Ever since
learning about returning children to joy, I have grown in my wonder and
appreciation of how central joy is to God and his work. However, in the same
way as returning children to joy begins with the thing that is not joyful, God’s
work for our joy begins by addressing our lack of joy.
Many times I
have shared about the Beatitudinal Journey described in the Sermon on the
Mount.[1] It
is the poor in spirit who are blessed with the kingdom of heaven. It is those
who mourn who are comforted. It is those who meekly acknowledge their inability
who inherit the earth. And, it is those who hunger and thirst for righteousness
who are satisfied. Repeatedly, it is those who face what is wrong with them who
then experience the satisfaction of knowing God.
For a while,
the difficult thing God has been confronting me with is an inner world of hurt
feelings. While some would teach dissociation from how we really feel as God’s
children, God and his word consistently invite us to admit and acknowledge how
we are doing as the first step in coming to know him in ways that are
unfamiliar to us.
I know that
we all have stories, and that mine is not unique. I also know that we all have
hurts and heartaches, so there is nothing special or distinctive of what I
feel. The common ground is that we all have not-so-good things inside us in
need of knowing God.
Today’s
point-of-contact was between the deep hurts of the soul, and the magnificence
of God’s joy.
We cannot
enter into God’s joy through the denial of our real feelings. Instead, we begin
by acknowledging the poverty of our experience of his joy. We allow ourselves
to mourn the sorrows that fill our hearts because we have not yet known his joy.
We meekly acknowledge that we are unable to fix the joylessness of our inner
beings. And then we express our hunger and thirst to know this “joy that is inexpressible and filled with
glory.”[2]
For a long
time I have drawn a lot of comfort from Jesus’ visit with the Samaritan woman.[3] In
the course of their conversation, Jesus gently moved back-and-forth between
showing the woman something higher about himself than she could ever have
known, followed by something deeper about herself than she was aware. By the
end of their meeting, the woman went back into her town and told everyone, “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever
did. Can this be the Christ?”[4] A
couple of days later the town’s folk declared to her, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have
heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”[5]
That whole
situation began with no one knowing who Jesus was, and ended with people having
come to know for themselves who he is, and many putting their faith in him
because of what they now knew by experience.
I have met
many church-going people who believe that we try to live out the joy of knowing
God by pretending there is nothing wrong with us. They have a “just do it”
mentality that denies that they are not doing it as well as they imagine, and
dissociates from anyone who threatens to expose their true soul-condition.
On the other
hand, the Bible is full of examples of people coming to know God by experience
in the exact center of something in which they did not know him. Whether we
look through the Psalms that consistently show men coming to know God in the
midst of a full range of emotions to God, or the heart-exposing gentleness of Jesus
in speaking with the Samaritan woman, or Jesus warning Peter of his ability to
deny his Savior,[6]
or Jesus confronting Saul with why Saul was persecuting him (there was no way
Saul had any idea he was persecuting his own Messiah since he had never met his
Messiah),[7] there
is a consistent pattern of God showing us what we are really like on the inside
so we will hunger and thirst to know him in the ways we lack.
For people
like me, this means facing a world of hurt inside that has met its match in the
joy of God. Today was like the introduction to the journey. Even in taking my
first steps in considering God’s joy in himself, his joy in relationship to his
people, and the transforming power of his joy to fill us with joy, I already
know that God has something very good in mind for me, and for everyone who has
the same need to know this joy.
© 2015 Monte Vigh ~ Box 517,
Merritt, BC, V1K 1B8 ~ in2freedom@gmail.com
Unless otherwise noted,
Scriptures are from the English Standard Version (The Holy Bible, English
Standard Version Copyright © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a division of Good
News Publishers.)
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