Lack of Joy IV: You are free

When Satan tempts me to despair,
and tells me of the guilt within,
upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died,
my sinful soul is counted free;
For God, the Just, is satisfied
to look on him and pardon me.
to look on him and pardon me.

If you are in Christ, you are freed from your sin. Sometimes a lack of joy is Satan tempting you to despair with feelings of guilt over past sin. But you are free. Christ has died for those sins. They now have no power over you. They now cannot separate you from God. This struck me on the weekend when we sang this song at a wedding. Unbidden, tears spring to my eyes. I've struggled so much with guilt, but God, the Just, is satisfied to look on Christ and pardon me.

I'm not one of those 'Love Thy Neighbour' Christians...

Classic from the Onion...

Lack of Joy III: Rejuvenation

I think that sometimes one thing we need in order to recapture true Christian joy is a little rejuvenation. Have you noticed how you feel after going to a Christian conference or camp for the weekend. I know that whenever I go to MTS Challenge or the Tasmanian Leadership Conference, I come back keen, eager, and joyful.

Why is this? Well I think it's putting aside some time to really focus on Christian issues, surrounded by other serious Christians who also want to learn. These kind of conferences tend to weed out the semi-committed who are only doing as much as is convenient for them. What's there instead are lots of people who want to glorify God, and it's being surrounded by those people that is a real encouragement.

Also, I think that it's great to be challenged every now and then. The speakers at a conference can be relatively sure that their audience is a Christian one, and so they seem to be prepared to be much more interested in challenging preconceived notions and really pushing you to live for Christ's glory, more so than you might get away with in church. I know if I said some of the stuff I've heard at a conference talk in front of church on a Sunday, people might get angry because they don't want to be challenged like that. I know that shouldn't stop us as preachers, but we need to be able to guide lovingly as well without driving people away.

So there's one solution anyway. It would be great if we could come away from church and growth group feeling like this every week. I think that's probably how we should be coming away from church and growth group. But unfortunately that's not always happening (maybe because of a lack of the above).

Lack of Joy II: A False Solution

At this point the logical step for Christians tends to be a statement like:

"This is because people aren't living in relationship with God the way that they are created to. Once they come to know God through Jesus, they will find true joy."

However, I don't think that this is totally convincing. It makes a mockery of those who truly believe and strive for a relationship with God, but don't feel joy. Some people then tack on:

"As God changes you to be more like Jesus, you'll be living the way he wants and then you will find true joy."

However, this also doesn't gel completely. Our sinful nature constantly strives for what is evil. A person who is trying to lead a righteous life can still not be happy when they see something sinful and think "I want a part of that." People who have been living good lives can still fall away because they get trapped into a life of sin (even Paul's two companions mentioned in 2 Timothy) while looking for happiness.

I think the answer is something deeper.

Lack of Joy I: A problem

I was thinking about Christian joy this morning, and why people seem to struggle sometimes to be joyful. It's quite easy to say "Rejoice in the Lord always", but quite another thing to actually live it out day by day, particularly when circumstances are against us.

A lot of the time unhappiness comes from two things: not-having, and having. Let me explain:

Not-having tends to bring unhappiness. It's when someone isn't happy because they don't have something, like money, power, influence, sex, boyfriend/girlfriend, etc. People in this situation are unhappy until they get what they want, which unfortunately tends to lead to phase two:

Having tends to bring unhappiness. We put so much stock in a thing making us happy that when we finally get it we realize that it doesn't really give us any lasting happiness. So we look for more (e.g. sex), or move on to something else that we think that will make us happy. And so the vicious cycle starts again.

Wouldn't it be great if there was something that could make us perpetually happy?

Getting fit

Went for a forty minute run last night around the streets of Kingston, starting with tackling Hutchins Street once again. I'm getting quite pleased with my fitness levels, and seeing my body fat levels drop at the same down (now <13%) is a great motivator. Of course, lugging around a few less kilos means that my legs are loving it too.

When I was running down Maranoa Road there was quite a bit of police activity. Soon I found out why when one of them approached me and asked if I'd seen someone running away in blue overalls and a white cap. Apparently they had robbed the Woolworths service station just a few minutes beforehand: unfortunately I was unable to help, as I hadn't seen them. The rest of my run was completed with police cars roaming the streets obviously looking for the guy. I don't know if they found him, but strangely there's nothing on The Mercury's website about the whole thing. Hopefully they got him.

Just got back from gym and looking forward to grabbing a late lunch. A footlong Subway Melt would go down great right about now... see ya!

Missionary Work...

Rain rain go away

Guess I won't be going for a run tonight.

Creativity

A week or so ago I made the decision to cut TV shows out of my daily schedule. Apart from news shows (luckily this includes The Daily Show and The Colbert Report), I'm determined to instead spend my time following other pursuits.

Fortunately this has really seen my creative side come out, something that I haven't seen in a long time. Right now I'm working on a writing project, which I'll reveal more about when it's a little bit more complete. For now I'm doing lots of reading, to inspire me and learn from other great writers. Ideas have been coming thick and fast and I'm excited about where it's heading... for now.

So feel like being creative? Try giving up on the TV for a few weeks... you'll be surprised how much spare time you actually have.

The silliest thing I have read all day...

The election results really saddens me. Nonetheless, I'm reminded of the words in 1 Kings 19:18: "Yet I reserve seven thousand in Israel — all whose knees have not bowed down to Baal and all whose mouths have not kissed him."

We are part of that remnant.

Who writes this stuff?

US Election

I've been following a few conservative blogs over the course of the election. One of the weird things that I've seen have been Christians saying that George W Bush has been a fantastic president, in part because of his party's stance on abortion (Dan J Phillips goes so far as to call him "brilliant and visionary"). The overwhelming issue for these people seems to be that abortion must be made illegal at all costs, because it's killing LIFE.

Can anyone explain to me why the approximately 90,000 Iraqi civilians killed since the start of the war don't count as LIFE? Please, if you consider yourself to be pro-life (as I do), spare a thought for those who have died.