Session 2: The Fight for Joy is Essential, Part 2

Why is the pursuit of joy in God not optional?

You Glorify What You Enjoy.

When God is our deepest pleasure we display Him as our highest treasure.

The pursuit of God’s Glory is not optional.

Does our emotions show that God is our highest pleasure or does it show that we are seeking other things over God?

I don’t know about you but that isn’t the reality in my life always. I needed to stop and repent.

That is one reason that I am excited about this series. Because I don’t desire God like He deserves and calls me to.

How would you describe your conversion? Does it match how Jesus describes it?

Matthew 13:44  “The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and covered up. Then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field.

Are we like Peter - Look what we gave up

Do we realize what we have recieved?

Do you believe that the path to our full joy is through our relationship with Christ?

Matthew 5:11-12: Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

John 15:11  These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

The Gospels are given so that we may experience God’s Joy may be ours.

Psalms 100:1-2 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth! Serve the LORD with gladness! Come into his presence with singing!

Psalms 32:11 Be glad in the LORD, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy, all you upright in heart!

Psalms 37:4 Delight yourself in the LORD, and he will give you the desires of your heart.

Philippians 4:4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.

Written by a man who knew more suffering than all of us put together.

2 Corinthians 6:4-10 but as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: by great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love; by truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, yet possessing everything.

How do we not be “Chipper” People?

The fight for joy is not a fight to be comfortable. It is not a fight for ease, or prosperous. It is a fight to join Jesus on the Calvary road.

Hebrews 12:2 looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

We are to “weep with those who weep.” We are to have empathy with those suffering. - not make light of it.

The outflow of that joy should be love for others.

2 Corinthians 8:2-5 for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part. For they gave according to their means, as I can testify, and beyond their means, of their own accord, begging us earnestly for the favor of taking part in the relief of the saints— and this, not as we expected, but they gave themselves first to the Lord and then by the will of God to us.

Do you delight in God? Do you have that assurance of your salvation?

4 Clarifications of Desiring God

The fight for Joy is a fight for Joy in God not a fight for joy in general.

CS Lewis quote

Why not say simply pursue God

It isn’t John Piper’s idea to talk this way. It’s Gods

Deuteronomy 28:47-48 Because you did not serve the LORD your God with joyfulness and gladness of heart, because of the abundance of all things, therefore you shall serve your enemies whom the LORD will send against you, in hunger and thirst, in nakedness, and lacking everything. And he will put a yoke of iron on your neck until he has destroyed you.

God is glorified by our experience of Him joyfully not merely by the way we think about Him.

The Devil thinks correctly about God but he hates what he knows. His problem is that he doesn’t delight in God.

People don’t awaken to how desperate their condition before God is until they start to measure their hearts by the demand for joy in God.

What do you desire? What have you watched on TV? Not just talking about good and bad but what do you desire when you have a free moment? Is your hunger for the word or do we have to find time to squeeze it in?

Does this seem crazy?

It is. We need God - desperately!!!