God's Beauty - Pt 4

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full. (John 15:9-11 ESV).

We can learn so much from our reading today. There have been many who have offered the Christian community their formula for joy. Almost always is includes “God and some “thing.” The formula to joy is not God and something; it is God in something. True joy is not to be found in God and job, family, sex, friends, food, rest, driving, buying a home, reading a book, or any other thing. It can only be found from God in these things. Every taste of beauty in this world, from the roar of waterfalls to the chatter of birds to the richness of true friendship, is a drop from the ocean of divine beauty. Every pleasure is an arrow pointing back to God’s beauty. Joy is from, and only finally in, God. I have quoted Jonathon Edwards several times over the last few days. I was amazed at how much this preacher, who is most notably known for his fiery sermons like “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” has to say about pure joy and giddy happiness in life. Edwards went so far as to say “…that when loved ones of ours die, we don’t ultimately have any reason to mourn, because we will experience forever in heaven in Christ everything in the loved one that we loved. Christ himself recapitulates and sums up himself all the other joys. If you have Christ, you have all joy.” I do not want to insinuate that we will be immune from sorrow and depression. However, I would say to everyone that if you have Christ, you have all joy. Let me close our little series with five brief tips: First, if you find happiness eluding you, you are not abnormal. So relax. Look for God’s beauty. Second, even in a stale, numb condition don’t worry. Worry is always rooted in the wrong questions about life. We so often want the answer to “why”; concentrate on “who.” Third, God’s verdict over your life is not strengthened by the intensity, or weakened by the lack of intensity, of your enjoyment of the beauty of God. In fact, part of the beauty of God is that his paternal care and love for you doesn’t hinge on your experience. Fourth, if you are feeling dry and barren because you are living in sin, and you know it, repent. That’s the only fix for the conviction you are feeling. Fifth, if you are in Christ, one day you will look back on this dry, barren, adversity-filled life and see how all the cumulative pain of this world is going to be rewound and undone, and actually be part of our final good. So hang on.