Feeling Good is Good Enough? What about Joy?!
Purity 472 07/16/2021 Purity 472 Podcast
Today’s photo of a setting sun dipping into the
Pacific comes to us from a friend who is vacationing in Kaanapali on the Island
of Maui in the great state of Hawaii. While
I am envious of my friend’s vacation, I am filled with joy for them and somehow
that joy transcends to myself. I don’t know, somehow I feel good just knowing
that I know someone who is out there enjoying the beauty that our Lord has
created.
That’s the funny thing about joy for a Christian,
it’s not really dependent on our circumstances. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit
and when you are living by faith and walking in the Spirit you will experience
it in many forms.
In Oliver Stone’s Platoon, a group of soldiers
gather to party with alcohol and marijuana. The euphoria caused by the drugs and
peaceful environment drives one of the characters to say: “Feeling good’s good enough.”
Unlike the temporary happiness and skewed
perceptions brought on by intoxication caused by drugs and alcohol and other fleshly
pursuits, the heightened awareness of the interaction of God in our lives from
moment to moment as we walk in the Spirit produces the “joy of the Lord” that is
clean and pure. The joy of the Lord doesn’t
cause us pain and it doesn’t bring us feelings of shame or guilt. The joy of the Lord is a deep-rooted inspired
feeling that comes from our acknowledgement of the goodness of God and from the
wonder of His presence when we commune with Him by welcoming Him into our life experiences.
Some may look at today’s photo and say: “Man, it
doesn’t get any better than that!”
But I assure you that enjoying the moment of that
view in Hawaii can be exponentially better when you bask in the wonder of the
God who made it and thank Him for creating it, and for creating us, and for allowing
us to have the time and ability to experience it.
The word of God says that we are not to be drunk
with wine which leads to debauchery, instead we are to be filled with the Spirit,
whose fruit is peace and joy.
So as the sun sets on another work week, I
encourage all my friends to take their weekend experiences from the level of
mere situational happiness and welcome the Lord of all creation into your lives
to experience the joy that comes from being in harmony with Him.
When you have a relationship with God through
faith in Jesus Christ, it doesn’t matter if you take yourself to a Pacific
paradise or you just stay in the familiar confines of your home; reflecting on
the things of God and communing with Him in an unceasing conversation of prayer
will open up the gates of heaven here on earth and allow you to truly know the
peace and the joy that He has for you.
So keep walking and talking with God. And when you
discover a spring in your step, don’t be surprised. That’s just the joy of the Lord flowing from your
heavenly Father right into your spirit.
This morning’s meditation verse is:
1 Thessalonians 1:2 (NKJV)
2 We give thanks to God always for
you all, making mention of you in our prayers,
Today’s verse encourages us to give thanks to God for the
people in our lives and to lift them up to the Lord in prayer.
Two of the fundamental disciplines of the path of Christian
Discipleship are gratitude, or thanksgiving, and prayer.
Technically, I guess thanking God for all the things He
provides in our lives is a form of prayer but it’s a form of prayer that I
continually practice as a means of walking in the Spirit and for dealing with
discursive thoughts and reactive emotions. Gratitude, which I think of as the continual
practice of thanksgiving, is an effective antidote for depression, angry, and
anxiety. But please understand me that I
am not recommending a general attitude of thankfulness.
Secular psychologists make the same recommendations to be thankful,
but because most secular psychologists hold an atheistic of humanist world view
the thanksgiving that is recommended would have you thanking “good fortune”, “chance”,
“my personal wisdom”, my hard work”, or “my specialness.” In these instances, the object to which we
are giving thanks is selfish and temporary.
In essence we are thanking ourselves for being able to see that we
should be thankful. “I can do it! Yay!”
With that said you can even practice this form of thankfulness
in the worst conditions too, “I’m thankful because I KNOW things could be
worse.” While I applaud, that attitude
of pure grit to persevere, do you see how lonely that is?
With a relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ, you
are not alone. And when you practice
gratitude you take your logical reasonings of why you can be thankful, and you
can lay them at the feet of the One who is worthy of them.
With God we are not alone. And today’s verse encourages to us
be thankful to the Lord for the people that He has put in our lives here on
earth. Our thanksgivings to the Lord
should include the special people that love us and that we can love in
return.
Our family, friends, and brothers and sisters in Christ give
us the ability to give and receive love.
Our love for the people in our lives causes us to care for them and wish
that they would prosper, and flourish and we can take our hopes for them to the
Lord in prayer. God wants us to love one
another, and it is only natural for us to prayer for one another.
So practice your disciplines of prayer and thanksgiving and
included the people in your life in each one of them. Although our relationship with God is highly
personal, we are to open our hearts to others and go to God to tell Him all
about the relationships we have that bring such meaning and joy to our lives.
As
always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from
prominent Christian counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with
their walk.
Today we continue with Dr. Neil Anderson’s Victory
Over the Darkness, beginning Chapter 8.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes
and encourage all to purchase Dr. Anderson’s books for your own private study
and to support his work. If you need this title you can find it online at several
sites for less than $15.00:
Chapter
8
God's
Guidelines for the Walk of Faith
A few years ago, I accepted an invitation to speak at a
church retreat the weekend after Mother's Day. A month before the retreat, the
pastor called to tell me that the conference center had been double booked, so
their retreat had to be moved ahead one week. He asked if I could still be
there the Friday, Saturday, and Sunday of Mother's Day weekend.
I wasn't about to schedule anything
that would take me away from my family on Mother's Day, but my wife, Joanne,
overheard the conversation and suggested I go ahead with the retreat. I told
her I didn't want to be away on her special day, but she insisted I go. So I
did.
During a break in the retreat, I
visited the little gift shop on the grounds and got a wonderful idea for making
up to my family for being gone on Mother's Day. One of the gift items in the
shop was a cute little basket containing a package of muffin mix and a jar of
apple jelly. I decided I would get up early on Monday morning and fix a
delicious, banquet-style breakfast for Joanne, Heidi, and Karl—complete with
eggs, sausage, and muffins.
So on Monday morning I rose with the
chickens, had my devotions, and started making breakfast. I was stirring the
muffin mix, singing, and feeling great when sleepy-eyed Karl wandered into the
kitchen. He grabbed a box of cereal and an empty bowl and headed for the table.
"Hey, Karl, just a second. We're
not having cereal this morning. We're going to sit around the table together
and have a big breakfast with muffins."
"I don't like muffins, Dad,"
he mumbled, opening the cereal box.
"Wait, Karl," I insisted,
starting to get annoyed. "We're going to sit around the table together and
have a big breakfast with muffins."
"But I don't like muffins,
Dad," he repeated as he got ready to fill his bowl.
I lost it. "Karl, we're going to
sit around the table together and have a big breakfast with muffins!" I
barked. Karl closed the cereal box, threw it into the cupboard and stomped back
to his room. The kid blocked my goal!
When I realized what I had done, I
went to Karl's room and said, "I'm sorry, son. You can have cereal."
He said, "I don't like
cereal."
Like me, I am sure you have suffered
your share of blocked goals, which are described in the previous
chapter. You had this great plan to do something wonderful for God, your
church, your family, or a friend. Then your plan was thrown into disarray by
hectic, daily events over which you had no control. A pileup on the freeway
kept you from getting to work on time. Your husband was late for the special
dinner you planned. Your child decided to be the lead guitarist in a rock band
instead of becoming a doctor, as you had planned. You didn't get your way at
the board meeting.
When you base your sense of worth on
the success of your own personal plans, your life will be one long, emotional
roller-coaster ride. The only way to get off the roller coaster is to walk by
faith according to the truth of God's Word.
Victory Over the Darkness: Realizing the Power of Your Identity in Christ.
---------------------------more tomorrow------------------------
God bless
you all!
Join our “Victory
over the Darkness” or “The Bondage Breaker” series of Discipleship Classes via
the mt4christ247 podcast!
at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is also available on Google Podcasts,
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Encouragement for the Path of Christian
Discipleship
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