Evidence: Part 4–Choose Joy

Although great trouble accompanied the Word, you were able to take great joy from the Holy Spirit!—taking the trouble with the joy, the joy with the trouble.

Do you know that all over the provinces of both Macedonia and Achaia believers look up to you? The word has gotten around. Your lives are echoing the Master’s Word, not only in the provinces but all over the place. The news of your faith in God is out. We don’t even have to say anything anymore—you’re the message!

(1 Thessalonians 1:6b-8 MSG)

Something in that passage doesn’t seem quite right. The phrases “great trouble” and “great joy” are in the same sentence. Other translations say “severe suffering” in place of “great trouble.” I don’t know about you, but when I think of severe suffering, I don’t feel very joyful about it.

The word “feel” is the key. We think of joy as a feeling. When we do that, though, we are confusing joy with happiness. Happiness is what we feel or don’t feel, but joy can be present even when happiness is nowhere to be found.

The reason for this is that happiness, like any other emotion, comes and goes, usually without any action on our part. Joy, however, is an attitude that can be cultivated.

It helps to remember the source of joy. The Joy of the Lord is His response to our gratitude. Even in the midst of our trials, we can still choose to feed the habit of being thankful for everything else that’s right in our lives. When we acknowledge God in these things, this happens:

Before you know it, a sense of God’s wholeness, everything coming together for good, will come and settle you down. It’s wonderful what happens when Christ displaces worry at the center of your life. (Philippians 4:7 MSG)

So praying in this way doesn’t necessarily change our circumstances or make the bad stuff in our lives go away. What it does do is change our focus. It is empowering to know that we don’t have to be ruled by the negative feelings that bombard us from everything that’s wrong in the world. We can actually CHOOSE joy. Give a listen to this song, which illustrates this concept perfectly:

Sounds great. So how do we start?

Here are some methods that I have found helpful.

One thing I have noticed that feeds depression in me more than anything else is an attitude of discontentment. I fall into the habit of comparing myself to others or even with my own perception of where I think I ought to be in life.

My church has found an antidote to this, which they break out every year at our Thanksgiving service. Included in the bulletin is a sheet with blanks numbered 1 to 100. At the top, it says, “Lord, I thank you for. . .” The first time I saw this at a Thanksgiving service, I wondered how I would ever be able to think of 100 things that I was thankful for.

Then I heard some kids next to me challenge each other to a race to see who could fill in all 100 the fastest. My competitive nature kicked in. I was not about to be shown up by a bunch of kids. So I started filling in blanks with anything I could think of. Big things, little things, serious things and silly ones. I tried to think of any situation in my life where I had ever said, “Thank God for. . .” Something. Anything. In four minutes, to my own astonishment, I had completely filled in the list. I stuck it back in my bulletin and promptly forgot about it.

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Thanksgiving x 100

One day not long after, I was feeling particularly sorry for myself, for no good reason. I found myself sinking into my typical emotional chasm, wondering what the point of living was, etc. Then I remembered the list.

I took it out and read through it. As I read each entry on my list of 100 things for which to be thankful, I found myself thinking about each one. Obviously, I had filled it out in a rush. Now that I stopped to really think about it, my perspective began to change. I started to realize not just that I had a lot to be thankful for, but that the things I had written on that list were what defined me as a person—my talents, my hobbies, my passions, the people who had the great impact on me, my faith, and so many more.

This list has been rewritten several times over the years. I carry it with me every day in my day planner. Wherever I am, if I am having a bad day, I can just pull out my list, circle the next number, and take a few minutes to thank God for that.

Yes and Amen

Another thing I have done is to keep a list in a file on my computer of everything I know to be true about God’s promises. I try to remember and record every answered prayer, every time when life has worked out in a way that goes far beyond coincidence, everything that can’t be explained in any other way other than “God showed up.”

This journal is my ultimate doubtbuster. When I start to think that maybe God isn’t who He says He is, or that He’s not interested in my life, or maybe that He doesn’t even exist at all, I go back to that list. Then I am reminded that not only is God real, but He can be trusted. When I look back at all the things He has delivered me from in my life, it reminds me that all of His promises yet to be fulfilled will be, and at exactly the right time. This fills the gas tank of my soul to the top. That’s the Joy of the Lord.

What I find interesting is that this joy comes immediately after doubt. I don’t generally go to this list unless I am feeling desperate and showing the signs of faltering trust.

When I regain my perspective, though, I realize that God’s response to my laying my doubts about Him directly at His feet is not to turn me away in anger, but to fill me with joy in His presence. Then I am ready to keep in step with Him for whatever is coming my way next.

It’s good to be around happy people, but it’s even better to be around joyful people. Someone who has the Joy of the Lord even in difficult circumstances is someone you are going to notice. You might find yourself thinking, “What’s wrong with that person? He should be miserable right now!”

A better question might be, “What’s RIGHT with that person?” What you are seeing is evidence of the Lord at work in the life of someone who has chosen joy.

(Come back for Part 5–Run the Race)

Evidence: Part 2–Where Your Treasue Is

Don’t hoard treasure down here where it gets eaten by moths and corroded by rust or—worse!—stolen by burglars. Stockpile treasure in heaven, where it’s safe from moth and rust and burglars. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being. (Matthew 6:19-21 MSG)

Have you ever been truly in need?

There’s a chance that some of you have. I don’t know the personal story of everyone reading this. But if you’re reading it now, then you have access to the Internet, which means you likely have shelter and enough means to know where your next meal is coming from.

The point is that whoever you are and whatever your situation is, someone has it worse than you do. This is true for every human being on this planet except one. Theoretically, someone has to be at the end of the line, and whoever that is will probably be dead by the time I finish typing this sentence.

The reverse is also true. If there is always someone that is worse off than you, then obviously, that means that you are better off than someone else is. If all of your needs are met, and you have one extra penny in your pocket, then to a great many people in this world, you are rich. So if you are reading this, you have more than you need. It might be a little more; it might be a lot more. And lots of folks out there have less than they need.

Let me be clear that I am talking about needs, not desires. You need clean drinking water, but you don’t need Perrier. You need clothing, but you don’t need the little black dress from Chanel. You need shelter, but you don’t need a mansion in Bel Air.

Some people get the wrong idea about how to get what they need. They decide that because you have more than you need, they might as well take some of what you have. Some might call that “redistribution of wealth,” but what it really is is theft.

If you have more than you need, technically, you are always at risk of having it taken away from you. The more you hoard for yourself, the more you stand to potentially lose.

There’s a way around this though. We as a nation need to get over this ridiculous mentality of piling up wealth for ourselves. Malcolm Forbes is frequently quoted as having said, “He who dies with the most toys wins.” Well, Malcolm Forbes is dead. Someone else got his toys. So what did he win?

Remember what we’ve talked about before—the toys aren’t even yours to begin with. Everything you have is on loan from God, because you don’t take anything with you.

So if you have more than you need, and what you have isn’t yours anyway, why not give some of it away? Nobody can take from you what you have already voluntarily surrendered. All you have to do is get to a place where the people you meet that have less than you are more important than the stuff you have that they don’t.

But if you’re not at that place yet, then how do you get there? In a word, trust.

Trust that God is your provider. Trust that He will continue to meet your needs as He always has. Most of all, trust that He can do more with the money you’re giving away than you could if you kept it.

It’s this trust that leads to a life of generosity. Think about it—why do we try so hard to hold on to our money? Is it because we worked hard and we earned it? Maybe, but I think it’s more about fear. We are afraid that we will LOSE what we have earned. We have probably set goals for ourselves that involved “moving up in the world.” Maybe we have been successful in attaining those goals, at least in part. We get jealous for what we have acquired along the way, because we have devoted so much of our lives to acquiring it.

This tells me that maybe the goals are the problem. If the ambition of our lives is to build our own legacy, what’s the point of that? We won’t be around to enjoy it.

On the other hand, when we trust God to take care of everything we need (again, not everything we want, but everything we need), we find ourselves holding on more loosely to a lot of things, but especially money. The less we try to grasp at the material things in our lives, the more we find ourselves learning to be content. We learn what the meaning of “enough” is. We learn that if we have enough today and trust that we will tomorrow, God will open our eyes to people we can help and situations we can change with the more-than-enough with which He has blessed us.

Best of all, we learn that when we help someone else have enough, we find that we STILL have enough. And by being kind and thinking of the needs of others first, we pay our blessings forward. And maybe, with this generosity as the evidence that God is doing something in our lives, we might inspire someone else to follow our lead.

Whoever is generous to the poor lends to the Lord, and he will repay him for his deed. (Proverbs 19:17 ESV)

(Come back for Part 3: What Leads to Peace)

DN=: Part 2–Freedom

“All things are allowed,” you say. But not all things are good. “All things are allowed.” But some things don’t help anyone. (1 Cor 10:23 ERV)

We are big on freedom in this country, aren’t we? We have a Bill of Rights in our constitution guaranteeing us freedom of speech, the press, assembly, religion and petition. When our soldiers go off to war, we are told that they are “fighting for our freedom.”

It’s in all the songs we learn as kids. America is the land of the FREE and the home of the brave. We are proud to be Americans where at least we know we’re FREE. From every mountainside, let FREEDOM ring.

Christians are also fond of the words “free” and “freedom.” We also have phrases that we repeat or sing in songs, such as:

Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
If the Son has set you free, you are free indeed.
My chains are gone; I’ve been set free.

Nevertheless, Christians can easily fall into the same trap as the rest of the world in the sense of abusing personal freedom at the expense of the freedom of another.

FREEDOM DN= LICENSE TO DO WHATEVER WE WANT

Within a generation of Jesus’ death, both Paul and Peter were dealing with this problem in the early Church:

It is absolutely clear that God has called you to a free life. Just make sure that you don’t use this freedom as an excuse to do whatever you want to do and destroy your freedom. Rather, use your freedom to serve one another in love; that’s how freedom grows. For everything we know about God’s Word is summed up in a single sentence: Love others as you love yourself. That’s an act of true freedom. If you bite and ravage each other, watch out—in no time at all you will be annihilating each other, and where will your precious freedom be then? Galatians 5:13-15 (MSG)

Make the Master proud of you by being good citizens. Respect the authorities, whatever their level; they are God’s emissaries for keeping order. It is God’s will that by doing good, you might cure the ignorance of the fools who think you’re a danger to society. Exercise your freedom by serving God, not by breaking the rules. Treat everyone you meet with dignity. Love your spiritual family. Revere God. Respect the government. (1 Peter 2: 13-17 MSG)

Do you see the tie there? Freedom = service. Some translations actually use the word “slave.”

Now for Americans, that notion can be jarring. For Americans of African descent in particular, it can feel like a harsh slap in the face. After all that this country and its people have gone through to win freedom, God wants us to be slaves again?

The original Greek word in Peter’s letter is doulos, which does mean slave, but not in the way we Americans think of it. When we hear the word “slave,” we think of forced labor. In other words, a slave’s status is determined by the work the slave does and the conditions under which he is compelled to do it.

A doulos, on the other hand, is also a bondservant, or one permanently bound and subservient to a master; however, their slave status is determined not by their work, but by their relationship to their master.

The implication then, made by both Peter and Paul, is that to be a bondservant of Christ, one must no longer be a slave to sin. After all, as Jesus Himself said, “No one can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24a NIV).”

Furthermore, in this context a doulos is a VOLUNTARY bondservant. We are born slaves to sin, but we CHOOSE to be “slaves” for Christ. The only way to be in a position to make that choice is to have first been freed from the grip of sin in our lives. A slave cannot free himself; he can only be freed by the master. And the Master said this:

A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. (John 13:34 NIV)

And also this:

Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me. (Matthew 25:40b NIV)

Therefore, serving God and serving other people are actually one and the same. So being a doulos to Christ means being a doulos to the world as well, but to its people, not its philosophies.

As no one can serve two masters, and as it is impossible to serve both Christ and our own sinful desires, so it is also impossible to simultaneously serve the world while doing whatever we want.

This is the reason that no one is justified by their works alone apart from having been freed by the Master, with whom they have a relationship.

Which brings up another DN=.

(Which will be covered in Part 3–Righteousness)