earth and you will get neither.”

In the midst of all that is happening, the gloom and frustration of the present hour there is one bright beacon of hope that we can hold on to that is sure to bring us great joy; the promise Jesus made: “if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also” What a wonderful promise!

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Editor’s note: Charlie Newman is pastor of Avoca Christian Church. To contact him, e-mail [email protected], or write in care of The Times at prtnews@ nwaonline.com or P.O. Box 25, Pea Ridge, AR 72751.

Church, Pages 2 on 07/17/2013